What are you doing Sunday? I think you’re taking one hour to go to Mike’s class! That’s what I would do if I had a free Sunday. Here’s a little more about Mike.
* When did you first come across the practice of yoga and was it love at first site or did it take some time to warm up to?
I had a friend and training partner come up to me and say he had checked out a yoga demonstration and taken a class, and said I should try it out. This is the same friend who eventually convinced me to become vegetarian, and so I should have just listened to him and gone to a yoga class on the spot. But I put it off as I doubted yoga would give me the same level of physical training as my then-current program. I was wrong. After a month of cajoling, my first class left me exhausted but ecstatic, and I experienced a depth and intensity I hadn’t expected.
* Having a background in such activities as sports training and martial arts, what made you decide to dedicate time to yoga teacher training?
I wanted to deepen my personal practice, and the studio where I was doing yoga in DC, and also teaching martial arts, had a teacher training course. My friend who owned the studio was a former Olympic-level athlete, so I trusted his experience and depth of knowledge about the physical mechanics of yoga asana. After that training I taught extensively, studied with yoga instructors whose message or approach I admired, and have since then traveled to India and spent time on many yoga retreats, all in an effort to follow my own spiritual path. Teaching yoga helps me stay aligned with that.
* You have taught yoga at the White House Athletic Center and martial arts at the Department of Defense. Has this experience affected the way you talk students through poses?
Every teaching experience is different. At the Athletic Center, security was incredible so even getting in was a challenge. Everyone training at the Athletic Center seemed to be in a continual state of high stress/high-gear due to the nature of their jobs and their
workload. The classes were taught in the same room where the cardio equipment lived, and every television in the place blasted CNN. So there was this barrage of noise, negative images coming from the television, and a tiny little side of the room in which to create a
serene, yogic environment. In that case there was not a lot of talking one can do, especially in trying to communicate the subtleties of a posture. But what it did enable was an opportunity to use asana as a way to dive inward, to discover immersion in a posture so complete that external stimuli would almost disappear.
At the DoD, where I was fortunate to help in giving a martial arts
workshop, I learned that it’s best to let the art, whether kung fu or
yoga, speak for itself. People are not convinced by words; they are
convinced, and progress, through their own direct experience.
* How does the core activation class you lead on Sunday at 3:30 differ from the Hatha or Hatha flow classes offered at East Side Yoga?
I think every teacher has his or her own teaching style and ideas on how to present the practice of yoga asana. East Side Yoga teachers all have such insight and clarity into yoga that all classes offer opportunities to deepen your practice no matter where you are in that practice.
Though there is a significant thoracic core component involved in ”core activation”, the “core” only partly refers to what’s going on in and around your torso. What it actually targets is what you experience at the core of your being, where the mind communicates with the body and vice versa.
Behavioral science tells us that your idea of yourself is shaped by the actions you take, rather than the actions reflecting you the person. Though this idea can be a bit unsettling, what it does afford is the opportunity to reshape the story you tell yourself about yourself: rather than adhering to perceived limitions about what you can and can’t do, you can perform actions that push beyond and lie outside those limits. Not in terms of difficult asana, but in terms of putting the body in a particular posture, letting that feed
information to the mind, and then amid that flow learning to find a place of calm and tranquility. We explore this in class, and this is also a useful concept to apply off the mat as well.
* Could you speak about how yoga can be used to purify the body?
There are three levels that can be addressed here in terms of purification: the physical body, the mind, and the spirit, or whatever word you use for that which lies beyond the first two.
On the physical level, one idea of the yoga postures is to cleanse and prepare the nervous system, which carries the energy of life throughout the body, for evolution to higher energetic states. Stretching the nerves, invoking certain sequences of activation, removing obstructions or blockages all help to create and support a strong and continuous flow around the body, preparing the body for meditation. This idea of energetic purification is where acupuncture and herbal medicine, diet, living and rest patterns can offer strong support for your practice. It’s important to note that in an effort to purify, you have to be mindful of all you do and, to the best of your ability, everything must be in support of that effort.
On the level of the mind, the focus on the breath, bandhas, and absorption in the asana helps build concentration, which is a key component of meditation and the subsequent limbs of yoga. There are also studies that show that the practice of yoga builds a mental toolset that helps not only release stress but also maintain calm and function better in stressful situations. Through the practice of yoga, you learn to better control the “monkey mind”: mental chatter, negative thinking, and all those things that don’t serve you start to drop away.
Beyond that, the purpose of yoga, the “eight limbs” yoga, is to prepare a person to connect to something greater than the mind/body and what is perceived of as “you”. The culmination of all the work above is to achieve this higher state, find a release from suffering, and experience a source of happiness not tied to the external. True
purity.
* What is your favorite passage or quote that seems to always infuse inspiration?
I have a friend who is a devout Evangelical Christian, and he says, ”You either pass the test, or walk away from the test. God doesn’t give you anything you can’t handle.” This is a good antidote to the penchant of modern society to avoid anything difficult, or assume that what is happening now will continue. Growth only comes through adversity; the only thing that lasts forever is love.
As Kahlil Gibran writes “when Love beckons you, follow him, though the way is hard and steep.” Do that, because the easy path has only one thing going for it: it’s easy. That never serves your best self.
* What’s your favorite thing about East Side Yoga?
ESY provides more than asana classes: Meditation, kirtan, workshops, nutrition, spiritual healing, and other health and spiritual offerings give each student a chance to progress further on the yogic journey. Steve, Elsa, and the whole gang create tremendous support, a strong community, and just the right environment to stay grounded firmly on a rewarding personal path.
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