I can trace my interest in yoga all the way back to the 1970’s when I first became involved with Transcendental Meditation (TM). TM was this extremely trendy and hippy thing to do in the 70’s and between that and my George Harrison records my parents were convinced I was going to burn in hell. Meditation worked though. It effectively 8-balled my teenage angst, which was considerable at the time, and made me into a happier, more peaceful person. I went out and bought a copy of Be Here Now. I was unemployed and I meditated constantly … This was all a long time ago and over the years my obsession with yoga ebbed and flowed. It has always there in one form or another though. I flirted with asana practice a couple of times during the 90’s but it wasn’t until 2000 that I really began to practice in earnest. In 2002 I received my certification from Yoga Alliance and became a teacher. My classes are typically vinyasa style and Ashtanga derived, slow moving but core intensive and with great attention to breath. I credit Larry Hobbs and Kristin Cooper-Gulak for so much of what I’ve learned about yoga over the last ten years. In addition to them I have studied with David Swenson, Annie Pace, David Life and Sharon Gannon. I have been a vegan for more than twenty-five years and believe that the choices we make in terms of the food we eat and the clothes we wear directly reflect our commitment to the eight-limbed path and that they are real time indicators of who we are as human beings. Yoga is an amazingly powerful tool. It is not a physical exercise but rather a spiritual practice, a way to uncover the higher self that resides within each of us and to understand the connection that we share not only with one another but with every other sentient being on the planet.
I still practice TM and listen occasionally to George Harrison. The Ram Dass is still with me too, though it is a new copy. The old one was lost.