Practicing yoga in the city has some special features, not the least of which is looking down from the 9th floor to the concrete patio below, or up to the Congonhas Airport flight lanes which cast a shadow on my practice balcony.
The practice has to be modified a bit. Headstand and shoulder are a bit cramped and I don’t quite like the feeling of being upside down so high up. I’d like my head to be on the ground — the actual ground.
But there is no trouble doing a supported Utthita Hasta Padangusthasana, most standing postures supported on the rail, and a modified Chaturanga on the rail. Just don’t look down.
It is also a bit cramped for a floor practice. So I have an indoor space for wide-angle poses (seated and standing) and floor twists (Jathari Parivarttanasana and variations).
In Sao Paulo there is support for Iyengar yoga, but travel through the city is a bit daunting. I haven’t found anyone in this area of the city that I might reach on foot, and the best-known Iyengar studio is about two hours away on foot, bus, metro, on foot again, and back.
A few years ago I found a teacher who had studied in Pune and had amalgamated some Iyengar concepts into his practice. It was helpful and he was a good sequencer, but the practice seemed like learning a dialect where all the pronunciations and movements were enough different to interfere with my own training. What is especially lacking is the sense of adaptive yoga and modifications for persons of varying condition and limitations. For that I especially miss my teachers at home.
But even though I miss the yoga at home, B.K.S always reminded us that yoga itself is a universal culture that we can carry with us anywhere.
