Astanga was the first yoga I ever did, and it’s been the staple of my practice ever since. Because of this, I didn’t tend to hold poses for long. Five breaths here, five breaths there, always moving.

Until one day, that is, during my yoga teacher-training course, when my teacher decided to talk about triangle for a while.

"Who wants to demo this pose for me while I explain it a little." No one responded.

I think I must have been looking at him the wrong way or something because he immediately looked over at me:

"Robbie, how about you?"
"Okay, sure." I said, not knowing what I was getting myself in to.

I walked up to the front of the class and put myself in the pose. All eyes on me, I tried to do it perfectly – hip lifting, side extending, legs strong and engaged…

Fifteen minutes later, still in the pose, my ankles feeling like they were going to break, he went on about something that had nothing to do with triangle, and I started to wonder what I was doing there.

"Um, Rockne?"

"Oh, Robbie! You can come out of that now, if you want."

"Gee, thanks for letting me know." I thought to myself, bitterly.

The next morning, practicing primary series, I started going in to triangle again. As I moved in to the pose suddenly my feet felt grounded and secure. I could tell where the movement was coming from my pelvis and how to keep my lower back from getting thrown out. The pose was completely different from how I’d ever done it before, and after years of feeling like I couldn’t understand where the movement was coming from, suddenly there it was.

One of the things that I love about astanga is the constant movement. The way you can feel the rhythm of your own breath the entire time. The way that as soon as you start to feel comfortable and your mind starts to drift off in a pose, it’s time to go somewhere else and start moving again. There’s no chance to daydream because you’re always going somewhere new. But there’s a place for slower practice as well. There’s definitely a place for holding a pose for a long time and really feeling what it’s about. Often poses that were already a part of your daily practice can become completely different after that.

This made me realise something wonderful. There is no perfect way to practice. Astanga is a great daily practice. I love primary series. But if you want to do it well, the best thing to do is to do something completely different once in a while. Like many true things this is as counter-intuitive as it is wonderful.