We’ve run a trial of Atma Power Yoga here at Atma Yoga for the past two months, and these are the observations.

Power Yoga, for the uninitiated, is the “generic brand name” for any dynamic strength building series of asanas inspired by Sri K. Pattabhi Jois’ Ashtanga ™ Yoga (r)

Big names in Power Yoga are Baron Baptiste, author of “Journey into Power” and creator of the Baron Baptiste Yoga Boot Camp / Brian Kest, an early American student of Pattabhi Jois’ Ashtanga, and Beryl Bender Birch, who is credited with coining the term “Power Yoga”.

Atma Power Yoga is a power yoga sequence handed down through a secret tradition to Atmananda das, the founder-acarya of the Atma Yoga sampradaya.

There are three main components to the Atma Power Yoga class. There are the asanas, obviously. As well, there is “root lock” (muladhara-bandha), drsti (fixed gaze), and ujjaya breath (”psychic breathing”).

Root lock is the activation of the muladhara-bandha, or lock in the muladhara or base chakra. This is accomplished by directing awareness to the….. anyway, either you know what the whole thing is about or you don’t. If you know, here are the observations:

People do not like to lose.

That’s pretty obvious, but how does that relate to this class? Well, as they say over at Creating Passionate Users, the whole idea is to help the user kick a** - not to leave them feeling like a loser. If you get people into a class and then lay muladhara-bandha, drsti, ujjaya breath, and asanas on them all at once, with the Atma Power Yoga Countdown to Destruction over the top of that, there is no way that they are going to experience a feeling of mastery in that class. No way.

They are going to feel overwhelmed, inadequate, and ineffective. For a few of us these feelings inspire a response of ferocious determination to dominate, but in most of us they lead to resignation and renunciation.

How to fix this: at the moment our thinking is to create a Power Yoga beginners class, and a Power Yoga general class. In the beginners class there is no count. The focus is on helping the students to have a “mastery experience” with the asanas.

Once they have that, they can come to the general class where we have the count going, and students who have already mastered the asanas, or at least gained familiarity with them, can now tackle the coordination of the breathing.

People do not like monotony

From initially high numbers and high enthusiasm, we’ve watched that class go down. Early feedback that we got from students about Elliott’s Hatha Yoga classes, which used to faithfully mimic his personal practice, fanatically derived from Iyengar’s Light on Yoga, was that they wanted something different each week.

Of course Elliott, the consumate Hatha Yogi, was thinking that a stable sequence that enabled the students to gain deeper appreciation of the poses and develop their practice in a solid way was the way to go. That’s a kind of reflection on his own practice, which consisted of three hours of asanas “by the book” each day.

However, most people are not after that kind of level or approach to hatha yoga practice. They’re after an experience. Something different, something interesting, something stimulating. Most people are not going deep enough into the practice. They are acting from a platform of curiosity, rather than a deep-rooted desire for personal transformation.

How to fix this: In order to accomodate this motivation for coming to the yoga class, we are developing four different Atma Power Yoga 1 classes, and rotating them, so that each week the class is different, while remaining true to its objectives for those who actually wish to practise and progress.

So that’s where we’re at with the Power Yoga thing. We’ve basically killed one of our nights to find this stuff out, but nothing ventured, nothing gained. I’m interested in any insights that others might have on this subject. Send me an email, leave a comment, or write an article if you’re blogging.