Life Beyond Power Yoga
Very often our podcasts are a coming together of old friends, conversations which sometimes unravel into talking about something funny, strange, a little bit weird, or “culty,” just like we would be sitting at a chai-stand in Mysore, India. Sometimes though, we call on a person who looms much larger in our minds, a giant in our industry, whose life experience, we know, has fundamentally altered ours; just by the sheer courage of the choices made in their era.
Beryl Bender Birch is one of those people. Without her, and without her books, Power Yoga and Beyond Power Yoga, how could we possibly “be here now” doing any kind of yoga at all?
Yet, so magically and with great kismet, we find out that Beryl, and others like her, are just like you and I.
That they came before us is an accident of birth only. The richness of their experiences mirror our own.
Beryl told it like it was, and continues to tell it like is, and we were thrilled to have her acerbic sense of humor and enjoyed her salt-of-the-earth presence. Beryl tells us about meeting, traveling, and meditating with her spiritual guide, Munishree Chitrabhanu, a Jain monk. She also speaks candidly about Pattabhi Jois’ indiscretions while teaching in the classroom, as well as how she began her Ashtanga yoga studies with Norman Allen in NYC.
You’ll hear finally, Beryl and Russell recount a time sitting with the Mindful Congressional Rep. Tim Ryan in San Francisco and being publicly harangued for cultural appropriation. With some side bars on the value of mind altering substances, Beryl congratulated Russell on being sterile… ‘a good start,’ she said, ‘on our population and environmental problems.’
This interview is provocative, historical, and sprinkled with a bit of magic.
Beryl is a renowned teacher, not only for her knowledge of classical yoga and her studies of the Yoga Sutra, but for her abilities to brilliantly and intuitively access a student’s weaknesses and mis-alignments, both physically and psychologically, and prescribe specific yoga practices for healing and growth. Her down to earth, accessible style of teaching has made her a beloved and highly sought after teacher.
She pioneered the introduction of yoga into the athletic community in 1980, when she became the Wellness Director of the New York Road Runners Club. She continued in that position until 2002, teaching yoga classes in New York City to over 100,000 students in that 22 year period of time.
Beryl coined the term “power yoga” and her Power Yoga classes in New York (and workshops all over the country) were the first and original “power” yoga program. Based on the Ashtanga sequences (Beryl’s personal practice since l979), Beryl adapted the power practice for athletes of all sports, ages, and abilities, which is one of the reasons the program rocketed to success.
Her first book, Power Yoga, was published in 1995 and sold nearly 300,000 copies. She has since then written 3 more books, Beyond Power Yoga (the philosophy of the 8 limbed yoga path), Boomer Yoga (practice for aging athletes), and Yoga for Warriors (written for veterans and men and women in active duty military)
“We have a responsibility to bring the best of our being into every moment and that comes out of practice. ”
The Finding Harmony Podcast is hosted, edited and produced by Harmony Slater and co-hosted by Russell Case.
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Opening and closing music compliments of my dear friend teaching Ashtanga yoga in Eindhoven, Nick Evans, with his band “dawnSong” from the album “for Morgan.” Listen to the entire album on Spotify - Simply Click Here.
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