Like with many things, New York City has an abundance of yoga [0]. With our far-reaching and (mostly) dependable subway system, it is easy to get around to different studios and clubs, and not be confined to the one closest to your home. I’ve long cherished this access to variety, as it keeps my practice fresh, as well as constantly informs my own teaching of sequences.

The other day I was talking with a student who recently completed the Yogaworks [1] 200-hour certification program. We discussed the YW training style, which is, to my understanding, much more Iyengar-based than the more flowing vinyasa classes that I usually take. “They don’t even allow you to teach crow,” she told me of her program — I knew that would not be a training for me. I understand the safety precautions, yet I also love to fly.

Which is why I’ve been returning to my favorite teacher, Dharma Mittra [2]. Four days a week he leads his two-hour Master Class. No teacher has ever brought me deeper inside of my body during an asana class, and I’ve long respected his playful approach to this serious discipline. At seventy years of age, he embodies the “teacher” more than any I’ve come across, and I recently decided to make his class a weekly affair.

I thought about his sequence when my friend told me she couldn’t teach crow in a Yogaworks-style class, for it was the very first thing we did in Dharma’s. Well, first there was ten minutes of pranayama and chanting, a little dharma, and then a forward bend. Immediately he brings you deep, folding down and pulling on your heels and nudging yourself into place. Then crow. Into headstand, back to crow, float back, flow. Jump into crow. Back to headstand, jump to vinyasa. Forearm stand, roughly three minutes. Eka Pada Rajakapotasana II. Visvamitrasana. Hanumanasana. Forearm stand again, three minutes, then prior sequence on left leg. Handstand. And so on. Twenty minutes into asanas and my body was putty. Fifty people in the room, Dharma on me for many of these postures, wrapping my elbow into new places, holding me in forearm stand for longer than I might have cared to. My nervous system racing, the floor around my mat a wet mess. Of course yoga is not about the body when you forget you have one.

Another friend of mine, who teaches at Equinox, sometimes opens class with crow. Three months ago, in fact, he did. A few days later he was using the computer at the club, and a woman who took that class approached him, stating that she too was a teacher, scolding him by stating you NEVER start a class with crow. My friend was a bit stunned, not by the fact that she may not have agreed with his sequencing, but that she supposedly understood his action offended some sort of fundamental yogic principle. I’ve seen this syndrome too often: students study their particular style of yoga, and expect that all other forms have to somehow conform to their basic “truth.”

I wonder how she would handle Dharma’s class. I’ve never been in a space where so many people gather, in so friendly and focused a manner, as his studio. In others I see students quibbling over mat space, texting before, after, and even during class, staring at the clock wondering when the practice will be over. It’s never over, and this basic realization is rudimentary knowledge before even entering Dharma’s space. You arrive to practice yoga, and you arrive because practicing yoga is something you do all the time.

I find it unfortunate when yogis become fundamentalist in regards to the physical practice. They’re missing the point that it’s a way of keeping the body loose for meditation and, if performed properly, can be a meditation in itself; or, as teachers like Dharma prescribe, an act of devotion. The variety of styles we have today is due to the demands of many different people. While my sequencing is nowhere near as challenging as Dharma’s, it is still very demanding, something reflected in the various athletes that show up to my classes — marathon runners, cyclists, as well as people who simply love being taken to another level of their own physicality. I have devoted students in their fifties and sixties that can barely touch their toes, but enjoy the focus they develop by pushing themselves. The key is in the attitude, not the asana; it’s in the meditation of the movement, not being perfectly situated for a magazine cover shoot.

This week I’ve been stating that Hanumanasana [3] is the ideal ego-buster. It works on both ends: if your pelvis is a foot or more from the ground, it teaches you acceptance of what is; when your mind softens to accept this fact, your body relaxes, and you move deeper into the pose. On the other end, for those who look like ballerinas, pelvis down, chest resting comfortably on thigh in a forward bend, there is also the loss of ego, in that you can’t take the “perfect” pose as a sign of some form of higher yoga attainment. It’s still meditation, going beyond the self, that’s relevant. In that light, all postures teach this important lesson, and any sequence that can offer you a greater understanding of this is just right for you. Leave the “rules” behind and get lost in the movement.