When Love Comes To Light
Happy New Year!
For the New Year and for the Dawning of the Age of Aquarius that it seems we’ve now fully entered… We have done the impossible for you!
We’ve nailed down the spinning melodic kites that are Richard Freeman and Mary Taylor.
What is truly incredible about these two is their enormous sense of self-awareness to the fishbowl world in which we all live.
They know themselves and they see you seeing them, and within this awareness, Love comes to light.
They become (as one of Richard’s books suggests) “The Mirror of Yoga.” It’s deeply uncomfortable to be human and to know our own weaknesses; yet, they manage to emanate grace and compassion throughout the kaleidoscopic lens of their lives. And in turn it reflects back on ours… Because, sitting next to someone— ‘Upana’ is how we learn. And we are able to raise our own vibration simply by being near these two souls.
Richard grew up in a very sophisticated cultural community surrounded by Philosophers and college professors who very commonly had a personal relationship to the Holocaust in Europe. In Richard’s subsequent search for Truth he discovered both the hole in the center of these “spiritual communities,” but also the Light at the Center. Richard Freeman has been a student of yoga since 1968, beginning with one simple sitting posture in the Zen tradition. He spent nine years in Asia studying yoga asana, Sufism, Sanskrit language, and Indian philosophical texts; contextualizing them within the turbulent political times of that period in history. In 1974 Richard began working with B.K.S. Iyengar, with whom he studied precise alignment principles, applying them to his own internally rooted experience of the forms. Drawing from this variety of contemplative traditions, and from Buddhism, in which he cultivates a deep interest, Richard teaches the Ashtanga Vinyasa method of yoga as taught by his principal teacher, the late Sri K. Pattabhi Jois of Mysore, India… And so we heard harrowing tales of his trips to India with Swami A. C. Bhaktivedanta, Swami Prabhupada and the Hare Krishnas, his years in Iran teaching the Royal family, before escaping back to the U.S. during the Iranian Revolution.
Mary Taylor began studying yoga in 1971, soon after she came home from France with a grande diplôme from Julia Child’s cooking school, L’Ecole des Trois Gourmandes. She found yoga at first as a means of finding equanimity during the stress of University, and it was that thread of balance that got her hooked.
Mary tells us about developing an eating disorder during her time in College, which led her to embrace the culinary arts as a way of mastering the beast that is anorexia, through food itself.
Her close relationship to Julia Child transformed her life; yet also, she became aware of the problems with fame. And, how as Frank Sinatra said “it’s not you that changes with fame, it’s everyone around you.” Mary became increasingly aware of these issues of hypocrisy within the food world, social activism, and ultimately, within the Ashtanga yoga community itself.
With both Richard and Mary we discus at length our Ashtanga Yoga culture and the pitfalls. We believe that you will find this hour with them as fascinating and engrossing as we did. Somehow time in their presence is never enough.
“As teachers we have a tremendous responsibility to show up fully and honestly, letting go of formulas and preconceptions while simultaneously observing patterns and drawing new conclusions. Trusting the process. Beneath it all we always remain students: practicing, studying, experimenting, inquiring, relearning, and then practicing some more.”
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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