Talking Shop with a Yoga Teacher

I was born in Bombay into a family of lawyers. I started my yoga training with BKS Iyengar at age 7 and at 22 I was the youngest student to earn an Advanced Teacher Training Certificate. As a child, I was taught the teachings of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother of Pondicherry, who are my spiritual teachers, along with my wife Mirra, who teaches Purna Yoga meditation. I became a lawyer, certified naturopath, Ayurvedic practitioner, and body worker. Mirra and I co-run our studio, Yoga Centers, in Bellevue, WA, and I run a food company called Eastern Essence Organic Whole Foods.

I am often asked what it was like to study with Mr. Iyengar as a child. It was very intense. Iyengar is a very strict teacher, although not as strict now as he was then! Since I wasn’t exactly born flexible, I had to work really hard to get the movement he wanted. But he was more than a teacher to me, he was also a friend. He would come to our house, we would have breakfast, we had lunch and all that. He often stayed at our house when he came to teach in Bombay on many weekends. Then we got to know the other side of him, which is one of the main reasons my family stuck with yoga. If only we had known him as the mighty teacher, we may not have continued, because his other side is so beautiful: gentle, sweet, childlike, full of fun, and he loves adventure. Obviously my asana teaching is based on the Iyengar method. I have the firm conviction that yoga is very broad. I cannot say that this is my yoga and that is your yoga, because I believe that yoga is so great that we all have to share what we know. I think that the combination of knowledge is very important without losing the essence of what you are teaching. I cannot teach Ashtanga: I cannot teach Viniyoga. But I can learn from them and see what is appropriate in my system.

So that’s what I do; I mainly teach physical yoga with the Iyengar method and internal yoga is based on the meditation teaching of my wife Mirra and the teachings of Sri Aurobindo and Mother. A constant question I get is how do I find time for my own practice with such a busy schedule. There is simply no option. Every morning I get up, do my basic rituals, and then go to practice. Practice is the first thing I do. If I miss practice in the morning, I never practice! So it goes without saying: I always practice first thing in the morning. People often ask me how my experience in so many vocations affects my teaching. It really helps to have experience in different fields. Then when you’re teaching, you can take advantage of different experiences and use language that resonates with different people. For example, one of my greatest loves is poetry, and I am talking about classic, beautiful and romantic poetry by Browning, Milton, Keats, Byron. And when I quote these, it makes a huge difference in class. Similarly, if I use a legal term or an anatomical term, it resonates with certain people and enriches the class. The best advice I can offer to beginning yoga students is to find a teacher who really knows the subject, which can be difficult because if you are a new student, you don’t know if your teacher knows the subject. This is the main stumbling block and the main joy of being a beginning yoga student. It is time to explore and find someone who really knows their work. And then stick with that teacher for a good five to ten years. And then, of course, yoga becomes the lifelong journey to inner revelation. © 2008 Aadil Palkhivala