DYNAMIC YOGA INTERVIEW 2008
How did you discover yoga?
I observed my uncle, an anglican minister, praying in a yoga posture when i was 16 years old. Totally entranced by what i felt emanating from him i immediately began to practice and havent stopped yet.
How can yoga detoxify?
Yoga can detox by generating deep heat that flushes toxins from deep as well as adipose tissues. For the heat to be taken deep, the core muscular activation of mulabandha must be engaged, along with the thoracic activation of uddyanbandha. In effect this takes place when the obliques and recti muscles are relaxed and the transverse abdominal muscles are anchoring a continuous lift to the ribcage orginating in the deep spinal muscles. This changes pressure differentials in the visceral cavities and tissues allowing blood to pass more freely and fully to cleanse and nourish the cells. This is easier understood than done. The pelvic floor and cranial muscles must also be relaxed.
Is fasting a part of yoga?
Fasting is a dangerous practice that leads to overeating. Moderation is more effective over the long term. Sensitive yoga practice cultivates a deep psychosomatic satisfaction that diminishes the tendency to compulsive overeating.
What are the overall benefits of yoga?
Yoga, only if practiced with sensitivity to the sensations produced in the body, can benefit every aspect of being human. It mobilises, strengthens, stabilises, purifies and vitalises the body. It centres, clarifies and calms the mind. It strengthens determination and resolve, and releases anxiety and compulsion. It generates a vibrant but tranquil appreciation of being alive, which expresses in spontaneity, generosity and compassion. An accomplished yoga practitioner is someone who loves and engages fully with life, unafriad of what it might bring, and undaunted by what it does. This is easily noticable in the deep, clear light of the eyes, and the relaxed, effortless agility of the body. Most often, however, yoga is practiced as an unacknowledged form of moral self improvement, or phsyical self indulgence. This leads to a deep and destructive imposition of flexibility, strength, breathing patterns and behavioural restrictions (vegetariansim, celibacy) on the inherent needs and capabilities of the body and mind. This is not possible when yoga practice is based, as it rarely is, on what the body and mind actually are and how they actually work.
How did Dynamic Yoga come about?
The dynamic yoga method developed as a means to permit yoga to be taught safely and effectivey without the irrelevant, distracting and ultimately destructive metaphysical soundtrack within which it is usually presented. This has led to a learning/training method that is as satisfying and deep as it is effective and engaging. It is based entirely on the inherent design of the human bodimind, and utilises the remarkable mobility of the human design to access the subtelties of the relationships between motion and stillness, action and perception, body and mind, matter and spirit. It is taught in direct expression of the natural principles of somatic learning as a progressive development of repetetive movements that support and express the dynamics of functional and structural integrity. This allows the body to come to deep integrated stillness within which the mind relinquishes its compulsve activty and tendencies spontaneously. Relying entirely on actions guided by the inherent integrity of the body, rather than concepts or ambitions, it is able to satisfyingly access and activate the full potential of body, mind and spirit.
Does Dynamic yoga promises Enlightenment/ wealth/ world peace?
Dynamic yoga is an invitation to uncover the depths and subtleties of the human condition: whatever they may turn out to be. It is based on, and demonstrates, the premise that although it often does not feel like it, there is an inherent wholeness to life, and to being human. This wholeness expresses itself in the human body as a functional integrity: whereby life sustains, expresses and extends itself. This is discovered in yoga posture practice through action. This only hapens if the activity of yoga posture practice is an investigation of the true needs, capabilities and nature of the body. It can not happen if yoga is directed towards any cultural goal: including flexibility, strength, fitness, health or enlightenment. When actions are refined in response to sensations they create, then the inherent integrity of the body is clarified. This allows the inherent unity of body, mind and spirit to spontaneously express itself. This delivers a deep, experiential, trust in the body and the life that guides and sustains it. This trust of life, in its wholeness and in its details, is the possibility that dynamic yoga offers.
Why is Dynamic Yoga less familiar than, for example, Power Yoga?
Dynamic yoga has never been regarded as a product, nor human beings regarded as a market. Besides which it not only makes no false promises, it neither offers a quick high nor an easy fix. What it offers is the possibility of taking action, and experiencing life, in an unfamilar but totally satisfying way.
How can one be a devoted yogi and at the same time live a normal life in modern society? There is no inherent conflict between the practice of yoga and living a worldly life: except where yoga, as it so often is, has been reduced to a cultural reaction. When yoga is undertaken as an open investigation, it transforms every aspect of life without necessarily changing or removing anything. The direct fruits of genuine yoga practice are not denial, detachment or any other sanctified escapism. An accomplished yogi is someone who loves and engages fully with life, unafriad of what it may bring, and undaunted by what it does.
It is said that dynamic yoga styles strengthen the ego. What is your opinion about that?
The succesful pursuit of any cultural goal strengthens the ego. Dynamic yoga is not about fitness, flexibility or strength. It is about accessing the inernal dynamic of integrity whereby life sustains, expresses, fulfills and extends itself. This is facilitated through the intelligent use of movement as a methodical preparation for stillness: thus "The Dynamic Yoga Training Method".
What influence has your education in Zen meditation on Dynamic Yoga?
My experience, understanding and teaching of yoga have been more deeply influenced by my training with zen masters, than with yoga gurus. But it has been shaped much more by the inherent wisdom of the human body expressing itself through phsyical sensations: they are my guru.
