| Mankind spoke to Michael Gannon who teaches astanga (or ashtanga) yoga, perhaps the most physical/athletic form and also one of the purest in that it hasn’t been particularly Westernised. Currently based in Mexico City, Gannon is one of a handful of what you could call ‘rockstar’ yoga teachers who are in such demand they run classes all over the world. We spoke to him at North London's Triyoga - he had just finished teaching a week-long course in London. Gannon’s current schedule includes teaching in Thailand, New York, Hamburg, London, Dublin, Bangkok and Crete.
Not really a new ager, Gannon says teaching yoga was never really on his agenda. There was a time when he was busy with a job in advertising, a hectic social life and running his own clothing shop on Miami Beach. He just wasn’t the yoga type…
What were you like before you got into yoga?
"I was really into partying. I was constantly on the go. I didn’t relax much. I was a master of multi-tasking. I was very very driven.”
But where you fit?
"I was physically active. I was into basketball, baseball, in-line skating, and beach volleyball. I never chain-smoked, I was never into drugs.”
Can you remember when you first tried yoga?
"The first time I went in to the studio to take a class the owner gave me a release form. I’m like ‘Why do I need a release form to do yoga. It seemed ridiculous.’ She said ‘Go take one of those mats. Go sit in the room, the teacher will be there in a minute’. There were 3 or 4 people in the room. I put my mat down in a similar fashion. Some people were stretching, chatting. I sat there, didn’t know what to do. The room gradually filled up. This guy comes in and starts talking. He starts saying something and people start moving their body in a certain way and putting their hands up in the air so I look around and put my hands up in the air, they fold over so I folded over. And it was like monkey see, monkey do for like an hour. I kept moving and sweating and struggling and thinking this is really bizarre. That was my first experience with yoga. I just remember lying down for the final relaxation and being exhausted, sweaty and feeling this really cool feeling after doing it.”
And you started to get really into it?
"There was some special connection for me with it. And I said ‘OK I’m going to do an experiment’. And I bought a monthly pass and said I would do this every day for a month and see what happens. I was working at the time, I had the store, I had the day job in the ad business and I was going to yoga classes. I would go to a power yoga class one day and Iyengar and Astanga class the next day, Sunday I’d go to a Bikram class. At the end of the month I started to feel initial levels of transformation. My body was changing, my mind was changing, my energy felt different. It became part of my schedule. Instead of going to gym in the afternoon I went to a yoga class. Instead of playing volleyball on a Saturday I went to a yoga class.”
The astanga practise is a morning practise isn't it? Most people get up at 5 or 6am and do a pre-breakfast, pre-work session.
“It doesn’t have to be. But ideally it is designed to be a morning practise.”
And it’s a tough 90-minute workout. You can’t stay up late and drink and smoke if you’ve got that facing you every morning
"It has an impact on your life. You have to go to bed early. You have to think about what you’re doing at night if you’ve got this practise waiting for you every morning.”
In my experience that morning practise gives you a feel-good vibe that lasts the whole day. Which is also one of the reasons why people do the practice maybe six days a week (that and the yoga butt/yoga body that comes with a 6-day a week workout).
"A lot of people start with a casual relationship with astanga. But astanga becomes this demanding lover where you can only be flirting with it casually for a while before you have to make a decision. You need to commit and commit usually means a few things; doing the practise more regularly than once or twice a week, it starts to demand you do it 3 or 4 or 5, 6 times a week. It starts to demand you take care of your body a little better, going to bed earlier, eating better. And if you do those things you have this fulfilling relationship.”
It’s a good practice for over-achievers.
"Yes. It doesn’t mean that people who are serious practitioners can’t be serious musicians or serious fashion designers or photographers or actors or business people or attorneys. I’ve worked with them all. They make time in their schedule to do that first thing in the morning or to incorporate it some way in their schedule each day – whether they’re doing classes, practising on their own or whether they have a private teacher that comes to their home. I’ve worked with lots of people around the world who that are very successful in what they do and they are very successful astanga practitioners as well."
There’s a key book on astanga, ‘Astanga Yoga’, by Italian teacher Lino Miele. He notes certain astanga poses reduce body fat around the abdomen or the waist. Have you seen students lose weight from doing the practice?
"I’ve seen some people lose weight from doing astanga. More importantly I’ve seen a lot of people that weren’t happy with themselves - be it their body or their energy or whatever it is - from doing the practise, they come to terms and become more accepting with themselves and the way they are.”
Meile’s book also talks about stress.
“Just going to the mat and starting the breath and doing the practise for me and for a lot of people that I work with just takes care of so many things…the breath starts going, the body starts moving and the mind stops. And all these things that we were stressed about seem to go away. And maybe they come back later on but we can see them in a different perspective.”
Does everyone feel the spiritual side of yoga?
"Some people awaken something and go deeper. Some don’t. They’re not interested. They have their own spiritual practise. And they just use it as a physical practise. It is feasible someone can trim their waist and lose fat around their hips from doing these particular asanas (postures). We don’t really promote it or sell it based on that.”
It can be confusing for people who want to start yoga – there are so many classes to choose from – astanga yoga, hatha yoga, mirror yoga, power yoga.
"We can speak about astanga. Astanga yoga was learned by my guru Sri K Pattabhi Jois after he spent 27 years with his teacher Krishnamacharya in India. And he learned just this one system from his teacher and he has been teaching that same system for 65 years. He is going to be 90 next year. And people go to study with him in India and they take this pure system of astanga from him and take it back to the States or Europe and it gets mixed in with other styles that maybe they were learning from somebody else. And they create some hodgepodge system and put a name on it like power yoga or flow yoga. Then it’s no longer astanga. It becomes something else and they teach it and it starts to grow and maybe there’s a book and a tour and it becomes another yoga. So its confusing for people.”
Does that bother you?
"The bottom line is that if people can go to a yoga class, whatever its called and wherever its from, whoever is teaching it, and have a good experience, feel good about themselves, feel that they are experiencing some kind of cleansing or purification or awakening, or transformation or whatever it is, that is good. In that sense all yoga is good. But when we try to trace original source of where someone’s teachings are from its getting harder and harder.”
|
