Saturday Ashtanga classes

Several students have asked us to continue the Saturday Ashtanga class.
There were three reasons for cancelling it: (1) Sharath, who is now the Director of the KPJ Ashtanga Yoga Institute, directed those of us who are the authorized teachers to stop having Ashtanga classes on Saturday. Saturday is a nontraditional day and considered inauspicious for yoga practice and many other other activities. I kept the class anyway because this is Kentucky, not India, and many students want to attend on Saturday due to being off work. (2)Unfortunately the class was poorly-attended. On Nov 28 - the last day of class - 11 students came. Until that day, no more than 6 students ever attended the class, and usually fewer. Only 1 student came on November 14. (3) That kind of attendance is very discouraging, and after the Nov 14 class, Tom asked me to take it off the schedule.

We have a limited budget to pay teachers for classes. We need to pay teachers to teach classes where we have the greatest need. Very few Ashtanga studios in the world offer both morning Mysore and evening led classes. It takes a great deal of effort just to offer morning Mysore classes, and except for the Saturday Hatha Yoga class at Holiday Manor (usually 35 students), Mysore classes are our largest and most consistently-attended classes (25-30 students every day).

We need to have some classes on the schedule, even if they're not well-attended, like prenatal yoga, which serve a specific need. However, when we have 11 Ashtanga classes 6 other days of the week, any other Ashtanga class we add has got to be well-supported by students. This also applies to the afternooon and evening Ashtanga classes. I recently moved the Monday and Wednesday classes to Holiday Manor and added back a Friday afternoon class in hopes of boosting more regular Ashtanga attendance. If they fail to draw consistent support from students, I'll have to take them off the schedule at the end of February. I hope that students will attend these classes on a regular basis. Regular practice is the most important feature of Ashtanga yoga. It's not how many poses you get or how deeply you can go - maintaining a consistent practice gives you the benefits of Ashtanga.