on Iyengar

I noticed a couple things in going to the first of several classes outside of yoga school proper. One is that it's I've come to appreciate previous teachers I've had immensely more, after running into a teacher who was just relentlessly negative and critical, both in phrasing ("don't," "struggle," etc) and in attitude.

Another was that it turned out to be a lot more valuable than I thought it would be to experience a different style of yoga. I assumed there would subtle or slight differences, but nope - where I'm used to vinyasa flow, with its reasoned sequencing and relaxing movement, the Iyengar yoga was disjointed and based on relatively few, static asanas. I'll acknowledge and perhaps even admire the point that in that manner one is able to really look at the minutae of a pose, but they seemed to focus on it so much to the point that it was ultimately more hindrance than benefit. The constant criticism and obsession with ideal form, regardless of injury (in the case of one poor woman grimacing at shoulder rotation) or the unique structure of an individual's body only exacerbated that hindrance. The idea that achieving conformity to some perfect idea of a pose would help the body achieve integration with the mind holds some shallow logic for me (in the sense of visualization, perhaps), but also seems intuitively wrong on several levels to me (ignoring the breath as bridge between body and mind, forcing which just brings resistance, etc).

-coincidentally, I just had happened to read these passages in one of my textbooks:
"Asana should not simply be an external form into which you fit your body, but should arise from within you. What you see in the mirror is the form. What you feel is the function of the posture. Unity, not uniformity, is the goal of yoga."

"Rigid adherence to the ideal form is simply habit or conditioning, whereas adaptation to insure function is an act of creativity."

- both from Yoga for Body, Breath and Mind, by A.G. Mohan