[albanberg]

There could be many different issues that could arise, it depends on the person. I will note an experience that I had.

I had been doing a Viniyoga practice for 1 or 2 years. I do pranayama in my asana (the physical exercises) and at this time I was not doing a separate pranayama practice. My teacher changed the pranayama in my practice and I became ill as if having a bad flu and I had some nasty boils break out on my legs. In retrospect, I needed to do some detoxing before doing this type of pranayama. My teacher kept me away from doing that pranayama for one or two years. Now I can, and have, been doing advanced pranayama for many years with no issues. I do this mostly in my asana practice but I do have seperate pranayama practices that I can do as well.

[maxxxxx]

Where do you practice? I would love to have a teacher that understands pranayama and can prescribe the right technique. Most teachers just know asana.

[albanberg]

I practice on my own. In our tradition, yoga is taught one to one. There are some classes you can find, but the intent of these is to introduce people to the tradition and for people to get to know the teacher a bit before doing private sessions. Yoga is taught this way so that the program that a person follows has been customized for their situation. This can have a great effect.

Back to your question. My teacher is fully booked and not taking new students. He mostly does seminars and teacher trainings. His name is Chase Bossart and he studied with TKV Desikachar over a 20 year period.

I've had almost 12 years of study with Chase and I'm now teaching on a limited basis. There are other students of Chase here in the SF Bay area and there are many people who studied with Desikachar around the world.

[maxxxxx]

Cool. The Desikachar and Krishnmacharya people seem really good and very practical. I have done some trainings with Gray Kraftsow and I would love to have someone with that depth of knowledge guide my practice.

[albanberg]

Oh, cool that you've had some experience with it!

[maxxxxx]

A few years ago I did teacher training (RYT-500 plus a few hundred more hours), taught for a few years. I have studied with a lot of people like Kraftsow, Rod Stryker and others but I haven't found a teacher who is knowledgeable and provides individual training. I am practicing myself but I wonder how much progress I could make with a good teacher.

[albanberg]

Thoughts: 1. What tradition did you study? 2. I think a good teacher would make a difference if you studied a different tradition/line of teachers. 3. I'm interested to know what you are practicing. 4. As I mentioned before there are people doing private mentoring, but you have to look for them and find one that you like. We need to get a directory going, but that will take time. If you want, you can ping me here: [e-mail] and I can try to help you find someone.

[orhmeh09]

What do you mean by detoxing before doing that type of pranayama ?

[albanberg]

In case you didn't see it, I replied above your comment. :-)

[albanberg]

orhmeh09, there's no link for me to reply to your comment. So I'll post here.

My understanding of things like boils is that the body is not able to release the toxins quickly enough through the digestive system, so it releases them through the skin.

The pranayama I was doing was pushing my body to get rid of toxins. After doing some juice cleansing, I was able to do this type of pranayama.