Read this brief article: What You Need to Know About Power Yoga.

Basically Power Yoga is a version of Pattabhi Jois’ Astanga Vinyasa Yoga created in the 1990s by some of his American students to make it more accessible to westerners.

One of the main differences between Power Yoga and Pattabhi Jois’ Astanga Vinyasa is that:

Power Yoga does not follow a set series of poses. Therefore, any Power Yoga class can vary widely from the next.

So there you have it.

The majority of people do not like to do the same set over and over again. That’s the traditional way, the way that it’s done in Astanga Vinyasa, and it works for some people who are hard core into it. You might remember that I glorified Atma Power Yoga for this previously. For the vast majority of people, however, it’s too much. Thus, Power Yoga was born - where you don’t do the same set each time.

Atma Power Yoga has only one set which is repeated each week, so in that sense it’s more like Astanga Vinyasa. The whole idea of Power Yoga was to make it more accessible, and part of that was a variable set.

So we are working on four different Atma Power Yoga 1 sets in order to vary the set each week.

This is the way that hatha yoga systems develop - through experience. There is no substitute for experience. In preaching, teaching, and other forms of leadership, there is no substitute for the hard yards.

Let’s look at the macro level first of all. If you look at the history of hatha yoga, the earliest hatha yoga texts contain a small number of basic asanas. Patanjali’s Yoga Sutra, considered the primordial yoga text, dedicates only one line to the question of asana, mentioning it in passing between a discussion of the ethics of the practitioner and the preliminary practices of meditation, saying only:

Postures (asanas) should be steady and pleasant.
Asanas are mastered by relaxed effort and remaining unaware of the body.

The oldest known Hatha Yoga text, the 15th century Hatha Yoga Pradipika, contains instructions for only 15 basic asanas.

Over time, practitioners of yoga have developed the asanas through their personal practice and deepening realization. Many of their poses are named after animals. Yogis lived in the woods and learned by observing the actions of animals, whose lives are in tune with natural processes. They also learned through practice and introspection.

I have practical experience of this. My first contact in this lifetime with Hatha Yoga was through Ramacaraka’s Hatha Yoga - the Yogi Philosophy of Wellbeing.

I read through this book, which talks about the holistic yoga lifestyle in terms of eating, drinking, breathing, sleeping, bathing, and began practicing the things it talked about. I found myself naturally stretching my body and feeling how it responded - where the tension was, how different movements made me feel.

That book covers asanas at the very end, but I hadn’t made it that far when I found a flyer for the Manly School of Yoga. I wondered what they would teach there - would we discuss lifestyle management? I went along, and was surprised to find that it was all stretching exercises, and I could see how they were more sophisticated and refined versions of the rudimentary stretches that I had spontaneously begun to do.

So that is how Hatha Yoga systems of asana develop. As Power Yoga pioneer and luminary Baron Baptiste explained in an interview:

My style of yoga practice developed over many years of trial and error, and in finding what worked for myself, and for the everyday folks who would walk through my classroom doors. My focus has always been on “what works” and throwing out what doesn’t.

That is how asana has developed from the very beginning, and that is how it will continue to develop. There is no “one right way”. Yoga asanas are not revealed knowledge except through a practitioner’s personal practice and development of sensitivity to their own body and what it tells them.

There is no substitute for the hard yards.

As a teacher, you have to make the difficult trek to the ocean and then return carrying some water to share with others. You have to make the pilgrimage to the mountain to hear from the teacher, and carry back the teaching to share with others.

In teaching asana, you need to go deep into the practice and share your realization with others. You have to be a source of inspiration for them. The guru represents our highest aspiration manifest before us. We see the teacher and we say: “That is what I want to become”.

If you want to be a credible teacher you have to be a credible practitioner. You have to be a credible leader. You have to lead in practice. If your students practice once a week, you have to practice once a day. If your students practice one hour a day, you have to practice two hours a day.

The commitment of the people will always trail that of the leader. Your ability to teach will be proportional to your personal commitment, in terms of your ongoing practice and also the duration of that commitment - the length of your experience.

There is no substitute for the hard yards. There is no short cut - no magic formula. You have to practice, practice, and practice. Then you can inspire and guide others based on your personal experience. You cannot replace the depth of experience of the teacher with a system. You cannot teach if you do not practice.

If you want to be a teacher, first be a practitioner.