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A pose-by-pose guide to the hidden intelligence of the Ashtanga Primary Series — technical enough for the dedicated student, deep enough for the experienced teacher.

Overview

The beginner sees the Primary Series as a bunch of different, unrelated poses. The asana wizard, seeing only one pose repeated in different guises, remains centered and swiftly strikes the form of any pose."

Most practitioners spend years inside the Primary Series without ever understanding what it is actually asking of them. Notes and Hidden Techniques of the Primary Series changes that.

This is a pose-by-pose guide to the hidden architecture of the Primary Series — the organizing intelligence that makes Ashtanga a coherent system rather than a collection of difficult poses. For each asana, David Garrigues maps the technique, the alignment, the breath, the inner work, and the often-overlooked transitions that connect them. He introduces frameworks not found anywhere else in the Ashtanga literature: the Crouch, Spring, and Destination anatomy of every vinyasa; the Eight Spotlights of Samasthiti alignment; the body masses approach to stacking yourself into integrity in any shape.

It is a technical manual and a spiritual text at the same time — because in Ashtanga, those two things are never separate.

This book is for:

• Practitioners who can do the poses but feel something is still missing
• Experienced students who have hit a ceiling in the Primary Series
• Teachers who want to transmit not just the form but the intelligence behind it
• Anyone ready to stop seeing the sequence as a checklist of separate shapes

Specifications

Format: Paperback

Dimensions: 8.5 × 11 inches

Pages: 173

Illustrated throughout

First edition · Published June 21, 2026 — International Yoga Day