This video is a full, uninterrupted personal practice demonstration of the Ashtanga Yoga Fourth Series — known in Sanskrit as Sthira Bhaga, meaning "divine stability" — performed by Kino MacGregor and filmed at Purple Valley Ashtanga retreat centre in Goa, India in 2014. Running over 102 minutes, it is one of the most widely viewed full-length demonstrations of this rarely seen series, offering practitioners, students, and researchers a continuous visual reference for one of the most physically and energetically demanding sequences in the Ashtanga system. The video contains no verbal instruction; it is a pure movement document — a moving study in what years of dedicated practice can produce.
What Is the Ashtanga Fourth Series?
The Ashtanga Yoga system as codified by Sri K. Pattabhi Jois and his teacher Krishnamacharya consists of six series of progressive asana sequences. Each series is designed to be practiced only after the preceding one has been sufficiently mastered, making the system inherently cumulative. The series are, in order: Primary (Yoga Chikitsa — yoga therapy), Intermediate (Nadi Shodhana — nerve purification), and then the four Advanced series collectively called Sthira Bhaga (A, B, C, and D), commonly referred to as Third, Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth series.
The Fourth Series (Sthira Bhaga B) sits at the third tier of Advanced practice. By the time a practitioner reaches this level, the body has been systematically prepared through years — often decades — of daily practice. The Primary Series has opened the hips and lengthened the hamstrings; Intermediate has purified the nervous system and activated the spine's full range of motion through deep backbends and leg-behind-head postures; Third Series (Sthira Bhaga A) has introduced extreme arm balances and further spinal work. The Fourth Series continues this trajectory with postures that demand simultaneous mastery of strength, flexibility, breath coordination, and drishti (focused gaze).
What Postures Appear in the Fourth Series?
The Fourth Series contains some of the most visually striking — and structurally demanding — postures in the entire Ashtanga canon. While the full nomenclature is traditionally transmitted teacher-to-student and varies slightly in documentation, the series generally includes the following categories of postures:
- Extreme arm balances: Postures like Viparita Dandasana variations and compound balances that require the practitioner to suspend the full body weight on the hands while the spine is in deep extension or torsion.
- Leg-behind-head combinations: Building on the single leg-behind-head work of Intermediate (e.g., Eka Pada Sirsasana), the Advanced series introduces compound versions and transitions where both legs may be involved simultaneously, placing extreme demands on external hip rotation and lumbar stability.
- Deep backbend series: Extended spinal backbending postures that require the practitioner to drop back and come up repeatedly, often with leg variations that close off the usual muscular compensations.
- Inversion sequences: Headstands, forearm stands, and handstands are woven throughout the Advanced series, requiring the core and shoulder girdle to stabilise the body at height.
- Transition vinyasas: Every posture in Ashtanga is connected by a vinyasa — a linking movement sequence — that maintains the energetic continuity of the practice. In the Advanced series, these vinyasas themselves become postures, as the entry and exit from extreme shapes requires significant skill.
What distinguishes the Fourth Series from earlier series is not simply the difficulty of individual postures, but the demand that all of the body's major physical and energetic systems operate in full coordination simultaneously. There is no single compensatory strategy available; the body must be genuinely open, strong, and balanced throughout.
What Are the Three Pillars That Make Advanced Ashtanga Possible?
Pattabhi Jois consistently taught that the Ashtanga method rests on three interdependent foundations — tristhana — which are non-negotiable at every level of the practice, but become especially visible and essential in the Advanced series:
- Ujjayi Pranayama (breath): A slightly constricted, audible breath produced at the back of the throat. In a practice of this length and intensity, the breath is the primary regulatory mechanism — it maintains internal heat (tapas), sustains focus, and prevents the nervous system from entering a stress response during extreme physical effort.
- Bandha (energy locks): Principally mula bandha (root lock, a subtle contraction of the pelvic floor) and uddiyana bandha (lower abdominal lift). These energetic seals are understood in the tradition to redirect prana upward through the central channel (sushumna nadi) and to structurally protect the lumbar spine during backbending and loading. Without consistent bandha engagement, the extreme postures of the Fourth Series place the lower back, sacroiliac joints, and shoulders at significant risk.
- Drishti (gaze point): Each posture has a prescribed focal point — the nose, the third eye, the navel, the hands, the toes, or a lateral point. Drishti externalises the direction of internal attention, helping to prevent the mind from scattering during a practice that demands sustained concentration over nearly two hours.
Together, tristhana creates what the tradition describes as "moving meditation" — a state in which the physical, pranic, and mental layers of experience are unified. This unification is the stated purpose of Sthira Bhaga: not to perform impressive shapes, but to achieve a quality of divine stability (sthira) that pervades all action.
Who Practices the Fourth Series, and How Does Someone Get There?
In the traditional Mysore-style transmission of Ashtanga Yoga, progression through the series is not self-determined. A student practises under a qualified teacher in a Mysore-format room — where each student practises their own sequence at their own pace, receiving adjustments and new postures from the teacher as readiness is assessed. New postures are added one at a time, only when the preceding posture is considered sufficiently stable. This means the path to the Fourth Series typically spans fifteen to twenty or more years of daily practice for most practitioners.
Kino MacGregor is among a very small number of Western practitioners to have been authorised to teach and practise at this level. She received her authorisation from R. Sharath Jois (Pattabhi Jois's grandson and the current director of the KPJAYI in Mysore) and has been one of the most prominent figures in making the Advanced series accessible and visible to a global audience. Her demonstration at Purple Valley — one of the world's most respected Ashtanga retreat centres, located in Mandrem, North Goa — provides a rare opportunity to observe what the sequence looks like when performed by a practitioner with the physical preparation and internal understanding to execute it in full.
Why Is a Full Demonstration Video Valuable for Practitioners?
In the traditional oral and experiential transmission of Ashtanga, the sequence is learned body-to-body, in the shala (practice hall), under direct instruction. There is no authorised written manual for the Advanced series — the sequence exists primarily in the bodies and memories of practitioners who have been taught it. This makes full-practice demonstration videos an unusually important resource, particularly for:
- Practitioners working toward the Advanced series who want to understand the overall architecture of the sequence — how individual postures connect, what the vinyasa structure looks like across a long practice, and how a practitioner manages energy over nearly two hours of continuous movement.
- Teachers who may not yet practice all portions of the Advanced series themselves but need visual references to support students who are beginning to receive postures at this level.
- Researchers and yoga scholars interested in the somatic and structural dimensions of the Ashtanga system, for whom extended movement documents are primary source material.
- Curious practitioners at any level who want to understand where the system ultimately leads — what the destination of the path looks like in physical form.
At over two million views since its upload in 2018, this particular video has clearly served a significant function in the global Ashtanga community as exactly this kind of reference document.
What Is Purple Valley and Why Was It Filmed There?
Purple Valley Yoga Retreat in Assagao (Mandrem), Goa, India, has been operating since 2000 and is one of the most respected Ashtanga-specific retreat centres outside of Mysore. It regularly hosts senior Ashtanga teachers including John Scott, Dena Kingsberg, Tim Feldmann, Petri Räisänen, Mark Robberds, Laruga Glaser, and David Robson, making it a hub for serious practitioners from around the world. The open-air shala, the quality of instruction, and the immersive environment of a Goa retreat provide a context that mirrors, as closely as possible outside India, the conditions of traditional practice. Filming a full Fourth Series demonstration at Purple Valley situates the practice in an environment that is already understood within the community as a place of serious, traditional engagement with the form.
Where to Go from Here
For practitioners inspired by this demonstration, the most direct path into the Ashtanga system is finding a qualified teacher who offers Mysore-format classes. Practising Primary Series daily under direct instruction is the only authentic entry point into a system that leads, eventually, to what is demonstrated here. Purple Valley's website (yogagoa.com) lists upcoming retreats and intensives with senior teachers. Kino MacGregor's online platform, OmStars, offers guided practice videos across all series levels for those without local access to a Mysore-format shala. For study of the philosophical underpinnings of the practice — the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, the Bhagavad Gita, and the Hatha Yoga Pradipika — form the core textual canon that contextualises what the body is doing in practice.
