How did you come to Ashtanga
I’m Michael Joel Hall. I’ve been practicing and teaching yoga for over twenty years. I’ve been the director of operations for a multistudio chain and have incubated my self practice yoga club for over a decade. I’m the founder of Ashtanga Tech — a yoga education platform for people who want to create a practice that serves them, not just the other way around. This is Ashtanga Tech Support. Every episode, I pull a few questions from the yoga and Ashtanga corners of Reddit, and I answer them. I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about this stuff, but also kind of just answering off the cuff. Don’t get it twisted, its serious business but we don’t have to be. Ok, lets get into it.
The Question
I’ve been listening to a lot of genesis stories lately from Laruga and Kino and so on of how each found Ashtanga and continued the practice. I have been reflecting on my own journey and wanted to hear some everyday stories from the community on how you got here? Bit of a long post if you’re interested: I took my first yoga class when I was 18 or 19 on a gap year where I was bored with a lot of free time at the gym. I remember my first teacher who taught the class at the gym was this Balinese wom…
— via r/ashtanga
Our Response
I came to Ashtanga because my teacher told me I should give it a go. I had been sort of loafing around in these Iyengar classes. The hardest chair yoga ever, but still loafing.
She thought I had some shit I could stand to burn up through some extra athletics and discipline. That’s the honest version. I tried a bunch of other movement practices, and a friend basically said, “Just go to a Mysore room. Trust me.” I didn’t know what Mysore was. I showed up and there were people quietly doing their own thing at 6 AM and I thought, these people are insane. And then I kept going back.
What got me was the structure. I’m someone who does badly with too many options. You walk into a vinyasa class and the teacher might do anything. You walk into a Mysore room and you know exactly what’s coming. That sounds boring. It’s the opposite. When the sequence is fixed, you stop thinking about what’s next and start paying attention to what’s happening. That’s when the practice actually begins.
Everyone’s origin story is different. Laruga and Kino have these beautiful paths — Laruga’s precision, Kino’s intensity. I love hearing those stories because they remind me there’s no right entry point. Some people come from dance. Some from martial arts. Some from desperation. Some from curiosity. All valid.
The thing that kept me, though — and this is what I think connects all of us — is that Ashtanga asks you to show up before you’re ready. Every single day. You don’t wait until you feel like it. You go, and the feeling follows. That rewired something in me.
If you’re curious about what makes the Ashtanga system tick as a system — why the sequence, why the breath count, why any of it — there’s a study guide for that: https://ashtanga.tech/study-guide/systems-diagnostics/
Discussion
or explore Student Union