1. For the purposes of this post “ashtanga” is “ashtanga vinyasa” in the Jois tradition, except where the Patanjali superset is discussed. I’m not pretending to be some yoga guru (far from it!!!). The post is mostly about direct experience and a novel connection to Vervaeke’s comments on embodiment. I’ve written before about ashtanga vinyasa here.
2. It’s hilarious what goes on in the process of letting go, the resistance and release is ecstatic.
3. I’ve been here before and you can never predict when it will arise, but it will make your day.
4. Today’s teacher guided us to a slightly different pose and asked us to “not report him to the ashtanga police” – he was joking but the adherents can be dogmatic.
5. This is the wrong word, because it’s beholden to our mechanistic cultural conditioning, I just don’t have another word for it right now.
6. Vervaeke asserts 4 types of knowing (propositional, procedural, perspectival and participatory). He is also a member of the 4E cognition academic movement (embodied, embedded, enacted, and extended cognition).