Ashtanga Nashville is about so much more than a physical practice and is committed to cultivating an environment that supports practice through all the eight limbs. A yoga home where we feel welcome and supported throughout life’s stages and where we receive connection and support from this new and growing community.

It’s important to me that folks don’t leave the shala feeling down because they didn't do their quote-unquote “full” practice or because their practice isn’t as athletic or graceful, etc as those around them. I never want anyone to feel guilty for putting their family first - ahead of stepping onto the mat. I never want anyone to put friends, family, and connecting to one another, aside. Yoga can provide a path to reducing other-ness and doing away with the separateness that we put between ourselves and others. It’s that separation that results in so much suffering, so much turmoil, so much struggle, and so much strife in the world.

To maintain a practice takes sacrifice, commitment and effort. It comes with the territory whether it be sitting on a cushion or doing postures or chanting mantras, or whatever your contemplative practice looks like. It may mean we have to give something else up to make that space in our life, but if it causes shame, guilt, ill-will, or feelings of failure then we need to look at setting reasonable intentions around practice and honor the other aspects of our life. It's a balance that we work to strike to be able to maintain this commitment, but not at the expense of what the practice is ultimately intended to do.

As a community we can serve each other by acting as one another’s sounding boards, accountability supports, and also reality checkers to help us maintain perspective on life and let this practice bring joy and peace and a good mindset to our our lives and are being in the world.

Ashtanga means eight limbs. Ashta is eight and anga means limb (or component of). Ashtanga Nashville is a yoga school that is devoted to the study and practice of the eight limbs of yoga. One of the things that I love so much about this practice is that those limbs include family, friends, your well-being, your mind state, and all the possible ways we can bring practice into our lives.

Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras

2.29  yama-niyamasana-pranayama-pratyahara-dharana-dhyana-samadhayo ‘stavangani

The eight limbs (angas) are abstentions/restraints, observances, posture, breath control, 

inward turning of the senses, concentration, meditation, and absorption.

Yamas provide an ethical foundation. They offer concise direction on how to behave toward others and are rooted in ahimsa, which is the Sanskrit word for not harming. Niyamas provide ways to nurture our self that range from general hygiene and healthy diet to study of uplifting sacred texts to surrendering our struggles through a process of letting go. Together the yamas and niyamas provide an outer framework for cultivating a body, mind and environment that is suitable for the remaining six limbs.

Asana means seat or connection to the earth. I like use of the term “posturing” in reference to our Ashtanga practice because it conjures up the movement and breath approach we take to vinyasa. The body provides us a way of accessing the mind. 

This limb gets all the glory when it comes to yoga. When you stop someone on the street and ask them what yoga is they’re most likely going to reference the posturing. But Ashtanga is a full spectrum practice that starts with how we behave out in the world and then moves toward getting onto our mat. How we act in the world has a big impact on how our practice plays out on the mat. These karmic relationships give us a lot of fodder for work with the mind.

1.2  yogas citta-vrtti-nirodhah  

Yoga is mind work - the effort to suppress the monkey mind.

The limbs go more internal as we progress. Pranayama is the work with the breath and with Ashtanga we incorporate that breathwork right into the posturing work. Pratyahara has to do with withdrawal of our senses. Our senses are amazing tools for bringing in data and they do so nonstop. In our practice we work to use our senses in a different way — turning them inward. 

The remaining three limbs are the meditative group. Dharana is concentration, dhyana is a merging with the object of concentration and samadhi is a shift in perspective that comes. It could be thought of as an enlightened state of mind wherein the connectedness of all things is apparent. 

We do bring the meditative limbs into our asana practice — even if we don’t at first realize this is what’s happening. The repetition and consistency associated with our practice is so valuable because it takes quite some time to work through all the myriad of mind states that present within us as we move through our practice. It takes a long while to move from the gross level mindstuff like “where does my foot go? what did I do with my arm? what's the next posture?” and into the subtle aspects of what's going on underneath all that.

We are spiritual beings in a material body and a material world that is changing every moment and over which we have very very little control. Impermanence scares the bejezus out of us. Yoga can help us learn to become more at ease with this fact of life and to recognize that as we grow older our practice is going to change. One of the things I find so hopeful and so supportive about the eight limbs as part of our Ashtanga Yoga practice is that we will always have something that we can take with us as this body changes. We may go through times where the physical practice is just not as accessible, but some aspect of one of the other limbs is always available and therein we have a practice.