I Don't Teach Chaturanga Dandasanas

I am not sure if my students realize this, but no one has ever come up to me after class and said, "We didn't do a single chaturanga." Occasionally, though, I have been asked:
"What style was this?"
“Where did you learn?”
"What lineage do you come from?"

For a long time, I simply said, "Vinyasa." After all, we move continuously. Breath guides movement. There is challenge, steadiness, and ease. We build strength, mobility, and awareness.

But over the years, especially teaching in the West, I've found myself wondering:

Do my classes really count as vinyasa if we never practice chaturanga dandasana?

We never do chaturanga. Not because I think it’s a bad pose. Not because I don’t think anyone should practice it. And definitely not because I’m trying to make the practice easier - many of my regular students would attest to that.

I simply don’t include it because, in a flowing class with mixed experience levels, it often asks for more prerequisite strength and specificity than I can be sure all my students have in each class. And unlike many other shapes, it doesn’t easily sit within a spectrum of modifications in continuous flow, or a gradual pathway of building toward it.

And yet my classes are “vinyasa.”

Vi means “in a special or intentional way.”
Nyāsa means “to place.”

Vinyasa is intentional placement: the placement of movement with breath, and the placement of attention in the present moment.

No single pose or sequence of poses makes a class vinyasa.

Not chaturanga.
Not downward dog.
Not warrior II.

Every asana has something to offer, but simply as a meeting place - an opportunity to meet our body, breath, and mind. One person may meet themselves in a deep lunge. Another in a seated twist. Another in savasana.

What matters isn't the shape we make. It's the quality of attention we bring to it, and how each moment is shaped by what came before - while still offering a fresh opportunity to begin again, just as life does.

So yes, my classes are vinyasa.

Not because they include a particular transition, but because they are an invitation to move with intention - to let breath guide movement, to let awareness shape the practice, and to meet ourselves, moment by moment, as a way of meeting the flow of life.