Learn a bit about Asthanga yoga from Jörgen Christiansson, a Certified Ashtanga yoga teacher with more than 30 years experience. He and Dr. Hill speak about yoga, meditation, long days in Sweden, and why Ashtangis take “Moon Days” off. Jörgen Christiansson is certified by the Sri.K. Pattabhi Jois Ashtanga Yoga Institute in Mysore India and has had a lifelong relationship with Yoga. With more than 30 years of teaching experience, he teaches Ashtanga Yoga in the same traditional manner as was taught to him by his Guru. Jörgen has a unique ability to sense each student’s limits and abilities. With his positive and inspiring nature, he safely helps his students break through old patterns and fears.
Episode Summary
The Science Behind Ashtanga Yoga: Ancient Practice Meets Modern Neuroscience
You've probably wondered whether those claims about yoga "training the mind" have any scientific basis. After sitting down with my neighbor and personal Ashtanga teacher, Jörgen Christiansson—who's been practicing for over 30 years—I can tell you the mechanisms are more sophisticated than most people realize.
What Makes Ashtanga Different
First, let's clarify what we're talking about. When most Westerners hear "yoga," they picture gentle stretching or power yoga classes. Ashtanga is something else entirely—a precise sequence of poses held for exactly five breaths each, with specific breathing patterns and visual focal points called "drishti."
Jörgen came to the U.S. from Sweden in 1987 to study music, but yoga took over his life within two years. His journey mirrors what many practitioners discover: this isn't just physical exercise. "I never decided to teach," he told me. "I was thrown into a class when a teacher was missing, and opportunities just kept appearing."
The word "Ashtanga" means "eight limbs," referring to the complete system outlined by Patanjali over 2,000 years ago in the Yoga Sutras. But here's what's fascinating from a neuroscience perspective: the eight limbs form a hierarchical training system that maps remarkably well onto what we know about attention, self-regulation, and neuroplasticity.
The Neurological Foundation: Four Lower Limbs
The first four limbs—what practitioners call "hatha yoga"—work directly on your nervous system through specific mechanisms:
Yamas and Niyamas (Ethical Guidelines): These aren't just moral rules. They're cognitive training protocols that reduce decision fatigue and create behavioral consistency—what neuroscientists call "automaticity." When you establish clear behavioral boundaries, your prefrontal cortex spends less energy on moment-to-moment decisions.
Asana (Physical Postures): Here's where it gets interesting. Each pose requires you to maintain a challenging position while controlling your breathing and focusing your gaze. This creates what I call "structured stress"—a controlled challenge that activates your sympathetic nervous system while simultaneously training parasympathetic recovery.
Research shows that sustained isometric contractions, like holding yoga poses, activate the insula—your brain's interoceptive center (Craig, 2009, Nature Reviews Neuroscience). This strengthens your ability to perceive internal bodily signals, a capacity strongly linked to emotional regulation and decision-making.
Pranayama (Breathing Control): The specific breathing pattern in Ashtanga—deep, rhythmic ujjayi breathing—directly stimulates the vagus nerve. This activates your parasympathetic nervous system, but in a controlled way that builds resilience rather than just relaxation (Brown & Gerbarg, 2012, Journal of Clinical Medicine).
The Attention Training Mechanism
What struck me most in my conversation with Jörgen was his description of "drishti"—the practice of gazing at specific points during each pose. This isn't mystical; it's sophisticated attention training.
"You look at one place and breathe," Jörgen explained. "That trains the mind to be still and focused, because the mind is like the wind—it's not easy to control."
From a neuroscience perspective, this is training sustained attention through what we call "top-down attentional control." The frontoparietal attention network—including the superior parietal lobule and frontal eye fields—gets strengthened through this practice (Corbetta & Shulman, 2002, Nature Reviews Neuroscience).
But here's the clever part: by combining visual focus with physical challenge and breath control, Ashtanga creates what researchers call "dual-task interference." Your brain must simultaneously manage multiple demanding processes. Over time, this builds what we might call "attentional bandwidth"—the capacity to maintain focus under challenging conditions.
The Automatic Emergence of Meditative States
I asked Jörgen about something I've experienced personally: after practicing for several months, I started entering spontaneous meditative states during practice. I wasn't trying to meditate, but I'd finish an hour and a half session feeling like I'd both worked out intensively and meditated deeply.
"It happens when it's ready," Jörgen said. "It comes automatically. There's nothing you have to do. It happens by itself."
This maps perfectly onto what we know about the development of automaticity in complex skills. Initially, maintaining the practice requires significant prefrontal effort—controlling attention, regulating breathing, maintaining postures. But as these become automatic, cognitive resources are freed up for what neuroscientists call "meta-cognitive awareness"—the capacity to observe your own mental processes.
Studies using fMRI during meditation show decreased activity in the default mode network—the brain regions associated with self-referential thinking and mind-wandering (Brewer et al., 2011, PNAS). The Ashtanga sequence appears to naturally guide practitioners toward this state through structured physical and attentional demands.
The Sensory Withdrawal Mechanism
The fifth limb, "pratyahara" or withdrawal of the senses, initially sounds abstract. But Jörgen's explanation reveals a sophisticated understanding of attention regulation: "The senses are what pull us out into the world and toward sense gratification, which causes pain ultimately."
This isn't about sensory deprivation. It's about developing what researchers call "attentional flexibility"—the ability to direct attention internally despite external stimuli. Neuroscience research shows that experienced meditators develop enhanced connectivity between attention networks and sensory processing regions, allowing for better filtering of irrelevant stimuli (Lutz et al., 2004, PNAS).
The Ashtanga practice creates this capacity gradually. As you hold challenging poses while maintaining breath and gaze, external distractions naturally fade. You're not trying to ignore them; you're simply too engaged in the immediate requirements of the practice.
The Sequential Architecture
What's remarkable about the eight-limb system is its recognition that higher-order capacities emerge from foundational training. As Jörgen put it: "It's impossible to just go straight to meditation. If you're sitting with a slouched body and fluctuations in the mind, you can't just sit there and meditate."
This aligns with what we know about skill acquisition and neural development. Complex capacities like sustained meditation require foundational abilities: postural control (involving cerebellar and vestibular systems), attention regulation (frontoparietal networks), and autonomic control (brainstem and vagal systems).
The genius of Ashtanga is that it trains these systems simultaneously rather than sequentially. You're not learning posture, then breathing, then attention. You're integrating all three from the beginning, creating robust neural networks that support higher-order states.
Practical Applications: What This Means for Your Brain
If you're considering Ashtanga practice, understand what you're signing up for: systematic nervous system training. The benefits I've observed in my own practice and in the research literature include:
Enhanced Attention Regulation: The combination of physical challenge and attention focus strengthens your ability to sustain concentration under stress. This transfers to work, relationships, and any situation requiring sustained mental effort.
Improved Stress Resilience: The controlled stress of holding challenging poses while breathing deeply creates what researchers call "stress inoculation"—exposure to manageable stress that builds capacity to handle larger challenges (Southwick & Charney, 2012, Resilience).
Autonomic Flexibility: The breathing practices directly train your ability to shift between sympathetic activation and parasympathetic recovery. This is crucial for both performance and health.
Interoceptive Awareness: The emphasis on internal sensation strengthens your insula's capacity to read bodily signals, improving emotional regulation and decision-making.
The Limitations and Caveats
Let's be honest about what we don't know. While the mechanisms I've described are well-supported, most yoga research suffers from small sample sizes and methodological limitations. The specific effects of Ashtanga, as distinct from other yoga styles, haven't been extensively studied.
Also, not everyone responds the same way. Individual differences in personality, neurotransmitter function, and life circumstances all affect how you'll respond to the practice. Some people may find the intensity overwhelming rather than beneficial.
Finally, the traditional eight-limb system includes ethical and lifestyle components that extend far beyond the physical practice. The full benefits likely require engagement with the complete system, not just the poses.
The Bottom Line
Ashtanga yoga represents sophisticated technology for training attention, self-regulation, and stress resilience. The mechanisms align remarkably well with current neuroscience understanding of how complex skills develop and how the brain adapts to structured challenge.
The practice works through what we might call "integrated training"—simultaneously challenging your musculoskeletal, cardiovascular, attention, and autonomic nervous systems in a coordinated way. Over time, this builds robust capacity for sustained focus, emotional regulation, and what practitioners call "equanimity."
As Jörgen told me, reflecting on three decades of practice and teaching: "The more you indulge in sense gratification, the more pain you have. Gradually you seek a yogic life—simplifying and structuring your life to support inward direction."
From a brain optimization perspective, that's not mysticism. That's intelligent system design.
References:
- Brown, R. P., & Gerbarg, P. L. (2012). The healing power of the breath. Journal of Clinical Medicine, 1(3), 397-409.
- Brewer, J. A., et al. (2011). Meditation experience is associated with differences in default mode network activity. PNAS, 108(50), 20254-20259.
- Corbetta, M., & Shulman, G. L. (2002). Control of goal-directed and stimulus-driven attention in the brain. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 3(3), 201-215.
- Craig, A. D. (2009). How do you feel—now? The anterior insula and human awareness. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 10(1), 59-70.
- Lutz, A., et al. (2004). Long-term meditators self-induce high-amplitude gamma synchrony during mental practice. PNAS, 101(46), 16369-16373.
Full Transcript
[Music] so welcome to the next episode of head first with dr. hill today's guest is Juergen Kristensen who's a certified ashtanga yoga teacher patina stronger for 30 years more than 30 years and he's my personal teacher and we share a wall our businesses are congruent so he was a pretty easy guest to get on I sort of am blessed to have next door so you're going to welcome to the show today like I have you thank you very much so could you introduce yourself to our listeners tell us a little bit about who you are what your background is where you grew up that kind of thing okay well I grew up in Malmo Sweden okay and came here in 87 all right early like 20 years old I think I was okay and came here to study music but the yoga part of my life became more sort of important and it took over two years later and then been teaching yoga things so you came to the u.s. from Sweden yes and I think I know that you went to India at some point too is that right I did I went to India as early as I could pretty much because growing up I always had an interest in Indian culture and so went there I think when I was 17 okay okay great so what kind of music were you into when you came to the u.s. what was that journey for you it was everything back in listen to jazz all kinds of experimental music I like what would be called now world music I guess which was a combination of all kinds of drug rhythms from different countries combined with different scales and types of music interesting yeah great so when did you first get exposed to yoga or meditation I think I mean I heard about yoga when I was a child but I came across it more in my early teens I think I was 12 and my mother went to a Transcendental Meditation course and I went there also to get initiated started meditating and had really great success in meditation back then I think your mind is just not as busy or filled with conditioning ah so when I started meditating back when I was younger I would sit for half hour and it felt like a few minutes went by so that was a nice I think you get this inspiration early on so you know what's to come certainly inspired to continue so I think it was my early teens and it started from meditation and I had read about yoga philosophy so I was mostly interested in in yoga from that perspective to begin with and then later on it became the yoga poses and the pranayama and the breathing techniques okay yeah and then when you came to the US for music and then so he said yoga took a bludger part yeah I was struggling for a while for about two years I was in limbo because I thought my career would be in music and and I still love music but yoga just seemed to be what was falling in place naturally all the time so finally I gave in and said okay do you follow the signs yes because with music sometimes people stay up late they rehearse and it's hard to get up in the morning and so it was a bit of a conflict I've discovered that conflict of course the stronger has a very early morning practice typically and some days I Roland will too late for for morning practice as you notice so tell me about your training as a yoga teacher so of course you got into personally but when did you decide okay this is something I want to pursue as a teacher to practice on you teach to teach ya to teach I never decided to teach I was kind of thrust into a class once I was helping out doing carpentry work with it was the Chuck Miller at yoga works and who was the first one to instruct me the method before I went to to India the Pattabhi Jois and there was a missing teacher and I was thrown in there and after that it just seemed to be more and more of those opportunities so I never really decided that was going to teach it just kind of happened okay so first you get sort of you discovered you were you were teaching all of a sudden exactly okay yeah now can you tell listeners what yoga is can you unpack that that's a pretty loaded term people people in the West may not have the same perspective on it as folks from India culturally it's a very big area but for you what is yoga what what can you tell us yeah first you have to define yoga which which part of yoga you're talking about okay yoga is is a state ultimately where there's union between the universal and individual self sounds great but mostly people speak of yoga as the practice of poses and reading which is classified into what's called hatha yoga mat yoga is the four lower limbs of our Sangha yoga limbs Yama's new Yama's asana and pranayama okay so those four generally go under the umbrella hata yoga and it's it's not a term for any specific style which is a misconception okay yoga is all pretty much all the styles of poses that are practiced today so all of the body oriented practice yeah the seemingly body oriented it starts with that we start with the body because it's the easiest thing to control holding a pose like inertia on yoga we hold the pose for about five breaths generally look at one place and breathe and that could be enough of a challenge to begin with because the mind wavers and goes here and there sure but just continuing to do that practice regularly trains the mind to to focus and so that's what we do understand a yoga okay so Ashtanga is a cause is of the hatha yoga or at least it contains the hatha contains the head limbs yeah Ashtanga Yoga are still means eight and it refers to the eight limbs which is Patanjali yoga okay what is Patanjali potentially is considered the the father of yoga ah heen I should know this but he lived about just a little over 2,000 years ago okay and he wrote the yoga sutras and so that is the science he describes in 180 verses the signs of yoga and how to attain these these stages so so besides the four lower limbs what what else is there after that you have prepped ihara which is you withdraw the senses and cutter now which is concentration dianna which is the meditation which leads to Samadhi which is the state of bliss okay so you know sometimes people say arrogantly oh I don't practice hatha yoga practice Raja yoga which is the higher four limbs but it's impossible to just go straight there okay if you're sitting with a slouched body and you have all kinds of fluctuations in the mind it's impossible to sit there and just meditate so to the lower limbs support the upper limbs they all need to be there okay they all need to be there but we start with we start with those first four generally and that supports a further practice so you mentioned with drawing the senses hmm can you say more about that what does that mean it sounds like meditation a little to me it is a little bit of meditation the senses are what pulls us out into the world and the senses are what pulls us out to to indulge in sense gratification which causes pain ultimately so it sounds it sounds boring to be a yogi because I try to attain from from that which most people seek but ultimately when you have the understanding that the more you indulge the more pain you will have in your life gradually that becomes boring instead you can so you seek a yogic life which is more to simplify and structure your life so that it supports that direction so withdrawing of the senses is that a practice where you gradually begin to turn inward and preparation for meditation the next step is concentration and if you're too focused outwardly you get pulled out you get distracted there will always be sounds smells all kinds of stuff going on when you sit to meditate anyone who meditates noses the point is not to focus on them they graduated just keep returning inward and focus on some sort of focus so I do a lot of Buddhist meditation I sort of view concentration in almost in contrast to awareness sort of single point versus present time awareness is the concentration in Ashtanga is it anchored to a specific point or a narrow focus or is it just concentrating all aspects of your mind how is it achieved what is the are we now talking about the astanga practice as in when we're doing the poses or just the active concentration as that builds from the practice which type of concentration of what your focus is is not so relevant okay they're all different paths leading to the same goal but in the yoga practice when you're doing the poses we start by holding a pose and usually there's a looking place as good or do we say my teacher he said looking place which is Drishti in sounds good you look at one place one specific place depending on the pose and when you look at one place and breathe that trains the mind to be still and focus mind control and so this is how we start gradually the mind is like the wind it's easy to control or harness so you have to start in this way first with the physical the middle with breathing techniques and then with drawing and in concentration in that order okay yeah so sounds like a good building that it is a good building so I've been doing yoga with you for a couple of years now off and on with certain degree of commitment some some months better than others yes and I noticed pretty early on when I started to practice in um car when away the your studio I didn't really have any yoga experience before I done you know for one day you know one hour classes twenty thirty years ago when I was young and when I started to do practice I would leave practice after an hour and a half feeling like I had both worked out at the gym and I had meditated significantly like I had the stillness of meditation and the more I I practice the almost the more involuntary sort of meditation pack I seem to get in and now I would say correct if I'm wrong it sounds like I'm been focusing on the lower limbs and your studio up until now been practicing the asanas and yet the meditative concentrated those things seem to be emerging in spite of me not focusing on them or trying to do them right is that a function of just doing the lower limbs yes it happens when it's ready it comes automatically there's nothing you really need to focus on when people come into the practice and they start focusing on those higher aspects right away huh they come in they ask about the class they've never practiced yoga there's two things when can I start teaching AHA I almost chose initially now the first-year practice but before they ask you know when they're going to attain these higher states hmm and so these are all aspirations and desires that are within you and it's coming from you know when you have that desire it's not necessarily a good thing it's it's the ambition that will gradually entangle you and get you in trouble it's better to come and just practice knowing that I'm focusing on this first now and then when it's when the time is ready it'll come wonderful so you don't really have to think too much or focus on these higher limbs right away it's okay to sit quietly that's the practice anyone can start and do there's very simple breathing techniques that people can do after they just begin yoga practice you begin your your asana practice or your poses surely you can sit afterwards and just do simple art and alternate nostril breathing techniques and then sit quietly that's fine it's beneficial for everyone kind of facial but it's important to to really focus on the beginning part of the poses and then the breathing so um for folks that know Ashtanga seems to have as a core piece of it what we call Mysore style practice which is I always tell my brain training clients as I'm encouraging to go next door that some differences what they may expect from other forms of yoga is that it is self-paced where you have an opportunity to go in and practice in a guided way a facilitated way but you aren't rushing to follow along typically most days you are able to drop into the rhythm of the practice at your own pace do as much as you like go as quickly or slowly as it feels appropriate for me that was one of the biggest reasons why I've actually stuck with Ashtanga is the fact that it wasn't it has this very personal process and I've actually had this sort of master the the personal nature of the commitment of the practice of doing it and before I knew it I did when I first start working I don't think I told you this when I first start working with you I had done about six weeks with you and that was it and then I went away to I'd this retreat I do every summer a Sufi mountaintop in upstate New York oh yes right and I went away and there was somebody teaching in a stronger led primary now okay great I'll do this soon four or five days into class but I brought a good time at the end of it everyone's like oh my god your yoga is so good no really I didn't notice you know I had no idea and it was because I was sort of forced to do it in a very you know internal way without paying much attention and also in your studio you know I was very new and I feel ungainly and clumsy and you know unflexible although maybe that's the mind not the body I hear is that it is the mind monkey yeah but it's almost that I that I learned Yoga in a way that I wasn't even aware I was learning because I was focusing on my practice for his you know thinking about what it was I should be doing so I'm is that this one you find in general from students that the Mysore practice teaches them without them even knowing yeah the my style is is a beautiful practice and first let me describe what the name is sometimes people who come and they see this Mysore does that mean I'm going to get really sore and it does it does whether you are stronger you do get sore but that's not what the name is from Mysore is a city in South India where my my teacher lived in South India my sword and he had his small room fitting a pen later 12 people squeezed into that small room huh and we were practicing this self-paced practice and it's really beautiful because people can start from any place no matter what their age or physical limitations you do what you can when you're in a class where everyone is doing at the same time sometimes you're led to compromise or over over do sure and this is a very nice organic way to practice because when people first come they they ask how often should I come how much should I do and it's basically incorporated a new lifestyle hmm you sign up for a month and you try to come six days a week if you can't make six days you do what you can people have schedules I understand but you try to keep the practice very regular and in the beginning your practice may be in only 20-30 minutes yeah yeah but it's better to do everyday 20 30 minutes than to do an hour and a half once or twice a week it has a completely different effect mm-hmm you're not overdoing and you're cultivating and learning to to practice on your own yeah you know it's the mind doing instead of just listening to someone telling you what to do you are memorizing and you're following your own rhythm and breath which is good to do for the most part it is also important to do at least once a week at led class to sort of check in to see what your rhythm is and if you're doing the vinyasa or the movements and breathing correctly but the my system is amazing yeah when I first got involved with with yoga with you I would you know tell friends whoa I'm doing you know some yoga Ashtanga oh really oh that's hardcore oh you're gonna hurt all that's that's too much and that was not my experience my experience was it was a very gentle place to land where I could push myself as much as I wanted or as little as I wanted and from the outside people that were not a strong use they had this perspective that it was hardcore you know physically really difficult yoga but that's not been my experience I sighs too much the difference between Mysore practice and only doing lead classes maybe I think it's more has more to do with who's teaching it and what their attitude is why is very significant okay now any action we do in life is governed by our motives what is our intention with what we do and based on that has a different result or effect and it affects the students too that's why it's so important the other big responsibility as a teacher what is your motive for doing what you're doing I am just passing on the method that I was taught to my by my teacher and I'm trying to create a space to facilitate in a safe place people just growing mmm you know but it should come from them inside yeah yeah but if if there's too much of ego involved if you have this idea that you want two people to be afraid of you or respect you or like you or all these wrong wrong intentions then you may you may give people this feeling that Ashtanga is intense and also of course there's people that are not qualified they call themselves a stronger teachers but they haven't really studied they haven't gone to Mysore they haven't really studied with the lineage and they may not know exactly the method yeah so I when I first started working with you I started googling you know Ashtanga places and looking for different teachers it does not look like there's a huge number of certified donkeys in this country is that accurate yeah no I don't think there's that many I don't know exactly the number I think us probably has the most your pedaling is almost no one okay and so there's a it's it's a growing number but it requires you to go and put in time it's certainly not a 200 hour training it's more like a 20 year training okay all right it's not so easy great well it's it's a it sounds like it's a worthwhile pursuit it is because at teaching yoga you know sometimes these 200 hours give new teachers the idea that they are ready after 200 hours because they get a certificate sure these are not standard trainings obviously these are just anything else and that is very dangerous because people believe that now they are ready and they have enough experience to teach yoga and to tell people what to do when they come with problems and injuries and they usually are not they don't have enough experience so humility is a very important part as a yoga teacher great so you learn from guru ji ever I learned from that occasional Pattabhi Jois hi my guru uh-huh and then you said 2,000 years ago Patanjali yes just over 2,000 years ago what happened in the intervening 2,000 years what happened like like where's the connection oh I think people were already practicing yoga before Patanjali obviously actually he just sort of did a concise in very short Sutra form verse form the signs of yoga and the steps basically of stealing the mind you know step by step what to do to still the mind and to connect in yoga he just wrote like a manual okay and that was followed by people ever since you know he's highly regarded as the father of yoga kind of so the Ashtanga itself emerge you know many thousands of years ago or is it sort of a framing a reformation of Patanjali sutras more recently you know I think categorizing different schools of yoga and lineages is something we do but Yoe gihan they're okay and the unique thing about what I'm practicing is that it is following a param para or lineage of teachers sometimes people do learn from watching videos or copying other people yeah and it does not have the same magic or or grace behind it certainly no when you have when you have the blessings of teachers of the teaching that's been passed down through the ages it has a certain energy to it and people feel it when they come to the room yeah even if I'm not adjusting anyone at that day just being in the room practicing they feel they feel the energy from guru ji from the lineage and so that is important people have certainly been practicing before Patanjali and ever since interesting you know my guru he had this teacher krishnamacharya and he had his teacher Ram Mohan Ramachari who was living up in a cave in the Himalayas aha and he studied with him for I think seven seven years and learned thousands of asanas and so and so on before so it's it's a connected lineage and that I think is what makes astanga-yoga unique so you have a course a studio in los angeles in culver city called um car 108 which is a I can't say enough good things about it as a lovely place to practice thank you what others style mean you haven't had a um car forever you only what five or six years is that right f4 yes six and a half years we've had that location I was looking for a space for about 20 years okay but I was teaching out of a friend's place mostly in Brentwood for many many years at least fifteen years and just decided I wanted to find a space where I could have more events longer hours and create more of a community or stronger community and have more influence of the space itself and so people say when they come they feel the energy feels inspiring and safe and good yes and that is because we're focusing on that when people come i don't allow anyone to have arrogance or attitude or anything okay sometimes you have people who come and they're proud of their poses or people get upset because someone took their spot okay whatever that means and so I try to teach everyone to get along in the room and focus on their practice so when someone comes in as a beginner it may look intimidating at first to see so many people some people been practicing 25 years yeah how many advanced poses but there's also beginners sure and they are very much supported and encouraged by the senior students I also really like I tell people that a there's no mirrors and B it's sort of a low lululemon quotient it's not really in LA yoga scene and the slightest which means it's a bit more comfortable you have for me at least is yeah no fluff yeah it's a mirror certainly pull the mind out it's not a dance class so mirrors would just distract you looking at yourself other people older mind aldehyde you look at the dish day or the point and you breathe to focus just Ito looking at the point of your nose the point of your hand exactly there's different ones for different poses okay yes I know some of those not not many but some yeah so I'm aside from teaching in a studio what other kinds of teaching and done I think you were traveling and one on one instructor for some people you've you've done a lot of worldwide travel you've been and itinerant a yoga instructor yeah now I traveled quite a bit and taught a lot of privates in the past these days I limited to maybe just a couple of privates okay generally because I'd like to build on car and be more available there of course when I do workshops and go away and have retreats yep so all of them but my guru said to have a class mmm-hmm he said always have a class so so what kind of things are you doing at Omkar besides simply ashtanga yoga what other things are emerging as you build the community and the activities we're doing chanting classes okay we're doing pajamas or kittens uh-huh philosophy you know all the other aspects that is yoga we have informal talks what we talk sometimes just after class but we will schedule separately also but we talk about different aspects and what's you know we talk about the Yoga Sutras but then also we talk about two simple things like I asked this morning why people practice yoga and I didn't want a high esoteric answer I just wanted why do you practice why did you start mm-hmm and then people say oh they want to be more still okay and someone said I just feel better yeah my body feels better and these are very honest correct answers you can why people start and after a few years you get to other aspects and you may you may do it for different reasons interesting yeah I I started doing it certainly to just be physically more you know intact more flexible and of course I'm as I mentioned as I started to do what I discovered that it served the purpose of both exercise and meditate for me very very well yeah I seem to get the same type of meditative stillness that I would get from their half day for our sit in an hour of stanga yeah and also get the same kind of workout I would get you know lifting iron for a couple of hours in the same hour and so it's very efficient use of time is but also not quite as worn out as I might be from pumping iron and not quite as much of a commitment as it might be for doing a half-day sit or something right it energizes you even though you're doing a physical exercise on some level you're moving the body or breathing yep it's exhausting certainly at the same time you're getting all the other benefits of you know you need to release past body memories that are stored in muscles there's also making you tight breathing through it the biggest lesson in the beginning is for people to learn that it's okay to feel pain and they learn that and your brake fluid uh-huh because you put up with the pain and you breathe for the moment and then afterwards you feel so much better and more relaxed mmm-hmm and so that is you know Ashtanga is not necessarily a only feel-good type of yoga right you feel good after yeah it's like an investment yeah you you work through some karma you put up with some of the pain now and then afterwards you feel better that's wonderful I certainly can come back for that yeah so um this is 2017 what kinds of things might you be planning for the year any any workshops and retreats anything that's interesting that you want to share with our listeners well my highlight is my yearly Swedish midsummer yoga retreat that is my favorite place to go and actually was the favorite for a lot of people who went there last year no coming back plus some new ones yeah I think I'll have to be one of those new ones here tell us but more about that is it's obviously in Sweden it's out in the countryside is this converted old farmhouse uh-huh and they have a little Swedish winery believe it or not it's kind of Italian style and the bluffs have been converted it's really a lovely place to stay have amazing healthy vegan food mm-hmm the chef that comes there she's amazing and we have yoga upstairs in a kind of loft space uh-huh and this is overall really beautiful very nice in place we look out around it's all fields and flowers and oh it's great can't wait to see it and this is of course is happening at the Swedish midsummer it will be starting June 18th through the 24th well before that I think I'm doing a three or four-day workshop in Malmo which is the city close by great wonderful so now what is a midsummer we don't have that holiday here in the US for the culturally can you tell us a little about the Swedish background of that yeah it's the longest day of the year mm-hmm and so people celebrate the light because it is very light you even that far south and Sweden it is it is people who first come to Sweden in the summer they get a little freaked out this is they don't realize it's going to get light so early uh-huh and they cannot also fall asleep in the evening because even 10 p.m. or 11 p.m. it's still light so they have to pull the blinds down yeah right so yeah we celebrate that that long day of midsummer it's an old tradition how much light are you getting at that point I don't know but it feels like the Sun is only down for a few hours and then the light starts coming back again I imagine that might affect people's energy oddly especially if you're getting if you're not from Sweden the Arctic's you're used to needing to drive around it affects people oddly even if you're living in Sweden okay people seem to come alive in the summer uh-huh almost like hysterically so also everyone stays out and everyone eats and drinks and parties uh-huh and then we winter people hibernate how can you get up for early-morning mice or practice if you're up you know partying all night oh yeah I'm not talking about partying but you know certainly when we have incidentally this year we have a moon day mm-hm Midsummer Eve uh-huh so that's very convenient we might get to sleep in a little bit okay and then we have instead of practice we'll do some versions or get done and we do a day of practice on the Sunday before the end of the retreat but yeah I it's it's not like you stay up and partly I'm just peed it's light Caroline so people tend to just sleep a little bit life and you don't seem to need to sleep as much interesting the Sun gives of energy yes yes certainly certainly so you said this this this term moon day it's make your practices a stronger for me it's the day that I get to not practice and not feel guilty but beyond that I don't have a good sense of why we take full moon and new moon days off of your soccer practice yeah there are many explanations for what the moon days are huh you can say very often people speak of the gravity cool of the Moon being in line with the Sun yes and the moon the body of the moon itself affects all bodies of water thus XT is the gravity and so the ocean Rises and so since we are mostly water people say that oh it also affects our body okay and so we take a day off that day not to misjudge it's kind of a more extreme time where it's a being and flowing and so you take a day off just to make sure you don't misjudge anything I think traditionally when guru ji was teaching at the under the maharaja of mysore they took a day off because it was a very busy time in as a Brahmin priest during full moon and new moon you do extra poojas okay what is that you just ceremonies uh-huh yeah so you do certain ceremonies at the time and sort of quite busy and so I think a very practical reason for why we take a day off then is because they were busy doing the poojas so that became a natural natural time off but it is a is a nice rhythm to follow to become aware of where the moon is in the cycle and certainly if we practice six days a week an extra day of moon day right unless it falls on a Saturday then you don't get a day off right but it is a nice extra break sure yeah I certainly when I started doing counting and realizing oh I can twenty two days a month oh that's not a big deal I can do that right it sort of makes it less threatening than the idea of practicing you know 30 days 28 days a month so yeah I anyone that starts to practice I don't want them to feel intimidated by the idea that oh I have to do this every day and it's going to be like this and that try not to think too far ahead just see the practice as something that you incorporate into your daily routine and in the beginning it may only be 20-30 minutes and once you start that it just becomes something you want to do because it feels so so much better yeah it supports everything else in your life so it's something you want to have there yeah I certainly find that I crave if I've been lazy or too busy and I've been up late at night and you know up on early morning not practicing after a few days of that my body starts going you need to do Sun Salutations and sort of get pulled towards my yoga room yes so it's very nice in spite of myself I discover I have a practice that you know is insistent on on being met to some extent exactly when you practice for long enough then you you want to have it in your life and the moment you realize that the most is when you've missed a few days yeah because keeping a regular practice just keeps your mind in focus of what's important in life after a longer practice you start realizing this while everyone else is pursuing sense gratification which ultimately leads to pain yeah you are you know going to bed early waking up practicing early mm-hmm and by the time you're done most people are starting their day yeah but they have discovered that what you do in the morning and how you condition the mind in the morning has an effects of the rest of the day so starting a morning with the mice or practice or astanga practice really supports everything else in your life that's wonderfully agree from a personal perspective I find it's changed a lot and you know and I work with brains I work people's personal challenges and struggles and performance goals and if I'm sort of a post Ashtanga practice in the morning at you know 8:00 a.m. or 8:15 my space my bandwidth my ability to quietly listen to take and people are saying to not think about I really need a coffee or something is really established it seems to get all the the busyness of my mind sorted so that I can be more present for clients yes yeah this practice teaches you not to give in to every little wimp mm-hmm it's a it's called tapasya or austerity which is one of the aspects of yoga not giving in to every sort of impulse but the senses send us is is yoga okay and it teaches you to stay in control over yourself and it's something that makes you feel better in the long run so we have morning Mysore class and led classes in the morning available at um car 108 what other evening or other classes are you having a whole program of classes starting actually so we have sometimes people are very intimidated to just start a Mysore practice okay and I'm saying again they should not be intimidated because that's nothing scary but if they cannot make it in the morning we do have what I call short primary which is the beginning or most of the primary series it's the same sequence as you do in the Mysore class but it's a guided and counted class so we we have that also during the weeknights and then we also have some other classes at 7:35 that are just kind of like hatha yoga or vinyasa classes then when Yassa means flow essentially that's that right yes it's vinyasa is the movement with breath okay sequence and so there's a style of yoga that has been called vinyasa yoga yeah a lot of times it's very much based on the Ashtanga system but maybe not sticking so rigidly due to the the sequence but yeah like a 6:30 every weeknight we have a short form of the astanga practice and this is the short primary series primary now primary meaning first of course I'm vaguely aware there are things beyond the primary series is that that accurate yes there's several series uh-huh I'm not concerned about getting some myself I'm not attached to that in the slightest because I'm only about halfway I think through the mastering the primary series myself personally yeah it seems to me you know when I come in in the morning and those people who've been doing it for many many years that this takes years it is not a hey I'm gonna learn Ashtanga this month it seems like it has a much longer practice or much longer process guru ji says this is not you something you do one month one year or even ten years oh it's a lifelong practice okay you're basically conditioning and preparing yourself it's a lifelong practice people come in and say oh how long can I learn primary series in one month you know they come on with this this ambition and it's it's you don't understand when you come in with that motive is from the wrong reason we start from where you are and it doesn't really matter in which series you are what matters is that you are progressing and overcoming obstacles and difficulties and allowing the body to open you're releasing with your breath that is what's important is the breathing practice and the the different series and poses are almost there just as a an excuse okay to breathe further so breathing gaze the poses what what else is important that I may have missed in my own Ashtanga practice mula bandha are the the locks the relock yes it's just like not even sure if we should mention it now but it's a slight awareness and contraction of the perineum disease which gives mind control as already says so trying to keep or maintain and also as you're breathing and moving is also very helpful maintaining that during practice or yes all the time all during practice for sure huh that's the best time to sort of remember to do it yeah but good would you would say almost at all times ah okay but it sounds very difficult I am I find that keeping things locked down there helps a great deal with my lower back I have some discs that are intact anymore yeah and oddly enough I mean I blew that two discs 25 years ago or something and I have a chronic lower back issue most of the physical things I've done sports exercises weightlifting whatever it is when I tweaked my back I have to Oh be careful don't do anything for a while at settled for a week or two and then slowly move back into it and for the first year I did a shank oh that was my my habit was to go oh right we commit maybe don't come in for a few days and then I started to push past that even if it was hurting and I only enough find that typical you know morning practice reduces pain in my back and every other exercise I've done it increases it or makes it worse or exacerbates it pretty profoundly but you know some citations are not the most gentle thing necessarily but they do seem to open up my lower back in a way that I've been very surprised by yeah if you learn to move in the right way with the breath mm-hmm it's very very very helpful even if you have issues with lower back and so forth many people have it's very common okay but if you learn to move correctly with the breath it actually helps a great deal what happens usually when people start feeling pain is that they hold the breath which is the complete opposite of what you should be doing when you're holding your breath that you're sending a signal to the body that there's some sort of distress and you tense up further and you cannot release and open up what needs to what needs to give so you should lock the lower muscles but also keep the blood flowing it's not even really a lock I almost just a slight awareness so it's not a tight contraction that is just going to cause constipation got a very slight awareness of lifting it's just an honor almost energetic lift uh-huh but I you know in the beginning I tell people not to worry too much yeah moolah vada the main thing is as good as you would say free breathing meaning just breathe even if you cannot remember exactly how long to breathe and perfectly and the quality of the breath the main thing is to not hold the breath okay keep moving keep breathing because even when the body is tight in one area other places open up if you continue practice and if it's different types of pain if there's a sharp pain definitely become be aware and an observant and ask the teacher what they think is the good idea to do but if it's something that's painful while you're doing it but it sort of goes away when you come out of the pose it's generally not a pain okay it helps the body open up in other ways because yes if you're bending forward you feel your back slightly but it also helps stretching your hamstrings if you do it correctly mm-hmm stretching the hamstrings will alleviate the pain that you have in the lower back so they're all they're all supporting each other so what people find is that if they feel pain and they back off they generally have pain for longer yeah let me if they continue practicing with awareness interesting I've also heard you say in class breathe with sound freeze with sound read with sound yes what is what is the yeah look at Darth Vader yes exactly kind of that breathing they people used to mistake it for what's called Wu ji breath which is a classic-car nagamma okay I think this is not that it is not that because which I breathing is when you're sitting and doing this practice by itself in a different way okay so guru ji would say breathe with sound which is this whispering just like a slight contractions like whispering with the mouth closed so people who have a hard time finding it I usually say just whisper and then close your mouth continue to whisper ah and then that sound comes you try to have it on both inhale and exhale and the main effect of it is that it lengthens the breath and it tells you the quality of the breath or if you again or stop breathing it's very noticeable if you hear the sound and all of a sudden the sound stops you know you stopped breathing so it's that's a helpful thing to happen incorporate that's wonderful yeah so um again I told you that what I told my friends I was getting into a song oh that's really intense at hardcore what are you doing but having practiced in your studio for a couple of years I see people who have who are young and slender la Yogi's and I also see people who are maybe that older or heavier or have some physical difficulties or can't touch their toes oh yeah it does is it true that a stronger is really for anyone I mean it can be a happended anyone gurus you would say Ashtanga Yoga is for young man old man even sick man uh-huh cool easy man I'm not practise Ashtanga Yoga okay so all it takes is that you have the discipline to get up in the morning get on the mat no matter how much you do if you come in sometimes I see people come in and they look down you know something happened in their life but they're there and they're practicing for half an hour and they feel better yeah it's a wonderful success I mean just showing up and practicing that's all that we need and people who are scared of the practice have usually heard it from someone yeah could be someone who does not have the experience of our Sangha well they learnt it from the wrong person you know a lot of times I have I've heard it from other people who teach other styles of yoga will be scared of our Sangha and it's it's a misconception okay they either don't have any experience of our Sangha Yoga themselves yep or they learn to the incorrect way yeah okay yeah well that's wonderful thank you so much for taking the time and sharing your wisdom with us today you're welcome if our listeners want to find out more about you more about Omkar 108 or stronger where can they find you and they can look it up on the website okay at home car 108 to.com om kar 1:08 calm what is M car mean all car is the name of ohm if you know uh-huh ohm is the universal sound and ohm car is kind of like it's the name of the symbol or ohm itself um not as the sound the letter is if you will is the on guard yes or just describing um the full word is actually on car but as the sound and mantra we say on ah thank you so much I never knew that and if someone wants to learn more about the stange yoga of course you can read about it you can google it but nothing's going to replace going in and learning it directly from a teacher so practice is the way to literacy says 99% practice 1% theory okay so don't learn our Stanga yoga from looking at YouTube videos come into class it's great good advice thank you so much thank you alright folks this has been episode of head first with dr. hill my guest today Jurgen Christiansen 30 year teacher of ashtanga yoga certified stange and he's a really interesting guy look him up on the web track him down come to class you can learn a lot and your body will thank you as well as your mind so take care of those brains and we'll see you next week [Music]