Ancient technologies developed over many generations through the work of our teachers, refining, understanding, comprehending, and connecting; body, movement, breath, mind, and energy. Things were carefully considered before changes were made to what their teachers taught.
But now the peasants are educated, and it’s seemingly so educated that we know how to make everything better, or so we think. This is especially the case in yoga. Goat yoga, nude yoga, drunk yoga, yin yoga, power yoga, flow yoga.
And this would be fine if the principles of our teachers were incorporated into whatever franchise was being created. Even Patabi Jois and BKS Iyengar both went on to create financially successful derivatives of yoga, however, they did not stay with their teacher Krishnamacharya long enough to create a yoga practice that incorporated the primary principles so that everybody received a yoga practice that was best for their; age, sex, body, culture.
Unless you play the guitar using chords and notes in the appropriate place, it will sound terrible even to a naked mole rat. If you run like a penguin it will not only be inefficient but will probably be bad for your joints, gardening is not guesswork, building needs to include the principles of the engineers. It’s not what you believe it’s what our teachers know.
It’s worth knowing the original principles and information about our practice before we change ancient technologies to improve things. Move away from the original too much and it is no longer that. When we know the information derived from generations of many hours of work, then we can understand what rules we can break.
And it will help when we surrender to the striving and the searching, allowing our practice to come naturally, enjoying the effort through the process.
