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HR&S:
What influenced you to begin learning yoga?
GW: Back in the sixties, the interest in yoga
was just starting, and there weren't many yoga classes.
When I was about 19 or 20, in the middle of the turbulent
sixties, I had an inner urge. I had to find out what
yoga was.
HR&S: How
did people look at yoga then? If I remember correctly,
it was treated like something strange, or an extension
of the beatnik movement from the fifties.
GW: Yes, even now it
still has remnants of those connotations, but back
then they'd make jokes. I was on the Joe
Pine Show—I'm dating myself here—he's
a guy who'd attack people in a funny way, and he just
went wild with it. People didn't think yoga was about
exercise, but about swamis, fakirs, and snake charmers.
They would make jokes about pretzel positions. They
didn't know what it was all about, and it took a lot
of work and explanation to get people to understand
the practice.
HR&S: What kind
of yoga was most prevalent?
GW: It was mostly philosophical:
meditation, chanting, devotion. The first physical
yoga practices that came over were soft, always emphasizing
how gentle the postures were, and most of the classes
were done with incense burning and candlelight. Just
being very mellow. I dove into it quickly, it just
seemed natural. I was studying with a few swamis and
yogis from India. I
practiced twice a day and I lived in an ashram for
some months. Then my brother wanted to have
a center in L.A., so I opened The Center for Yoga
with the help of an advanced teacher. But the advanced
teacher didn't like L.A. and soon left, so there I
was running a yoga center after studying for less
than a year. I had to rise to the occasion and teach,
read every book I could, and talk to every yogi I
could meet.
HR&S: Did you have
one particular swami or advanced yogi who you considered
to be your mentor?
GW: I started out in
the Sivananda lineage and studied with many different
yogis because there are so many disciples of Sivananda.
One of them, not very well known in thiscountry, is
Swami Venkates. I'm interested in what is true and
what works and what has value. If I practiced or tried
something for a while and it didn't have value, I
let it go, no matter what the "authorities"
said about it. I was a free thinker.
HR&S: Do you think
yoga should be integrated with whatever else you're
doing, or should yoga be the one thing you do?
GW: Yoga can complement
and balance anything you're doing, including sports
or other practices. Tai chi is one of the closest
relatives to yoga and I think it's a great system.
But of all the systems we have, yoga has the broadest
spectrum of intricate breathing practices and hundreds
and hundreds of postures that can be adjusted to any
body in any state of health or illness, injury or
age. It is infinitely adjustable. Yoga is the most
holistic and completely balanced system on the planet.
It works on balancing the body, the structure, the
glands, the breath, the digestion, and the bio-psycho-physical
energy systems. Properly practiced, it brings a person
to their highest possibility.
HR&S:
If someone comes to you in a state of bad
health—I'm in the nine-to-five lifestyle, I get
home and watch TV, my back is killing me, I'm overweight—how
do you answer their concerns?
GW:
The old saying is to start from where you
are. Just start practicing and breathing, working
with the state of your mind and body. Find the most
inspiring, turned-on teacher you can and take classes.
Let the river start flowing and it will take you with
it.
HR&S: What can someone
new to yoga practice look forward to achieving?
GW: We all approach
yoga with questions about time: How long will it take
and where will it get me? But in a certain way yoga
is about the ending of time. There are goals, but
there are also no goals. You want to attain certain
postures, muscle tone, and relief from stress; those
are tangible, reachable goals. But it's also about
constantly adjusting, balancing, and tuning your body
to each moment. Learning how to do that is an ongoing
process rather than a goal.
HR&S: You can get
into yoga from either the spiritual approach or the
total physical exercise. What's the most common approach
right now?
GW: I think on the deepest
levels there is no separation between the spiritual
and physical. The supreme intelligence works on the
physical and the unseen level. There is an enormous,
trendy, and solely physical interest in yoga right
now, but we like to believe that yoga is so holistic
the physical practice will bring people to other levels
of spirituality. At the same time, many people are
attracted to yoga because of its depth and levels.
HR&S: How does yoga
cultivate the spiritual from the physical?
GW: Yoga teaches you
an enormous amount about your body and how to control
and balance and work with all the different systems.
But you also learn about the mystery, because as much
as you know, there's an equal or greater part
of being that is mysterious and unknowable, the sacred
from which comes the simple essence of spirituality:
self-knowledge, self-understanding, and looking at
the meaning of living and dying on the earth.
HR&S:
What other changes have you seen in yoga
practices over the last thirty years?
GW:
The things that are called new practices
now are not necessarily that new. Although they are
new to this country, many are ancient practices. Yoga
has been handed down and expanded through the centuries,
and in more recent times I've seen more scientifice
under- standing integrated into yoga. For instance,
things like nutrition may have been there, but they
have much more precision now. There is a lot of new
understanding about body dynamics, body kinesiology,
and joint mobility which have expanded our ability
to use yoga. Yoga is changing by coming to the West.
Some people are trying to commercialize it, and others
are trying to strip away any mental or metaphysical
side to it. But though you see these kinds of attempts
to change it, the core remains the same.
HR&S: In your years
of teaching, have you developed any practices that
you have labeled personally?
GW:
Yes, several. In 1977 I got the idea to
do double yoga. I created over 150 postures that two
people can practice together, and published the book
Double Yoga in 1979.
HR&S: What
are the benefits of doing double yoga?
GW: You can support
and assist each other in poses you couldn't do alone,
or that you can do better than you can alone. It gives
two friends or a couple something to do together.
We have a lot of fun with it, but it's a very small
part of what we practice and teach in our workshops,
because I think the individual practice is much more
important.
HR&S: What about
the Flow Series?
GW: The Flow Series
came out of a number of years of practicing Iyengar,
Ashtanga and other systems. I originally designed
the Flow Series for myself. I wanted a well-balanced
practice to do every day that included the major yoga
postures. Although it was influenced by the Ashtanga-Vinyasa
style, which is sequential yoga synchronizing breath
and movement, I developed a very complete, well-balanced
practice made up of traditional ancient postures
which can be amped-up to advanced levels or toned
down to beginning levels. We recommend that people,
like the seasons, change their practice — sometimes
you do fiery yoga for a few days, then you do a softer
practice. Even as an advanced student, you don't want
to be cranking it to the max every day. They don't
do that with racehorses or any athlete. You want to
flow up and down.
HR&S:
It seems that your business is alive because
of your passions, not your college degree.
GW:
If there wasn't passion, I don't think
I could do it. I believe yoga is here to stay; it
has taken root, and will always be a growing part
of this culture. It's hard to say what direction
it will take in the future. Yoga is like a plant that
you put in a new environment, it slowly grows and
transforms into something in harmony with its new
home.
-- HR&S
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