At Ananda, we encourage everyone to explore their body’s potential without the use of props, except when a medical condition prevents a student from practicing Yoga safely without props. Sometimes an instructor may introduce props for the purpose of teaching an activation of certain muscles, but then the students are promptly graduated away from them.
While getting into a pose may appear at first to be the main priority of Yoga practice, we soon discover that the benefits of breathing mindfully, concentrating the gaze and thus the mind while exploring a pose to the best of our body’s natural ability, far outweigh the perceived benefit of becoming attached to performing a pose the body,mind and breath are not ready for
At Ananda, we come mainly from a lineage of Ashtanga, which teaches us to release attachments to a static idea of perfection, and to practice with the intention of being present and safely exploring our limits while observing internal alignment