[wes]

Cliff,


Asthanga yoga can be very many things. In the "most pure" form that I have studied, you do poses in a certain sequence without stopping (sometimes called flow yoga) with long holds that are quite intense. Also when doing these poses and holds there are prescribed places when you inhale and exhale so that you essentially are doing the poses and flow in a hypoxic state. In other asthanga yoga I have taken the breathing is hardly mentioned and the emphasis is on motion and not the holds which can be very intense (though only if the student makes them intense, its easy to go light on them). I sarcastically call this type of "astanga" yoga "jump around" yoga as it seems there are lots of people jumping around and not much else happening. The point of all this is it is not really possible to say "astanga" yoga does this, or "hot yoga" does that or "bikram's" yoga does whatever. With yoga it depends mainly on the teacher, not the style of yoga and also what the student puts into it how much of a cardio vs flexibility vs strenght workout it is.