White Lotus Yoga
An Article on White Lotus’ 16 day
residential
Yoga Teacher Training Course
From Yoga Journal, March, 1994
By Anne Cushman
In the summer of 1990, in the middle of the White
Lotus Foundation’s 16-day Yoga teacher training
program, a brush fire erupted about 100 yards downwind
from the center’s driveway in the Santa Ynez
mountains in Santa Barbara, California. The ensuing
firestorm raged for four days up and down the drought-parched
valley, destroying over 600 homes and melting power
lines for 13 miles. While continuing the teacher training
in a nearby hotel, White Lotus directors Ganga White
and Tracey Rich tuned in to radio reports indicating
that their Yoga center was going up in smoke. But
when they returned to inspect the damage, they discovered
to their amazement that the devastation had neatly
skirted the boundaries of their 40 acres. Flames had
roared to the very edges of their land, defining the
property line on three sides, then had turned back.
The only damage, Rich reports, was a "fine layer
of sacred ash."
Magic and miracles
have been associated with this site for as long as
human beings have inhabited the surrounding coastal
mountain range. For the Chumash Indians, the canyon
was a sacred healing spot known as Taklushmon,
or "the gathering place." It was blessed,
among other things, with a stream that never dried
up, even in the severest droughts. When an eccentric
German-born mystic known as Yogi Earnest Haeckel purchased
the land from the federal government in the mid-1940s,
he built on this spiritual foundation by constructing
a small Yoga and meditation center–adding, in the
1950s, a well-stocked bomb shelter where he and his
students could take refuge from radioactive fallout.
When
White and Rich acquired Haeckel's property 11 years
ago, they wanted to create a shelter of a different
sort–a sanctuary where people could retreat from the
fallout of their daily lives to soak up the healing
power of Yoga in a pristine natural environment. Their
White Lotus Foundation offers a wide variety of workshops
in asana, pranayama, meditation, tantra, and Yoga
philosophy, along with ongoing weekly classes. At
the heart of these offerings is the 16 day residential
teacher training program, a nonsectarian guided tour
through the vast and variegated landscape of Yoga
history, philosophy, and practice.
In
this high-density, total-immersion course, twice daily
asana classes (one emphasizing a complete, flowing
practice, the other concentrating on alignment, detail,
and instructional techniques for a few key postures)
are combined with pranayama and meditation instruction,
teaching practice, and video feedback. Nightly lectures
address topics such as Yoga history and philosophy,
the physiological and therapeutic effects of asana
practice, vegetarian nutrition, holistic health, and
Yoga business strategies. But far more important than
the content of the course, says White, is the attitude
toward Yoga it seeks to cultivate. Through decades
of practice and study with masters from a wide range
of traditions, White and Rich have distilled a fluid,
creative teaching style that's aimed at "setting
people free." We're giving you a way of learning
and doing Yoga that's open, flexible, and not attached
to any dogma, ritual, or sectarian approach,"
White tells the 24 students who have gathered in the
spacious, book-lined lounge on the first evening of
the training. "Then you can leave and study with
any teachers you want to–even the most dogmatic and
authoritarian–and still learn something from them."
White himself has spent more than 30 years cultivating
just such an openness of body and mind. His spiritual
journey began in the mid-1960s, when he undertook
the study of Eastern philosophy with an Indian professor
of religious studies who was also a Zoroastrian high
priest. Fascinated by his teacher's lectures on Yoga,
he traveled to India and began intensive study with
various Yogis in the Sivananda lineage–primarily Swami
Vishnudevananda, whose then newly published Complete
Illustrated Book of Yoga
was selling briskly among America’s flower children.
White soon emerged as one of the 
key
figures in the burgeoning Hatha Yoga movement in the
United States. Peter Sellers became his student; Muhammad
Ali requested a private demonstration; and Donovan
narrated a documentary about the "new spirituality"
that featured White doing asanas on a California beach.
Within a few years, White became vice-president of
the Sivananda organization and began opening studios
and ashrams all over North America, including his
own Center for Yoga in Los Angeles (which he finally
sold in 1993) "At Sivananda, I got a broad overview
of classic Yoga philosophy and learned a lot about
traditional Indian systems," he recalls. "I
met many, many Yogis and swamis and had very deep
experiences of physical and spiritual opening."
However, he gradually became frustrated with what
he perceived as an excessively hierarchical and dogmatic
tradition–and disillusioned by the gap he noticed
between what was taught and what was lived. ("Once,
I walked in on a swami beating up his secretary,"
he recalls. "It blew my mind.") When his
increasingly probing questions were ignored– "once
you accept a teacher you're not supposed to question
any more"– he left the Sivananda organization
and began traveling around India on his own, looking
for teachers who would encourage his inquiries. He
found one in Swami Venkates, renowned as "the
laughing swami," a Sanskrit scholar and Hatha
Yoga master whose motto was "never take anything
too seriously." Venkates introduced White to
J. Krishnamurti, who encouraged him to keep on questioning
authority and trusting his own inner wisdom. "I
felt a great release and freeing, as if I'd thrown
off a lot of dead weight," he says. "Instead
of an efforting toward enlightenment, Yoga became
a lightening up."
While continuing to study with Venkates
and Krishnamurti, White explored new Hatha Yoga paths
as well. He refined his sense of alignment and Yoga
therapeutics by training several times with B.K.S.
Iyengar, including a month-long intensive for teachers
held in Pune in the mid-1970s. (" There were
only about 15 of us in the class, so you can imagine
what it was like - he killed us ," White jokes
about the notoriously demanding Iyengar. "If
you're a teacher, he likes to break you down.").
He was also strongly influenced by the vigorous, flowing
Ashtanga Yoga taught by Pattabhi Jois, with whom he
studied in Hawaii in the early 1980s.
It was in Hawaii that
White met Tracey Rich, a Yoga teacher from Nashville,
Tennessee, whose gentle, intuitive teaching style–her
primary teacher had trained in the Kripalu tradition–had
been laced with fire by intensive Ashtanga practice.
Unlike White, Rich had never been particularly interested
in Indian culture or traditional Vedic philosophy.
"I was a classic '70s teenager–lots of sex, drugs,
and rock and roll," she jokes.
Searching for something
deeper, she sampled Hatha Yoga in her early 20s and
was instantly enchanted by both the sheer physical
pleasure of the asana practice and the peace of mind
it brought her. Finding that her body easily melted
into even very challenging postures, Rich began teaching
after only six months (at the urging of her instructor,
June LaSalvia, a friend and confidante who "pushed
me out of the nest at an early age"). Drawing
on her own inner investigations and her love of dance,
music, and poetry, she gradually developed a playful,
spontaneous approach that encourages students to improvise
and explore.
White and Rich's "Yoga romance" quickly
led to a long-term partnership, and in 1983 the two
merged both their lives and their unique teaching
styles to launch their Santa Barbara retreat center.
"We wanted to create a place where people could
come to have an experience of Yoga," Rich recollects.
"We wanted to give them a taste of a total lifestyle–a
radically different way of living–so they could make
transformational choices. "
At this they have succeeded admirably.
As a visitor descends the dusty dirt driveway into
their canyon retreat, the traffic sounds from nearby
Highway 154 fade away, replaced by the wind rustling
through groves of live oak, bay, and sycamore. The
stucco studio perches on the rocky hillside amidst
landscaped gardens resplendent with roses, tiger lilies,
iris, orange bushes, and fig trees. While soaking
in the redwood hot tub or lounging on the lawns and
sun decks, guests overlook a panoramic view of valley,
mountains, ocean, and the distant sprawl of Santa
Barbara, which seems as remote as another planet.
At the bottom of the valley, Skumuwash
Creek–the name is Chumash for "to have arrived"–sings
over giant boulders of sandstone and granite. Between
classes, students scramble through the woods to a
swimming hole fed by a waterfall, where they dive
naked into icy water and bask on sun-baked ledges.
During my visit, I spend hours lying on warm, water-smoothed
boulders, watching dancing slabs of light, reflected
upward from the green surface of the pool, playing
on the undersides of the overhanging rocks.
At night, guests sleep in yurts or
domes tucked away in the oaks, where we're sung to
sleep by crickets, frogs, and the yapping of coyotes.
The full moon paints black silhouettes on the translucent
walls of my creekside tent, creating a delicate batik
of crisscrossed leaves and branches. Awakened by a
rustle in the underbrush one night, I open my eyes
to glimpse the silhouette of a fox stalking through
this diorama like a figure in a shadow play.
This intimate connection with the
rhythms of the natural world is a crucial part of
the curriculum at White Lotus. "I think the waterfall
and the wind and the birds teach you more about Yoga
than we ever can," White maintains. Another important
element is what one student refers to as "the
classes in experiential nutrition." Gourmet vegan
lunches and dinners are designed to dispel the myth
that meatless, dairyless, whole-foods cookery is ascetic
fare: We feast on dishes like polenta-spinach pie
with tomato basil sauce; black bean enchiladas with
guacamole, soy cheese, and vegan sour cream; fresh-baked
muffins and breads; and tofu cheesecake with fresh
figs. One evening, a spread of curried vegetables,
orange-pear chutney, basmati rice, and homemade chapatis
is accompanied by sitar music and a slide show depicting
the highlights of White's many travels in India.
All levels of students are accepted
into the teacher training program, from rank beginners
who want a comprehensive introduction to practice,
to experienced teachers who want to expand their repertoire
of knowledge and techniques. In the program I attend,
one student is an Ashtanga Yoga instructor with a
body as flexible as a contortionist's; she has come
to learn more about the philosophical context of asana
practice. Another is a former Air Force officer, stiff
as a bayonet, who has just retired after 20 years
in the service. (Like a good soldier, he performs
his newfound practice with dedication, but reflexively
stands at attention between poses.)
Several students come from tiny rural
towns with no Yoga instructors, where they've been
diligently practicing from books and videotapes. Like
missionaries armed with a fresh supply of tracts,
they plan to return to share their newly discovered
knowledge with an eager congregation of would-be Yogis.
While Rich and White acknowledge that two weeks of
classes won't turn a novice into an expert, they insist
that's not the point of their program.
"It's like making yogurt–after
you put the culture into the milk, it takes time for
the milk to turn into the yogurt, but the process
has been initiated," White explains. "White
Lotus 'certification' just means that the culture
is in the milk. People have gotten a visceral, nonverbal
feeling of living Yoga–as well as a comprehensive
set of teachings, practices, and techniques. This
culture will continue to work within them for months,
even years, after they leave here."
At White Lotus, the
primary vehicle for transmitting this culture is the
"Flow Series," the backbone of the Hatha
Yoga curriculum. All students are required to practice
-- and learn to teach–this challenging 90-minute routine,
a carefully sequenced set of classic postures synchronized
with deep, rhythmic breathing. As Rich explains in
the videotape Yoga:
The Flow Series,
the graceful, uninterrupted stream of asanas
"builds cardiovascular strength and stamina,
cultivates mental and physical balance and flexibility,
creates great upper-body strength, and tones and stimulates
the internal organs. It increases oxygenation and
circulation, builds excellent back strength, and creates
an overall sense of deep relaxation."
The series begins with Sun Salutations
and standing poses to build heat, strength, and endurance.
At the peak of the routine, once the body is warm
and flexible, backbends are practiced to energize
the spine and promote vitality, followed by calming
and introspective forward bends. Twists release the
spine as the body begins to cool down. The practice
concludes with inversions and pranayama to tone the
endocrine system and recharge the energy body. Throughout
the series, the practitioner maintains ujjayi breathing,
a pranayama technique in which the breath makes a
whispering sound as it passes over the back of the
throat. This practice slows the breath down and draws
the attention inward, helping to create a meditative
state.
The
Flow Series is designed as a complete, meditative
workout that both stretches and strengthens every
part of the body. However, this standard routine is
far from written in stone; rather, it's presented
as an infinitely adaptable skeleton structure that
students can adjust, improvise upon, or even abandon
altogether, as their own needs dictate.
"We believe in adapting the Yoga
for the person, rather than trying to fit the person
to the Yoga," White maintains. Within the basic
framework, easier or more difficult poses may be substituted
as appropriate. Students are taught how to use props
to modify postures for people with special needs.
At all times, students are encouraged to listen to
and respect their own body's needs–as well as the
needs of the people they teach.
"Postures are tools for exploring
yourself, not goals you're trying to achieve,"
White continually reminds us. "Your body is not
just a vehicle to perform the ideal asana." When
one student asks Rich–who is using an extremely inflexible
beginner to model Trikonasana -- to demonstrate the
pose "correctly," she looks genuinely baffled.
"But he is doing it correctly!" she replies.
"For his body, with his level of muscular tightness,
this pose is absolutely perfect." "After
all, what does it mean to be an advanced student of
Yoga?" White asks. "Perhaps you can do advanced
poses, but if you're practicing with a lot of competitiveness,
ego, and self-righteousness, then you're still a beginner."
"You have to continually ask yourself why you're
doing this practice," Rich adds. "Remember
that what you're really doing is committing yourself
to a path of self-investigation and self-transformation
through a physical form."
In some classes, White and Rich abandon
the prescribed series altogether to give us a taste
of an entirely different style of practice. Rich likes
to lead us through dance-like sequences–some vigorous
and aerobic, others slow and soothing–in which the
poses flow into each other in unexpected combinations,
shattering our preconceived notions about "what
comes next." One morning, saying that "the
asanas live intuitively in us," she puts on gentle
background guitar music and asks us to spend an hour
and a half improvising according to our own inner
inspiration.
"Don't
move until you find your connection to your own inner
impulse. Let your movement be inspired," she
instructs. In this kind of practice, she says, it's
essential to distinguish thought-inspired movement–based
on ideas about what pose ought to come next–from body-inspired
movement. "Stay still until your body tells you
where to move next," she insists. "When
you practice in this way, your practice becomes a
prayer to yourself." Practice can also be a way
to relate to another person. In a class in "Double
Yoga," White and Rich show us how two people
can flow through a series in synchrony, maintaining
physical contact and using each other for balance,
leverage, and support. On a physical level, this practice
can help us get into poses we couldn't otherwise accomplish,
White explains. On a psychological level, it reveals
our habitual ways of relating to other people. "
Are you expecting the other person to hold you up?
Are you pushing too hard? Are you blaming the other
person for everything that goes wrong?" he asks
us. "You have to meet each other as equals, with
attunement and receptivity and a free flow of information
back and forth, in order for the double Yoga to work."
White and Rich maintain
that this experimentation with different styles of
Yoga practice is crucial. "It's essential to
vary your practice–not just the particular series
you do, but also the attitude you take toward yourself
and your practice," Rich says. "Some days
you want to work at your edge, expand your limits.
Other days you want to be gentle and comfortable."
After all, says White, Hatha Yoga
literally means the union of Ha and Tha
-- the energies of sun and moon. "Any pose can
be done in a Ha or a Tha style -- hot,
vigorous, and strengthening or cool, relaxing, and
peaceful. It's important to know how and when to use
either approach ."
Above all, it's essential to keep
an open mind toward different approaches to practice,
even those that contradict your own preferred style.
Asserts White, "Hatha Yoga is meant to be a journey
into greater awareness and understanding, not a journey
into more conformity, rigidity, and external rules."
This same iconoclastic attitude reigns
in White's evening lectures on Yoga history and philosophy,
held in the cozy common lounge adjoining the kitchen.
Under the mischievous eyes of an enormous wooden laughing
Buddha, White offers us "an overview of Yoga
doctrine filtered through my own heretical opinions."
He clearly and succinctly summarizes fundamental topics
like the distinctions between the major types of Yoga
(Hatha, Raja, Bhakti, Karma, Jnana, and Tantra), the
eight limbs of Patanjali's classical Yoga, and the
contributions of various great sages and teachers.
At the end of the training, a formal exam poses questions
like "What are the benefits of the Headstand?"
"List the names of the seven chakras and some
of the principles associated with each," and
"What are a few of the major reasons most Yogis
are vegetarians?" But at the same time, he warns
us not to get bogged down in the letter of the law.
"For just about anything you want to do, you
can find sanction in the ancient texts," he tells
us. "Eat potatoes, don't eat potatoes. Be celibate,
get enlightened through sex. It's all there. The bottom
line is that you have to think for yourself and awaken
your own understanding. "
White peppers his talks with juicy
anecdotes about the foibles of famous teachers, both
living and dead. He informs us that one well known
Yogi with a worldwide following is actually a former
Indian customs agent who fled the country to escape
charges of drug smuggling; and that another respected
organization was once temporarily taken over by a
middle-management Swami who claimed to be channeling
the ghost of a deceased master. Even the ancient sage
Patanjali, the first to formally codify a body of
Yogic teachings, doesn't escape White's irreverence.
"We don't have any idea who Patanjali even was!
All we know is that he wrote down some teaching–we’re
not even sure whose," he points out. "Imagine
that you write down your notes on me teaching this
class–and 2,000 years from now, your notes are all
that's left of Yoga, and people are arguing about
what they mean. In the long run, you can't rely on
conforming to someone else's insights. Patanjali's
Yoga Sutras are only useful as a catalyst to
precipitate your own understanding."
Ultimately, that's the whole point
of White Lotus’s insistent challenges to the sacred
cows of Yoga–not to belittle the ancient teachings,
but to bring them to life within each student. It's
precisely because White himself cares so much about
the spirit of Yoga that he insists upon scrutinizing
its teachings so critically. For paradoxically, it's
only by questioning doctrines and techniques that
we can contact within ourselves the living source
of wisdom from which they spring. "We're always
looking for strict rules because life is chaos, and
we're trying to resist that chaos by making a straight
and narrow path. But the truth is that that kind of
path is actually very boring," White maintains.
"What we're really craving, if we look deeply,
is the change, adjustment, sensitivity, and balance
that make life–and Yoga–interesting. It is my hope
that the White Lotus program will help people discover
that truth for themselves."
The White Lotus Flow Series is designed
as a complete, meditative workout that stretches and
strengthens every part of the body. "Hatha Yoga
is meant to be a journey into greater awareness and
understanding, not a journey into more conformity,
rigidity, and external rules." says White.
Anne Cushman
is associate editor of Yoga Journal. This article
originally appeared in the March/April 1994 issue
of Yoga Journal. 1994 Yoga Journal.
Used with permission. All rights reserved. For subscription
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