Waiting to Be Given the Next Pose: Reclaiming Authority Over My Practice
The method saved my body and my attention. The power structure around it nearly cost me both. I could have written a post about it. I built a platform instead.
The Intermediate Trap
Three years in and you have the sequence memorized. You know the Sanskrit names, or most of them. You can get through Primary without stopping to think about what comes next. You have also stopped noticing anything. That is the intermediate trap. You learned the shapes and skipped the system. This is the thing about yoga that nobody tells you at the beginning, mostly because it sounds like a contradiction: the people who are often practicing best are the ones who have just started. Not because they are more flexible or more focused. Because they are paying attention to what is actually happening, instead of managing how it looks. A beginner has no performance to maintain. They arrive, they try, they fall. They breathe because…
Teaching a Lineage I Never Fact-Checked
For years I could recite my lineage and couldn’t have told you which parts were history and which were marketing. So I ran an audit on my own values — and built the answer instead of only preaching it. Culture and Context is the humanities companion that lets you hold the source, not the paraphrase.
Performing the Practice vs. Reading It: Why Inheritance Isn’t Understanding
A student asked me why the closing sequence comes last, and I heard how much of what I knew was inheritance, not understanding. I could have written a post about it. Instead I built the map — 81 lessons, on a platform I own. The thing is the proof.
From Obedience to Inquiry: When I Started Asking Why in Practice
The values audit behind Foundations of Praxis: I kept teaching that beginners deserve to understand from day one — then I stopped talking about it and built the on-ramp. Designed sequence, guided audio, count videos, a Practice Recorder you own.
Practicing Without the Teacher’s Count: Making the Sequence My Own
I ran a values audit on myself and didn’t like how cheap talk is. So instead of posting that practitioners should be able to practice alone, I built the tool that makes it possible — every pose, both sides, counted breath by breath, on a platform I own.
Ten Years of Practice, No Idea Why: Building the System I Couldn’t Find
For years I mistook obedience for depth. The day I started reading my practice as a system instead of a set of instructions — and started instrumenting it like one — everything I’d called discipline turned out to be drift.
how does compression work help you find concavity without fighting your hips?
This is Ashtanga Yoga Tech Support. Real questions from the yoga community, answered. The Question I've been thinking about using compression work with my legs parallel so I can find the concave quality in my stomach while letting my hips move naturally. Does that make sense as a way to work? — from a MJH note Our Response Yes. That’s exactly the direction.Compression work with parallel legs gives you a container. You get to feel what your abdomen does when your hips aren’t externally rotated, when there’s no flinch pattern steering you away from the midline.
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Read more: https://ashtanga.tech/tech-support/how-does-compression-work-help-you-find-concavity-without-fighting-your-hips/
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Big Toe Joint Pain in Ashtanga: Risk, Reward, Conditioning
Big toe joint conditioning can be a missing link in Ashtanga yoga, especially when you’re jumping back and putting weight onto a joint that isn’t prepared. In this Shala Daily, we look at why so many practitioners get screened at the big toe joint and what it means for injury risk.
The video explores a practical question: what is the risk-to-reward of big jump-outs, and is it worth it for you? We talk about how the hallux joint can be conditioned, and how that may help you approach hard landings and transitions with more awareness.
Alongside the physical work, the study guide theme is surrender. What can we accept? How do we change perspective and let go when stressors are present, even if others can’t see them? That same acceptance shows up in practice when a flinch or reset appears, even without pain, and you have to acknowledge what’s happening before you can smooth it out.
If you want to learn skills like jump-outs, the message is clear: want what you want, then take calculated risks and do the conditioning work for toes, wrists, and ankles.
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anyone else find that nidra is the practice they never skip? even more than asana?
This is Ashtanga Yoga Tech Support. Real questions from the yoga community, answered. The Question something I've been thinking about lately I've had an on-and-off asana practice for years. some weeks I'm on the mat every day, other weeks I talk myself out of it constantly. you know how it goes but yoga nidra? every single night. haven't missed in months. it's become the most consistent practice I have by far I think it's because it requires zero activation energy. you're already in bed. you press play. you lie there.
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Read more: https://ashtanga.tech/tech-support/anyone-else-find-that-nidra-is-the-practice-they-never-skip-even-more-than-asana/
All content: https://mjh.yoga
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