Todd on Lumahai beach - Kauai, Hawaii
A bit about Todd
I first discovered yoga in the early 80's while living in San Francisco. I only had a couple of months of classes before my teacher ran off to pursue a singing career in Nashville, which was a bummer because I really felt so good after each class. I don't know how her singing career turned out, but I do remember her saying that there where only two types of yoga, Iyengar Yoga, which she was teaching, and Hatha Yoga. ...
What I remember most vividly about that first class is how effortlessly the other 30 or so in the class, who were mostly women in their late thirties and forties, seemed to glide and flow through the class without effort, while I- training for a triathalon at the time- was in an evergrowing pool of sweat ... and as I left class and went into Makawao, a small town just down the road, feeling so alive... I knew then that this was the next step for me. ... I chose to continue the whole week, and then moved to Encinitas in southern California to study with Tim.
Already a person with an active athletic practice, Ashtanga really resonated with me, and in a matter of weeks, this was the only physical practice I felt like doing. Besides the six day a week practice of mostly primary series with a sprinkle of second and third series poses which helped to make it fun, Tim introduced me to the power of pranayama . Most mornings I met Tim at six am in his studio and it was usually just the two of us, and it was cool in the studio in the morning... and as we simply sat there and went through the pranayama series I would begin to sweat... while simply sitting there breathing. This astounded me because I had been taught all about aerobic activity and physiology in my college studies, but the idea of aerobics was always conected to intense physical activity. So this planted a seed in me which I was curious about and which would help steer me in my exploration of yoga. I studied with Tim almost a year before deciding to move to LA to study with Ana Forrest.
ana - and starting to teach
I was introduced to Ana by two friends, Stephanie and Paul, who had taken a few of Ana's intensives. I enrolled in the next intensive
and loved it. Ana's approach was so different.... there were no set sequences of asanas, so there was more room to really allow for a different definition of how I had defined my practice of yoga up to that point and to really begin to consider just what "practice" was all about.
Ana also works a lot with energy, and so I was intrigued as I too find working with energy a natural thing. For me, Ana's work focused a lot on the energetics of the emotional body via the physical body. This can be very intense work demanding a lot of courage if you have "stuff' locked into your emotional and physical body. Ana was amazing at helping people feel safe enough to begin to go into these places. and one of the most important things I really got from Ana was just how important it is to create and hold a "safe space" if you want to invite and allow and inspire people to make difficult choices.
After about three years of working with Ana, I began to teach at her studio in Santa Monica, and other venues around town. At first this was challenging because all of my teachers had been very flexible -which I wasn't- and they had all been practicing yoga for years- which I hadn't been.... but my guides were patient with me and with humor continued to reassure me as I would fall back into my uncertainty. I continued to ask my guides what to teach, and they would say that "the poses were not important, and to follow the moon". This made no sense to me at all, even though it felt right.
Then one day out of the blue, a friend recommended a book to read.."The Man who fell in Love with the Moon", and one of the main characters in the book kept referring to the full moon as being in a certain part of the body... hips, thighs, and so on - this intrigued me and I wanted to know more about this...it sounded like it was related to what my guides were talking about. Months went by.
One day as I was visiting another friend, who happened to have a rather extensive library at her house, a certain book title seemed to grab my attention as I glanced over at the wall of books, "Moon Time..." . I looked through the book and to my utter delight read bits and pieces about the lunar cycle and how it travels through the zodiac and relates to various parts of the body.... pieces were definately coming together. I started to play around with this aspect in my practice.
Initially I was very nervous about coming into class to teach and talk about "following the moon", as it sounded so "new agey" and really weird... even for me! But my guides were consistent in their counsel when I continued to ask what to teach... they simply replied, "Follow the moon". So I did a little experiment. Ana Forrest is very connected to the earth and to native people's practices and understandings, and so for a couple of weeks, I would go into her class and after class would feel and determine which part of the body we seemed to have been focused on most in class that day, and then I would look up where the moon was on that particular day, and to my surprise, most days we had indeed been primarily focused on where the moon was.
I never talked about this with Ana, and she had never mentioned it... but nevertheless, it was enough of a "sign" for me to plunge ahead and begin teach what I had started to practice. One of the best parts about following the moon in your practice - for me- was that you inevitably get to all parts of the body, and so it helped me to resist the temptation to simply teach what I was good at, or plug away at something that really needed a rest. It was really a very useful tool which helped me to feel the natural cycles that were all around me in nature, and that I was a part of- and that I was really a part of something much much larger than me.
It would be some years of playing around with changing my definitions of what a practice was or "should be" - following the moon; working with energy, essence and form; effort and allowing -before even the idea of what is now BLIS Yoga would be born.
I began a time of exploring other teachers and other approaches to this thing we call yoga. Along the way I studied a few months of Iyengar Yoga with Lisa Walford - a senior Iyengar teacher at Yoga Works in Santa Monica - and tried an assortment of classes and teachers around town. I learned many things doing this. I usually found things that resonated with me in each "style" and or approach, and often would get a glimpse of another piece to my puzzle in the way something was said, or taught.. I enjoyed a few workshops learning about fundamentals of Anusara Yoga with John Friend, and was especially intrigued with Yin Yoga and the Taoist approach to yoga which Paul Grilley teaches. I also gained a lot of clarity from Paul's approach to viewing the body anatomically, which made sense to me intuitively, but I had never heard articulated quite that way before. This helped me to move my teaching further from form into essence.
Todd, Erich, & Vittoria afte class Sep 2000
erich - reconnecting with the heart
The most fundamental teaching I encountered was with Erich Schiffmann.
I still remember the first class I took with Erich; it was a level 4-5, which was for teachers... well, this particular class was small, and everyone - except me - was doing splits and backbends -drop backs- like it was the easiest thing in the world... whew wee... I somehow managed to slither out of that class and it was some three or four years before I dropped into another class of Erich's. And this time things were completely different.... I had been doing more and more practice at home, on my own, and had stopped taking other classes, as they weren't really that interesting to me any longer. Well, I remember how amazed I was that a number of the things Erich taught in class were the very things I had been doing at home, although no one had taught them to me before... and I remember thinking .. wow, you mean it's OK to teach this stuff too??!! A light went off for me- a eureka moment - and I knew that I was "home".
Over the next three to four years I practiced with Erich, and slowly learned more and more about what it feels like to embody your practice. Erich really teaches through his demonstration, and we share a similar intrigue and passion, dropping into and embodying the essence of your heart... your innate state. Erich's enthusiasm continues to infuse my practice and my teaching . Erich introduced me to lines of energy- something he attributes to Joel Kramer; the power of slowing down and even daring to pause; and what it feels like to find your own practice ~ yum!
Erich also introduced me to Raj who provided a door and a bridge to including spiritual and devotional sides to my practice and teaching. Raj has helped me to connect with my guides who continue to inform, often with humor, always with gentle persistence and patience. I continue to be amazed and inspired by my students, young and old , who demonstrate the courage to make different choices and share what they are rediscovering with me and others in their lives - not always an easy thing to do.