THE DYNAMIC YOGA TRAINING METHOD

the simplicty of spontaneous authenticity

 

 

DELIA: Let’s get a little background on you, Godfrey. How is it that you came to be in Ibiza and where are you from originally.

GODFREY:  Well, I’m from the North of England, where it’s a bit cold, and I thought I’d had enough of that and I’d go somewhere warm.  Spain was my target and I had a friend who had a place in Ibiza, so that’s why I ended up there. But it’s a good place for yoga, that kind of thing has been going on here for hundreds even thousands of years.

DELIA: I understand that it dates back to the Carthaginians.

GODFREY: Well, even before that, it’s basically a goddess worship center of the Mediterranean before the Carthaginians even.

D: I remember you pointing out a mound in the distance that is the island where Ulysses had to resist the sirens.

G: That’s what they say, yeah, that’s where the sirens lived on that rock.

D: So there’s some serious history going on there.

G: And the Romans used to use it to party on. To bury their dead and to party, yeah.

D: And before that, before you went to Ibiza, you were a teacher in London.

G: Yeah, I had a center called The Life Center, which is really where Ashtanga yoga hit the public in England about eight years ago.

D: How long have you been doing yoga?

G: I’ve been doing yoga for 28 years.

D: You must have started when you were pretty young?

G: I was 16.

D: So you were 16 doing yoga and taking drugs?

G: Yeah (Laughter).

D: Were they compatible at the time?

G: Well, in that I think, the yoga kept me alive. Yeah, probably in that sense, but in a way, yeah, I think the impulse behind both was the same which was to see a little bit deeper, find out what’s going on below the surface.

D: What hooked you about the yoga? As a young man there were a lot of things that could have grabbed you.

G:  Yeah, it just felt good, I felt alive and I knew it was coming from my practice. I felt connected to my body and everything seemed to work better.

D: Did that take you in pursuit of more study in India?

G: No, it didn’t really. For a long time I just did it because of what it felt like and I didn’t really take any notice of the philosophy or anything behind it. In a way I still don’t from a conceptual point of view, I still approach it from what it does to me and what it feels like for me.

D: Whom were you studying with? Today people are very caught up with who they study with and what style they study.

G: Yeah, in those days there wasn’t so much of that going on; but there was a kind of distinction between what we used to call marshmallow yoga, which is people taking it really easy and making funny noises on the floor, which is kind of the image that people had of yoga as being for house wives or slightly suspect people and then the style of yoga that I did which is known as Iyengar yoga, which is much more physical focusing on correct use of the body. But I didn’t really study that much with specific people because I was moving around and it was hard to find a good teacher so it was mainly self taught just through my own practice.

D: Up until when?

G: Up until now. (laughter)

D: But you went to India, right and studied with a teacher there.

G: Yeah, I went a couple of times, you know, but if you look at how other people go to India it’s just a tiny drop, because I only went to one teacher once for three weeks and another once for four weeks, so you know how people who go for three months every year,  year after year after year. I think in a way that I like that, because it means that I haven’t been, you could say, affected or infected by the Hindu context within which yoga developed and I’m not a Hindu, I’m a Westerner and so I think that many people find me more accessible than people who have spent a lot of time in India and have become a bit weird.

D: Well, what do you think of yoga as a spiritual practice? I think that’s something that people in America are concerned about. Many people tend to view a study of yoga as having to delve into the religious aspect of it or the spiritual aspect.

G: Yeah, I think you have to be able to make a distinction between a religion and spiritual practice and a religion involves a belief system. But a spiritual practice is a means of accessing, you could say, a spiritual reality or you could say, God, if that’s part of your belief system. So they are different and there’s no doubt that yoga is a very powerful spiritual practice, but it’s evolved within a religious context which is Hinduism. But spiritual practice is the baby and Hinduism is the bath water, you don’t need it.

D: So what do you think about what is happening in America now with Yoga?

G: I’d say there’s a big transition, but being European I don’t see it as many Americans do as being focused in America. I think it’s more like that there’s a transition going on from the past, which is the East, to the future, which is the West. The whole context of yoga is changing. It’s no longer being practiced by Hindu’s it’s being practiced by people who don’t necessarily have a belief system or a religion, and they’re using yoga more for what it really is, is to find out what’s really happening. So I think what is happening to yoga is really good and necessary and in fact it’s really dying in India. I have many times been practicing yoga in India and people come up to me and say “ What are you doing?” and I say. “Well, I’m doing yoga.” and they say, “What’s that?” They don’t even know. So, it’s like whatever happens in the West to yoga is what happens to yoga. The future is definitely here, so I thinks it’s really great and there’s a lot of proliferation, there’s a lot of fragmentation, and within that there’s a lot of creativity as well and I don’t know where it’s going to end up but it‘s going to be interesting to see.

D: There’s a veritable free-for-all out there in terms of styles, whose right and whose wrong.

G:  Yeah, but it’s interesting because in the classes that we were doing in New York you could see the thread and the so-called style of yoga that really seems to be taking the most attention is Ashtanga yoga and that’s because of Madonna and Sting. But what I noticed is the kind of essential core of Ashtanga yoga is what is being taken by everybody. You keep hearing the words like bandhas and vinyasa even though people don’t really know what they are, but they know they’re important. So even though there is a proliferation of styles, nevertheless, there seems to be that there is an understanding that there is a core element of yoga even if there isn’t a practical understanding of how to apply it in all of these adaptations that are coming.

D: So what you are saying can also be described as what separates yoga from just doing general exercise, which is what we are seeing show up in gyms and health clubs.

G: Yeah, you mean where people are just stretching and jumping around and calling it yoga, but it’s not really yoga. Yeah, I mean, so the question is what makes the difference between what isn’t really yoga but is a form of exercise based on it and what is yoga because its a spiritual practice.

D: And what is that?

G: Well, that’s what is known traditionally as the bandhas, that’s how you align or adjust the subtle muscles in the core of your body and that brings about a transformation in your breathing and your energy and your awareness.

D: Some teachers teach it, some teachers don’t or some teachers know it, some teachers don’t.

G:  Well and both, yeah (laugh) and some who don’t know it teach it, though they think they do but they’re not.

D: And thus runs the world around. Well, we had the interesting experience of taking class with Swami Bua, who is a hundred and sixteen year old swami in New York and as he said to us, “Have you ever met any one like me?” With that Indian accent.

G:  Yeah, and he was great and as Andrea who came with us said, it was more like a workout and it was, it was in the way he was giving it to us, was very superficial, but that’s where people are, isn’t it? If you try to throw people straight into the deep end then they just jump out.

D: Right. I’m curious to explore that further to see where he goes when you say, hey I’m in the deep end.

G: My experience, of great Indian yogis is a bit dodgy. Because they’re Brahmins and Brahmins are probably the biggest elitists in the world, if you’ll excuse me for saying that. You know they come from this culture which is based on the caste system and the Brahmins are at the top and they look a little bit down on us Westerners because we’re not even on the lowest caste. And they’re not really sure if we’re ready for the real spiritual gems of yoga and so sometimes they don’t give it to us.

D: So we don’t know what we’re missing, really.

G: Yeah, I think a lot of the time they’re keeping the....

D: The good stuff....

G: Yeah.

D: Oh, that’s interesting. Well, will we ever find out?

G: Well they don’t always do that. I have a friend who studied with the guy that I studied with and he’s giving her all his secrets, but he said to her “you’re the only one”. You’re the one, and he’s never done that before to anybody.

D: So?

G: So, he’s obviously willing to pass it on, but I think there’s a reluctance to make it too easily available to westerners and I can understand that, you know, because we’re very profit oriented and we see something and we say “ah, how can I make money out of it?” Rather than, well how can this be used to benefit people.

D: So what is the ultimate goal of doing yoga, all this practice, is it  to attain enlightenment?

G: For whom?

D: And what is that? (Laughter)

G: That’s why I ask for whom?

D: For oneself.

G: Well, I think you can really do yoga for any reason that you like, because it’s so broad in its effect, from making you fit, to making you healthy, to making you relaxed. If you want to put it into a religious context for allowing you to maybe get in touch with what is really happening here, if you want to call that God, as you like. So pretty much any motivation it can deliver something to you, but I think originally what yoga was for, was to allow you to experience the spiritual dimension of life and the real meaning of life without needing an intermediary.

D: Should Hatha yoga be the first step on the “path” for a student?

G: Well, that’s a tough question. If you make the distinctions between the various styles of yoga then I think the answer is, not necessarily. Hatha yoga is for people who want to work through the body, but there are other yoga’s that you don’t need to do that, really. So I think it’s a personal thing, but it does seem to be the most popular one, that’s probably because we in the west are materialists. And to go through the heart or the mind is a little bit too elusive for us.

D: So according to Patanjali, who is the first one to write this all down, 2000 years ago or more, he says that the purpose of hatha yoga is to release the tensions and limitations in the body....do you want to expound on that. (laughter)

G: I’m just trying to find out which sutra you’re heading for there, cause it could be one of two. Yeah, what he says is that yoga is designed to free us from limitations and somewhere else he says that tapas is designed to purify the body mind. And tapas, you could say is the essence of hatha yoga. Tapas  meaning literally, to burn. So , the idea is that you create an internal fire that purifies you and you do that through, actually, the bandhas, which we ,mentioned before. So, what he’s saying there is the process of tapas or hatha yoga is to purify you by getting rid of your limitations, but it’s very easy to interpret that in a moralistic way which is not what he means, he just means to take away anything that is preventing you from manifesting your true nature.

D: You’ve coupled your hatha yoga practice with Zen Buddhism.

G: I would say I wouldn’t really understand yoga at all if I hadn’t been subjected to the harsh discipline of Zen masters. (Laugh)

D: Oh, really?

G: Yeah, for sure, you know, because the hatha yoga, or the yoga world is without lineage anymore....It’s very loose and it’s very confusing and there’s a lot of charlatanism and it’s very hard to know where to turn; but Zen, they have a straight line lineage, straight back to the Buddha and it’s very clear. And the teachings have a lot of power behind it and there’s no real difference between these things. A spiritual practice is a spiritual practice, the form that it takes can be almost anything, perhaps, but the fundamental process is the same is how to get rid or how to free yourself from identifying with your limitations so you can manifest your true nature.

D: So one of the main points to doing hatha yoga, to doing the postures, is to prepare you to sit.

G: Yeah, you could see that externally, but that’s one part of it, yeah.

D: So who then teaches you to sit? Does one go to a Zen master to learn to sit or is that included in the yoga teachings?

G: You can find yogis who will teach you that, but it hasn’t really percolated that much to the west in the sense that those who really teach the postures in a systematic and effective way, tend not to be those that teach the meditation, so that the two have become separated, although they’re not intrinsically separate. And so I had to live through that separation but rather than finding a yogi who taught me what to do when I was sitting still I found Zen masters who told me what to do when I was sitting still.

D: Are you then one of those rare yoga teachers who will teach sitting meditation to your students.

G: Yeah, I include what to do in stillness in every class.

D. So, in terms of people coming to study with you, do they have to have experience, can they be beginners?

 

G: Well, I actually approach it as if everybody’s a beginner. For many reasons, but I actually find that most people are. That what I’m trying to teach most people don’t know what it is because it’s very simple and it’s very subtle and they’ve missed it out really. So I’m just trying to connect people, you could say, back to the core of the practice of yoga. I’m not really trying to teach them the externals, how or what or when; but just that there are subtle things that need to be done within what your doing with your body and what your doing with your breathing and what you’re doing with your mind, if what you’re doing is really going to be yoga.

D: Alright, what about food?

G: That’s part of it. You can’t really make a separation because if your trying to adjust your body what your doing is you’re changing relationships between cells and if those cells are not of the highest quality your wasting your time. And the quality of those cells is made by your food, so what you eat is fundamental to an effective yoga practice.

D: So does one necessarily have to be a vegetarian?

G: Well, I’m not vegetarian so am I being prejudiced if I say no? (laugh)

D: Or does one need to be celibate to have an intense practice?

G: Same answer. (laugh) I don’t think one needs to be anything conceptualized. Each one of us finds out through our practice what we need to be in order to practice and that’s different for everybody. For some people, they do find that they need to be celibate some of the time maybe all the time. Some people they find that they do need to be vegetarian some of the time, all of the time. Some people find the other if their really paying attention to the practice and using the practice as a mirror they find out having thought that they should have been vegetarian it turns out not to be the case which was my case. And the same can apply to sex.

D: Is Dynamic yoga to be considered another style of yoga?

G: It’s not supposed to be a style, but it can be taken as a style if it’s looked at externally. What Dynamic yoga means really it’s referring to the fact that there’s an internal dynamic that must be going on within the shapes of the postures in order for, what Patanjali talks about, as being yoga to occur. But it’s also for me, what dynamic yoga means it’s a learning method. It’s a very specific way of learning how to work internally which can then be applied within any style you like whether it’s Iyengar yoga, Ashtanga yoga , Power yoga, whatever, it doesn’t make any difference.

D: And really they can only go to study with you in order to learn it.

G: I am training people so there are people teaching it and there are other people who know it but who don’t teach it in the systematic way that I teach it because their teaching it more within a form and they are more concerned with teaching the form because they’re coming from a lineage and they’re wanting to maintain the lineage. But I’m not interested in the lineage, I’m interested in the essence.

D: But you can appreciate and respect the whole thing of lineage.

G: Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

D: And the necessity of maintaining lineage.

G: I’m not sure of that.

D: Why?

G: (Laugh) Because I’m not.

D: Because you blow it apart?

G: Well, I think what needs to be transmitted is the essence and I think that if you get to concerned with the importance of the context of the lineage, the form of the lineage you can lose the essence. It seems to be that that happens. I see that in Ashtanga yoga. Their very attached to the form that the postures have to be done in a certain sequence and hold for a certain number of breath’s, blah, blah, blah. But in adhering to that form and putting so much emphasis on that form they forget to emphasize or to clarify what does it really mean to do the bandhas, what does it really mean to do Ujjayi breathing and they just give that lip service and it gets lost.

D: But the other thing we know about that is that in speaking of lineage in Ashtanga yoga, it’s come to find that the lineage starts with Pattabi Jois and not necessarily.......

G: Well, that’s not where the Ashtanga vinyasa yoga lineage begins that’s just that he’s got the most number of students. I was taught by a contemporary of his who was taught by his teacher who has many less students and has a much lower profile and we connected in the same way to where Pattabi Jois came from so the lineage is not Pattabi Jois’s he’s just, you could say the most aggressive  presenter of it and he’s presenting it in his own way.

D: So his way of presenting the sequencing comes from him, Pattabi Jois?

G: They are his, yes.

D: It does not come from a long lineage from before him?

G: No, but what he’s done is he’s been realistic, because the form of the lineage was for advanced practitioners. This involved a 4,5, 6 hour practice which doesn’t make sense for people in the West. So what he did was he took the distinction that is there in the lineage between what’s called primary postures, intermediate postures and advanced postures and he made them into six separate sequences of an hour and a half to two hours each. In other words he made it usable for Westerners which is very necessary. I don’t know what my teacher is doing now, but when I was with him he taught it to me as one sequence and I had to practice as one sequence. So by the time he’d finished with me my practice was five hours long.

D: You were practicing yoga five hours a day?

G: Yeah.

D: So what does that do to the Kundalini? That little snake coiled at the base of your spine. Did that much yoga cause it to rise?

G: Well, the thing about the whole kundalini concept there is that Hatha yoga is almost a paradox. Hatha Yoga is not supposed to make the kundalini rise. The kundalini has a huge impulse to rise as its nature, but it doesn’t rise because of the blocks, or the impediments or the impurities in our system. The purpose of Hatha yoga is to clean the system, so that the rising can occur naturally and subtly and without crisis.

D: And when it rises to fast?

G:  Then you can go crazy.

D: Has that been known to happen?

G: Yeah, it happened to a very, very good friend of mine who was just visiting an ashram in New York state, and she was there for awhile, I think it was Bramananda was his name, and he gave her visual shakti pat, and then died that night, so it was obviously a big blast and she went a bit crazy.

D: What is Shakti Pat?

G: Shakti Pat is the transfer of kundalini or the transfer of divine energy from supposedly an enlightened person to a non-enlightened person to accelerate  their development.

D: Sounds like he put the wammy on her.

G: Well, we don’t know why he did what he did, but she’s OK now. She’s actually married to another guru so maybe he did make a wise choice in the sense of who the vehicle was to be; but maybe she wasn’t quite ready to handle it in a way that was comfortable for her, but she’s handled it.

D. I’ve heard stories of people who have forced through their practice and breathing the kundalini to rise and became blind?

G. Yeah.

D. or paralysed. It is serious energy  you’re playing with.

G. You’ve got to prepare the circuits to take that kind of power and that’s what hatha yoga is for, so if you’re practicing hatha yoga in a sensible way you shouldn’t really notice kundalini rising in the sense of intense experiences. You just notice it more subtly in the transformation of your being, in the transformation of your awareness, in the transformation of  your sensitivities.

D. At this point in your life, in your early forties, many people consider you a master. What do you think about that?

G. Many people are deluded. (laughter)

D. So what do you consider yourself?

G. I consider myself a student, really. I don’t feel like I really know about yoga, I know what I experience through my practice and I know that’s a great thing and I know that I’m able to share that with people. But I’m not able to say “yeah, I know what it is, you gotta do what I say, this is the way it’s going to work for you.” I’d be very suspicious of anybody , whatever their race or color that tried to say that to me.

D. You base much of the method and foundation of Dynamic yoga on the five elements , something you don’t see very much of in the teaching of yoga . Could you elaborate on that?

G. First of all the five elements are symbolic manifestations or representations of fundamental energies that exist in life and you could say five, eight, nine, what ever, but the five elements are normally related to earth, water, fire, air and space. That exists in western culture as the four elements and it exists in very strongly in India as the five elements and in yoga there are five different aspects of the practice each one of which relates to one of the elements. You have the form of the postures which relates to earth, and you have the way that you move, which means how you get to the form and how you leave the form and how you go about getting and leaving and that’s water which is known as vinyasa. The form is known as asana and vinyasa is how you move. Then you have the internal subtle energetic’s  which brings about the real transformation which is fire, the purification process, which is bandha. Then you have the quality of your breathing, which is air, which is pranayama. Then you have the quality of your awareness which is space, which is actually the overall context within which it happens. If those five elements in the form of their five techniques are present: asana, the form, the shape that your making, vinyasa, the way that you’re getting into the shape, bandha, what your doing within the shape, pranayama, what the effect of what your doing has on your breathing and drushti, meaning that you are paying attention, which you have to in order to make the other four work. Then your practicing yoga, then you’re actually involved in a spiritual practice and then you are going to find out and experience yourself more fully and more deeply.

D. There are so many videos out on the market presenting yoga as a form of exercise rather than the spiritual practice that it is. What do you think of yoga videos for things such as weight loss.

G. The truth is you don’t lose weight through yoga and if someone is presenting a video for losing weight through yoga, what that really means is how to lose weight by using a superficial presentation of the techniques of yoga, but it’s not yoga. Because yoga is a spiritual practice which means it’s a way of finding out and living what you truly are to the deepest level including everything about you, so that’s not really yoga. Yoga can do something which is much more important than that by allowing you to really get in touch with yourself, to become familiar with yourself, to acknowledge yourself, accept yourself, honor yourself and love yourself, you’re not going to mind what you look like. So you lose your weight in your mind, not off your body.

D. When you speak about this as a spiritual practice many people are afraid that they would have to give up their religion in order to practice yoga.

G. The process of a spiritual practice in this sense will make them question their beliefs, but if their beliefs turn out to be based on their truth then they won’t have to drop them, but they might drop them, but they won’t mind if they do. But they won’t have to take on board an alternative belief system. It’s not like you have to say, well I’m Christian and that’s something else therefore I can’t do yoga. Its got nothing to do, really, with your belief systems. What the process of yoga will do is challenge your belief systems and if it turns out that you just borrowed them or somebody has dumped them on you and they’re not really actually yours, then you’ll become free from them. And it may turn out that actually somebody who was not a Christian could end up being a Christian.

D. Now that you have an instructional yoga video in the market, what do you say to a student who consider’s videos as adequate training for hatha yoga?

G. Yeah, I have to admit it’s a bit dodgy. It depends, because you can’t say that you should only go to a good teacher because there aren’t many good teachers. People have got to work with what they’ve got and sometimes a good book or a good video can be better than a bad teacher.  I don’t think you can make an absolute statement saying videos are bad, videos are good. A good video can help, but obviously your going to need to have some direct feedback sometime from somebody because you never know if your going to apply the techniques from a video or a book properly, because there’s no feedback mechanism.

D. And how would they know what a good video is? Right now many people who have been doing aerobics and watching aerobics videos trust those aerobic teachers on the videos who are now making yoga videos.

G. They obviously don’t know about yoga if that’s the journey that they’ve come to. Yoga’s not something you can learn about in a week or a month or a year or two years. I’d say twenty years. Find out if they’ve been doing yoga for twenty years, then they might know something about what yoga’s really supposed to do.

D. Thats really difficult in a culture that’s looking for immediate results, lose ten pounds in two weeks, type of mentality.

G. It’s a question of motivation, really. One of your guys said, that people get the government that they deserve and that’s probably true of yoga students. You get the teacher that you want.