Sintra - Teachers Immersion with Ty Landrum
Day 6 - June 21, 2024
Led Black Lotus Sequence
Okay, if those of you are here and don’t know what a Mysore-style practice is and what a Led practice is... Let me tell ya.
Mysore-style Ashtanga Yoga is named after the city of Mysore in India, which is often considered the traditional and historical home of Ashtanga Yoga. The naming of this style of yoga is a nod to its origins and the city where it gained prominence. Mysore has been a significant hub for yoga for many years. It's where the renowned yoga teacher Sri K. Pattabhi Jois developed and popularized the Ashtanga Yoga system in the 20th century. By naming this style after Mysore, it pays homage to the tradition and one of the places where it all began. It also reflects the authenticity and roots of the practice.
It began with personalized Mysore-style classes, where each student practiced at their own pace. In a Mysore-style class, each student advances at their own pace through a self-led sequence with support from the teacher, gradually memorizing it over time. The teacher is there in the room, offering individualized guidance, hands-on adjustments, and customized cues. This approach welcomes beginners through advanced practitioners honouring individual needs and making it a uniquely accessible and intimate experience.
Led class reinforces the proper vinyasa system you learn in the Mysore class – when to inhale and when to exhale as you enter in and out of each asana. Following the teacher's pace and count in led class instills discipline and helps build both mental and physical strength of students.
Both approaches are challenging in its own way and are important to have in my practice. When I practice Mysore-style, it is a meditative flow that lets me dive deep within, focusing my attention on the present moment. The very first class we had on Sunday June 15 - my mind was wandering, my ego was loud - full of insecurities and comparisons. It is truly a beautiful practice because half way through my practice, none of those thoughts, the chatter stuck around and my only goal was to move through each breath one inhale and exhale at a time.
So lets rewind, today we practiced The Black Lotus Sequence which is a sequence that Ty Landrum has created to allow for greater accessibility. This past week, we got our sequence sheets and half of the room was practicing the traditional method and half was practicing the Black Lotus Sequence. Because my Mysore-style practice is such a meditative experience, I didn’t want to whip out the sheets and interrupt the flow that I have longed for.
The Black Lotus Sequence is a plethora of sequences that Ty has spent a ton of time creating, fine tuning and mastering. I would be disrespecting him by sharing. In today’s world of social media or internet use, this traditional practice of Ashtanga that we hold so close to our hearts feels like it is no longer sacred or valuable. Once upon a time, these poses were only available to you as a student via your teacher and now everyone wants to practice the flashiest asana that they see on instragram.
After today’s led practice, I am definitely curious to try it out for one or more days next week during our Mysore-style class time. They are poses that I’ve personally practiced and taught myself however the flows are different and I love how it has been meticulously strung together. His teachings, his cues align with how I teach and provides reassurance as a yoga instructor back in Edmonton.
We finished the last hour of class with Pranayama practice. I am so content with this Teachers Immersion. Week one is DONE.
Day 4 - June 19, 2024
Mysore
I touched my head again! With my feet in scorpion. It is such a wild feeling.
I don’t usually get too caught up on goals but I would like to seamlessly float back and forth in my tick tocks. We tried a little bit of that but obviously wasn’t successful. Just like drop backs, it takes some time to understand how to rock up and down.
Alignment
We spent a lot of time on the foundations of Sun Salutations on Day 1-3. This makes sense as there is so much to learn in both Sun A and Sun B. So many people struggle with the conventional breath count for Sun B that I think I will modify how I teach my Sun Bs in an all levels class.
Today in our Alignment class, we learned adjustments on triangle pose/Utthita Trikonasana, and side angle. A couple years ago, I injured my right hip from practicing triangle pose in what I thought was a super deep way. I learned today that I was grinding my cartilage and experiencing hip impingement every single day I was kept my hip open before dropping my arm down to enter triangle pose. After going to physio and taking a break from practicing Triangle in that specific alignment (open/squared hips to the wall), the pain never came back.
We learned to enter triangle from sort of a closed hip (inhale from an apanic form) before opening up our arms. We then fine tuned the asana by isometrically activating our legs by externally spiralling our inner thighs.
If you practice yoga once a week, probably not going to cause any real damage but if you’re repetitively practicing in a way to mimic what an image looks like in your head, observe what you feel as you practice, and go slow enough to be able to make safe choices.
Verbal and hands on adjustments were reviewed and practiced. So much has changed since my Ashtanga YTT in 2017 and learning to verbally cue a specific person’s body (as opposed to general cues to a classroom) was actually a challenge! It is so much easier to manually adjust a body but so much more helpful to verbalize what they should do, so they can feel it and experience the adjustment within - and hopefully come back to it on their own.
Philosophy/Chanting
We ended our class reviewing the 4 States of Consciousness:
Jagrat - the waking state, the literal state
Svapna - the dream state
Sushupti - the deep sleep state
Turiya - the 4th state (?)
Shay (Ty’s wife) took over and began to describe The 4 states of brain waves: the Beta, Alpha, Theta and Delta which correspond to the waking, the dreaming, the twilight-state between dream and waking and the deep sleep states respectively.
She guided us through 30 minutes of Yoga Nidra which is to help us enter the Theta state from the Beta state. Once the Theta state is entered, the process involves the practice of standing at Theta, and from there trying to ‘see’ the Alpha and the Beta states simultaneously. The second that this is achieved between the 3 states, the mind immediately shifts into Gamma brain waves. And this Gamma wave is what is associated with the 4th or Turiya state.
She asked us to “set an intention to NOT fall asleep”.
I fell asleep.
Within minutes of her starting the class. I felt both feet twitch and propel off the ground! And then I don’t actually know what truly happened after. Towards the end, I adjusted my legs to prevent myself from further falling asleep and made it to the end without snoozing like many others (people were definitely snoring). Embarrassed about my inability to adhere to my intention, I confessed to her that I fell asleep as we walked out of class. She mentioned that maybe I actually tapped down into a different wave… I was skeptical about that because I can sleep pretty easily but all I know is, on my walk home.. everything felt vibrant. Sounds of birds were clearly isolated from the hustle and bustle of the traffic and even chatter from the surrounding tourists. Florals from the trees smelled more aromatic than the day before. The vibrant colours of the trees were even more obviously contrasted by the grey cobblestone. It was as if my senses were sharpened. It was something else.
Day 3 - June 18, 2024
And so it begins.
I have not travelled for yoga since 2019 and this idea appears to be a foreign concept. I remember taking off for two months at a time.. attending various retreats, applying for a last minute visa to travel to India the next day and not knowing where or what I was doing or where I was living on a day to day basis.
Travelling without Jay is lonesome but it forces me to put myself outside of my comfort zone - that’s always a good thing.
There are 26 of us, mostly from Europe and 2 Canadians (including myself) and 1 American.
Our class schedule as follows:
7:00-9:00AM - Mysore practice
9:30-11:30AM - Alignment/Adjustments
12:00-1:00PM - Philosophy/Chanting
Learning from Ty is very different than other teachers I’ve learned from. With that said, I’d consider that I have limited experience with authorized/certified instructors. I have attended classes and retreats taught by: Mark Robberds, Deepika Mehta and Kino Macgregor. I have attended classes taught by Geoff Mackenzie and Sharath Jois.
Naturally, I gravitated to Mark’s teachings as he is very scientifically and anatomically focused which aligns with my natural journey of learning. I admired his ability to maintain a physical balance between yoga, surfing and the many various styles of movement. Having yoga solely define my life or be the only method of physical movement is not how I wanted to live my life.
I chose to attend a Teachers Immersion with Ty Landrum specifically, because I have always thought he was so eloquent and poetic and admired his ability to string along words so beautifully without sounding fluffy and fake. In fact, we had a discussion and laughed about funny cues and wordings that you’d hear in a yoga class but hey whatever is going to help your student understand how to get there is better than nothing!
I knew he was going to educate us on “Prana” and “Apana” (saw this all over the instagram stories from previous workshops) and how they each dictate the flow of our practice but did not realize how much it could play a role in my personal practice. There is a lot of rewiring to apply in my practice but I am enjoying how this actually aligns with how I teach and how I sometimes practice.
Think spinal waves. Sending your tailbone down. Sending pubic bone back. Protraction of shoulders. Widen through your heels. Internally rotate your legs. The result: Engagement without actually telling me or you to engage a particular part of our body.
It’s only day 3. But what I will say is, his attention to the detail is eye opening and he is fine tuning my yoga practice every day. There’s simply doing the asana. And then there’s setting yourself up to feel asana. I have never heard a teacher talk about specifically diaphragm compression and how to mitigate that to still be allow breath to flow easily, to still be able to talk freely. I am intrigued. I am sore as fuck. But I am so very excited to get on my mat and observe what is to come in the next 3.5 weeks.
Ps. My feet touched my SCALP in scorpion today. FIRST TIME EVER. With his help of course.
