Ashish is not Iyengar teacher per se, though he was studying with notable Iyengar teachers in Rishikesh, Dehradun and other places in India. He is a teacher who is good both for beginners and for experienced students in yoga, as everyone will find things to work on in his class.
Ashish has excellent body reading skills and can instruct you to engage some small muscle that will change your entire pose. He sees how each student performs each pose and what muscle they engage and gives personalized instructions to everyone that help them achieve optimal results. I was struggling with a few poses for several years, not understanding why my body collapses in Scorpio and what I should do to progress in it. He was the only teacher out there to define my specific weakness and give me tools to work with it. He did it with a lot of my asanas and that actually helped me to deepen my practice a lot.
Very often Ashish uses props like belts and blocks to help open specific body parts or teach how engagement of proper muscles should feel.
He will teach you a skill of focusing your attention deep inside your body and engage deepest muscles to relieve excessive tension from superficial big muscles. That is very good skill not only for asana alignment but for your overall health, as new movement habits can improve your posture or remove old pains and aches.
Ashish is one of the few teachers in entire Rishikesh who can safely work with students with disabilities and injuries, such as slipped disks, hernias, scoliosis, pregnancy, knee problems, etc. You need to talk to him before the class and he will pay special attention to you during entire session, suggesting you personalized asanas, props and exercises.
And the wonderful thing about his classes is that they are stress-free and easy-going. Ashish conducts his classes in a soft manner. He is a strict teacher, but he’s understanding as well, and students feel focused, motivated and relaxed at the same time.
Many students come to Rishikesh and take exclusively his classes. He teaches in several schools as well, but you can always count on his dropin classes.
If you’re looking for a high quality asana instruction in Rishikesh, Ashish is a good choice!