A Well-Balanced Yogi: At the Intersection of Hip Hop Vinyasa and Ancient Ashtanga

Taking the time to sort through my personal history with yoga has opened the door to where I stand with my practice today. After years of on-and-off yoga practice, coming back to my mat when I found a need for it or (frankly) remembered I had it, I have committed to making yoga practice a tangible part of my everyday. One noticeable change this has invoked has been waking up 30 minutes earlier than usual in the mornings, rolling out my mat, making a cup of coffee, and starting my day with stretches to the tune of Jessica Olie’s chill Spotify playlist.

Last week I wrote about moving cautiously away from a traditional gym membership which had dictated my exercise schedule for the past couple of years to allow for exploration into different types of yoga studios that could enhance my practice.

The first studio that made the consideration of other gym options seem legitimate was Y7 Studio. In a stroke of serendipitous luck, the hip yoga brand opened their newest outpost exactly in-between my apartment and my office. I walk the ten minutes between the two each day and now I could make an easy stop along the way to take a Y7 class. The convenience of this set-up dramatically changed the way I viewed going to the gym; suddenly it became less of a chore that would eat up my precious free time. It morphed into the one hour in the day that I got to focus on myself and my practice, without going out of my way.

I would not call Y7 your typical Vinyasa class. For all of the distinct methods of Paulo, my former Chelsea Piers yoga instructor, he still followed the traditional flow of a Vinyasa class, one that was recognizable for anyone who had taken a similar class in the past. Y7, on the other hand, is about as progressive as yoga gets. The brand utilizes slogans like “A Tribe Called Sweat” and “We Flow Hard” to drive home the core teachings of yoga in a dark, candlelit room, infrared heated to 90 degrees, and, to top it off, the classes are taught to hip hop music.

When I first heard of Y7 I believed that it would be far too “different” for me and that the people who did it were a bit out there in their willingness to partake in this peculiar exercise-yoga hybrid. I was also convinced that I would faint in the heated class due to my past inclinations to do so. With a friend visiting in New York, I decided to give their new student special a shot. At $45 for three classes (mat + towel are included), the special is quite a solid deal. It took a single class to realize what I both feared and needed to know: for me, the methodology was a perfect fit.

When I used to run frequently, the best way I could get through a long outing was to blast my music and pretend that I was dancing. If I could trick myself into believing that I was just moving to the music and get lost in it, I could finish a long run. Y7 was the embodiment of this idea and almost immediately after that first class I was hooked. The teachers use the poses intrinsic to Vinyasa yoga to create three different flows within a class. There is freedom to change up the flows to suit the individual, to turn a standing forward fold into a headstand, and then of course…there’s Usher. And Cardi B.

Currently, my yoga schedule includes five to six Y7 classes per month. This is significantly more than I was visiting Chelsea Piers and has been unquestionably more impactful. Still though, in the practice of hot, hip hop yoga, I found myself missing the classic way. My thoughts sometimes led to a brightly lit room, stretching slowly surrounded by plant life, and silence save for an instructor’s voice. Recently, I made the decision to act on an opportunity to try a new kind of yoga, one that a friend had mentioned and I thought could nicely supplement my current practice.

The thing holding me back from Ashtanga yoga initially was pure intimidation. I understood Ashtanga to be practiced only by experienced yogis. In Vinyasa, one can twist and design the many asanas to create countless types of flows, leaving much up to interpretation. In Ashtanga, there is a right and wrong way to practice. There are evidently countless series of poses to be learned and memorized, exactly in the correct order. The poses themselves are aligned with traditional Vinyasa but the structure maintains a very different, more synchronized feel.

I learned this quickly in my first class at New Vibe Yoga. Rarely nowadays do I venture to the stomping grounds of my university past, the East Side. Living and working within a ten block radius encompassing the West Village and Meatpacking District, there has to be an excellent reason for me to cross town. I have the feeling that I have found one with this studio.

On two floors of an old St. Marks townhouse, New Vibe Yoga maintains two studios; Mysore Ashtanga and Led Ashtanga classes are held separately. If I was intimidated by Ashtanga in general, Mysore was the quintessence of my intimidation. Instead of attending a yoga class led by a teacher, as I had always done, it is an open studio where students come and go over the course of several hours, spending about an hour on their personal practice. Each student is completing the same, structured series of Ashtanga poses but, based on their advancement with the training, are able to progress with more complicated poses over time. The instructor comes around to each student and personally corrects or guides them as they move. When I heard about this form of yoga from a friend, I candidly could not imagine a time or place in which I would try it.

That time and place was a few weeks ago, when Groupon was offering a deal for 5 classes at $33 for New Vibe Yoga and I jumped on the opportunity thinking I would attend their led classes. After browsing their website and learning that they advertise Mysore also for beginners, and after accepting that my schedule that week would only allow for me to attend at that time, I chose to test it out.

Full of hesitation I arrived, a bit clueless for a frequent yoga practitioner, to the Mysore class. There were six or seven other people already situated through the length of the townhouse at various stages of their practices. One women was resting in her final shavasana while another was contorting into a headstand supported only by the actual crown of his head, no hands.

The owner of the studio, Alex, explained that Ashtanga is the most ancient form of Vinyasa yoga. He walked me through the primary Ashtanga series, a flow of sun salutations as delineated on the very tee-shirt he was wearing. I was taught that any time I was at the front of the mat, my feet should be together. Whenever I was at the back of the mat, my feet were to be separated. I was to breathe only through my nose and in downward facing dog I was to round my back so that I could tuck my chin and look towards my navel while breathing deeply. Not as easy as it sounds!

After 45 minutes of repeated sun salutations and a couple of challenging poses like sitting in lotus pose and elevating from the floor using only the hands I was tired and ultimately impressed by the process. It was a new concept that such simple poses, perhaps executed more properly than I was used to thanks to hands-on corrections, could lead to sore arms and a calm mind thanks to deep breathing. The personal attention given in this Mysore class was exceptional; I left feeling as though I had just had a yoga personal training session. Even from across the room, Alex would speak through my flow to help me remember which pose came next while adjusting another yogi’s pose.

Probably my favorite aspect of Ashtanga is how deeply personal the Mysore flow is. Sure, there is beauty in the class setting when a community flows together, hitting each pose at the same time to the beat of music. But also beautiful is the ability to stand in a room with others, each truly going at their own speed and committing the practice to memory so they, alone, can progress on to the next series.

My experience with Ashtanga has been humbling. Though I do yoga often, Ashtanga values repetition and mastery of the basics before moving on to more “complicated” poses. It has allowed me to realize that there are many kinds of yoga to be explored. I have certainly been practicing at Y7 more frequently than New Vibe thanks to the proximity and convenience but, even so, I believe strongly that there is something to be said for combining the new wave tendencies of hip hop yoga with the ancient structure of Ashtanga.

As I create my own morning flows in my apartment, I have found ways to combine parts of both types of practice. The dark room, beat bumping style of Y7 and the respectful, orderly style of New Vibe Yoga are only two of the many avenues one can insert themselves into in their practice… apparently there are eleven main types of yoga. My path to becoming a well-balanced yogi, literally (I’m working on my inversions) and figuratively (in my ever-evolving practice), continues.

More to come on yoga but next week back to travel with Hamburg, Germany!