Jnana Yoga is often translated as the yoga of acquiring knowledge while Dravya Prapti Yoga as the yoga of acquiring wealth. A close friend of mine suggested that:

Ashtanga Yoga is the yoga of acquiring.

Some people may feel what she is proposing is akin to Ashtanga heresy. To imply that we practice Ashtanga merely to acquire the next pose is often perceived as an insult, an indication that the practitioner is missing the point.

But often, what lies beneath the veneer of the quintessential Ashtangi, is a desire for the next pose, the next series, the next milestone. We use the poses as a means of grading ourselves against our peers – Where are we? Where do we fit in? How long will it take me? Who am I?

As in other areas of life where we deliberately choose not to acknowledge our darker side, it is perhaps the same in our yoga practice. We choose to be consciously unaware of this facet of our spiritual failing, this desire of the human body, this quest for the next pose.

In Ashtanga, acquiring is the elephant in the room that we opt to suppress and if I’ve learned one thing about yoga it’s that we are not here to suppress. An important step in the search for our true nature is to appreciate who we are, the root of our desires, and to express all aspects of the true self. People often confuse the concept of “true self” as the “good self”. Our true self is the root of our being, where judgement is absent and we simply are.

So as we acquire poses and wear them as discrete badges that we are not supposed to talk about but do anyway. It is understood that it’s not the pose that you’re “stuck” on but the state of your spirit… but we shift to the importance of the pose because it’s tangible.

Some practitioners “get” what it’s all about in primary series while others finish Advanced B and are still at a loss. We all know this, but fall back to acquiring. This is not a mistake, but in hiding the reality we deny the reality – and we don’t practice Ashtanga to deny, we practice Ashtanga so as to accept.

So perhaps if we were more open about our inherent shorcomings then we’d all be more content with where we are. To accept that we acquire is to accept our true nature, and realising our true nature is the path to liberation.