My Ashtanga Yoga Practice

Practice
Pose Details
Asana Library
Chants
Settings

Inspiration

Ashtanga Yoga is a revered, dynamic, and rigorous branch of yoga practiced by millions worldwide. In traditional Mysore and led classes, practitioners flow through an unbroken, synchronized sequence regulated by steady breath counts (vinyasa), traditional Sanskrit terminology, and focal gazing points (drishti).

However, practicing outside the shala (studio) is notoriously difficult. Most yoga apps present generic, visually cluttered video workouts that force you to crane your neck toward a screen, breaking physical alignment, cervical spine neutrality, and internal focus (pratyahara). We wanted to build a distraction-free, audio-first companion that honors traditional lineage—enabling practitioners to keep their eyes on their drishti, synchronize with traditional Sanskrit vinyasa counting, and tailor their practice to their available time and lung capacity.

What it does

My Ashtanga Yoga Practice is a production-grade mobile app built for dedicated Ashtanga practitioners of all levels:

Screen-Free, Audio-Led Practice: Delivers authentic Sanskrit vinyasa counts (Ekam, Dve, Trīṇi...) and breathing guidance, so yogis can practice without constantly looking at the device.

Versatile Sequence Selector: Supports practices ranging from time-friendly routines (Sun Salutations Only, Finishing Postures Only, Quarter & Half Primary) to the complete, grueling Full Primary Series (Yoga Chikitsa).

Configurable Breath Pacing Engine: Allows practitioners to calibrate breath-hold speeds (from restorative 4 BPM to vigorous 10 BPM cycles) to match their natural lung capacity.

Comprehensive Sanskrit & Asana Reference Library: Detailed posture breakdowns featuring Sanskrit names, English translations, drishti focus points, anatomical benefits, and native audio pronunciations.

Traditional Chants & Invocations: High-fidelity opening and closing Ashtanga mantras with line-by-line Sanskrit script, transliteration, English meanings, and audio recitation.

Practitioner Experience & Utilities: Includes audio ducking/background session management, keep-awake prevention during practice, offline-first reliability, and customizable daily practice reminders.

How we built it

This app is built with the latest React Native and Expo SDK, leveraging the modern architecture with TypeScript for type safety across complex sequence and pose models. Utilized expo-audio and expo-speech with custom timer scheduling to ensure low-latency audio playback, dynamic Sanskrit pronunciations, and flawless pacing across background state transitions.

Monetization & Entitlements: Implemented RevenueCat (react-native-purchases & react-native-purchases-ui) for cross-platform subscription management, offering flexible Monthly and Annual tiers with a dedicated Customer Center for self-service subscription management.

Testing & Quality Assurance: Built an automated testing suite using Jest and @testing-library/react-native, verifying state progression, sound triggers, and pose calculations.

Challenges we ran into

Precision Timing Under Mobile OS Constraints: Mobile operating systems aggressively throttle JavaScript timers (setInterval / setTimeout) when screens lock, or apps enter low-power modes. Ensuring fluid, drift-free breath counting required careful timer reconciliation and lifecycle listeners.

Authentic Sanskrit Pronunciation & Acoustics: Standard text-to-speech engines struggle significantly with classical Sanskrit diacritics and rhythm.

Integration of RevenueCat and Stores: platform-specific setup and permissions, product availability delays, testing purchase and restore flows, and ensuring premium access updated correctly as subscription status changed.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

An Audio-First, Mindful UX: Created a beautiful dark-themed interface that encourages the user not to look at their phone while practicing, keeping the focus entirely on the breath and movement.

Authenticity to the Lineage: Faithfully captured the traditional Ashtanga Primary Series structure, drishtis, and chants without cutting corners or watering down the practice.

Production-Ready from Day One: Completed end-to-end store readiness, complete with strict privacy controls, offline-first architecture, comprehensive EULA/terms compliance, and native paywall configurations.

What we learned

Audio Engineering in React Native: Gained deep insights into managing audio focus, ducking, background playback state, and asynchronous asset preloading across different mobile platforms.

UX for Physical Embodiment: Designing for physical activities requires inverse thinking compared to standard apps—the best interaction design is often the one that demands the least visual attention.

Sanskrit Linguistics & Traditional Counting: Learned the intricate vinyasa counting system specific to Ashtanga, where every breath inhalation and exhalation has a specific Sanskrit number tied to anatomical movement.

What's next for My Ashtanga Yoga Practice

Interactive Apple Watch & Wear OS Companion: Haptic tap feedback for breath transitions on your wrist, eliminating the need for audible sound in quiet communal practice spaces.

Practice Analytics & Moon Day Tracker: Traditional Ashtanga rests on New and Full Moon days; adding an astronomical lunar calendar and a practice consistency journal.

AI Drishti & Alignment Feedback: Exploring on-device CoreML / ML Kit computer vision pose estimation to offer real-time posture symmetry checks.