Interview with Brad Ramsey

You could be forgiven for not knowing who Brad Ramsey is - he played a significant role in the early growth of Ashtanga before retiring to Maui, where he lived as a semi recluse for many years. It turned out to be one of my favourite interviews, as it filled important gaps in the Ashtanga history, and because Brad was a deep and serious thinker and practitioner.

“Brad was a very private guy, to the extent that he became a recluse over the last 25 years of his life, living in Maui for most of that time. He was certainly not someone who drew undue attention to himself—no facebook page or blog for Brad. Still, it is sad to see that someone who made such a valuable contribution to the development of ashtanga yoga in the West has gotten so little recognition. Brad was my teacher for the first three years of practice. Over that time he taught me primary, intermediate and advanced A and B asana sequences, all the six pranayamas, many Sanskrit slokas and devotional songs….

From the late 1970’s through the late 1980’s Brad was one of the best and most important ashtanga yoga teachers in the West and one of Guruji’s favorite students. If you read Brad’s chapter in the book, Guruji, you get a good sense of Brad’s brilliance and insight into the deeper dimensions of yoga.” - Tim Miller

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Interviewer: Brad, could you tell us how you got into yoga and how you met Guruji?  

Brad:  It started when David (Williams) and Nancy (Gilgoff) moved to Encinitas. Cher Bonelle and I were already doing the 28 day plan, that Richard Hittleman book.  Are you familiar with that?  It’s an old classic.  Well, Cher’s son was taking a pilates class and after the class David was using the studio for his little Hatha yoga class.  So we started doing that with him and that was really enjoyable.

Later on David said: ‘there’s this other yoga. It’s not for everybody but you are welcome to come over to my house and try it.’ So I started working with him through the primary and part of the intermediate.  And then he organized a trip for Guruji to come over and rented a church in Cardiff and that was where I met Guruji and Manju.  And that was a real experience for me. That was beginning of the pranayama and the more serious practice. 

And Manju stayed, and at one point his class was large enough that he needed some help so he asked me if I cared to apprentice with him. So I worked with him for at least a year maybe closer to 2 years.  And then a church opened up closer to my home in Carlsbad and we rented that, a group of us, and started teaching there.  That’s the one right on the border between Leucadia and Encinitas.  And I taught class there until I moved to Maui in 1980 I think it was.  

In about ‘76 ’77 I had a chance to go to India and get the full experience studying with Guruji there and that was a real eye opener.  And that’s about it. Then I taught, taught here with David Williams and on the Big Island. Then we moved to Kauai and I stopped teaching, that’s the story in a nut shell.  

Interviewer:  So you first started learning from David Williams when he came back from India after his visit with Guruji 

Brad:  Correct

Interviewer:  But at that time he was just teaching Hatha yoga right?

Brad:  That’s what his main focus was then. he had a few select students that he showed the (Ashtanga) series to.  But it wasn’t a big thing, it was so little known at that time it hadn’t really caught on yet.  But it gradually developed so there were enough people and we could pool our resources and bring Guruji over. That was 1974.  

Interviewer:  And Guruji came the first time and his son Manju stayed on?  And he (Manju) taught and you became his apprentice and that’s how you started to teach?

Brad:  Exactly 

Interviewer:  And that was in 70… pretty much straight away 

Brad:  Pretty much straight away: maybe ’75, probably the later part of ’74.  And at that time David and Nancy moved to Maui and they started teaching here and so it went on.  We brought Guruji over several times again.

Interviewer:  Can you remember your first impression of the practice when David showed it to you in comparison to what you were doing before?  

Brad:  It was hard.  It was really hard. even Salutation A was very difficult.  I was one of the stiffest people that I’ve ever seen in my teaching experience.  So just to get through 3 and 3 salutations, to get comfortable with that; that was months of work.  All the little hatha yoga things I had done before really were no preparation whatsoever for that kind of physical effort.  But I was really attracted to the synchronization between the breathing and the motion and the idea of the locks, that was new to me also, the whole system just made sense to me.  I still think it’s the most perfect system ever devised, the most efficient method of physical transformation that I’ve ever seen. 

Interviewer:  Do you remember your first meeting with Guruji?  Did you anticipate him coming?  

Brad:  I was working at La Costa Country Club at the time and when his agenda was definite, when we knew he was going to be there, I asked them to lay me off so that I could collect unemployment and study exclusively with him and not have to shuffle … you know my work schedule would have interfered with the time when he was here.  So after that it was pretty much exclusively doing yoga and working with Manju.  And with my own classes a little income started coming in and I was able to eke out a small living. so that worked well for many years.  

Interviewer:  When you said class you continued to teach Hatha yoga or you taught the series. 

Brad:  No after working with Manju and I never taught anything but the series.  

Interviewer:  So there were a few years of teaching with Manju before you went to Mysore.

Brad:  Yes, I finished my apprenticeship by then and we were already in our own little deconsecrated church. I had a pretty good size class there in Leucadia.  And some of my friends helped me finance the trip and it was wonderful.  It was really wonderful to see him at home.  He’d returned to California after his first trip and he and Amma came and they stayed with Manju that time. they taught at Manju’s place and I would do yoga there, then they would come over to the other church, my church and teach there.  So it was a busy schedule: started early with Manju and then at 9 o’clock at our church, little St. Andrews.  

Interviewer:  Do you remember you first impression of Guruji? 

Brad:  I though he was amazing.  He just radiated quiet brilliance.  His English was not good at the time.  But still, if you listened you could get the gist of what he was saying and the more you listened to him the easier it got.  Having Manju there the first time was a great help and then you start to pick up some of the nuance of the Kannda. But Sanskrit has always been a little bit easier for me to grab hold of because you can study it and it’s in all the literature.

We had theory class every night. you’d get it after a while in spite of his English.  And his English picked up, every trip he would get a little better.  I think he was getting more foreign students then so it improved fairly rapidly.  He never had the facility with it that a lot of Indian men do but his Sanskrit was impeccable and that’s a chore in itself so it was a trade off.  I didn’t have trouble understanding.  When you meet your guru you just know.  It’s there or it’s not I don’t think it’s something you really grow into it’s kind of automatic.  

Interviewer:  Can you describe how it was studying in Mysore with him? 

Brad:  Oh it was intense.  It was painful.  He would take care of his Indian classes in the morning and his western class was in the afternoon so meals were kind of a problem because you couldn’t really…  You could take a little something for breakfast - oatmeal was something you could eat, or something easily digested but then you had to wait until 6 or 7 o’clock at night to eat.  But in a way it was good because we had time to do pranayama in the morning maybe some light stretching, walk around Mysore a little bit and then head to class in the afternoon.  And it wasn’t crowded, the yoga shala was very small at that time.  So we’d do our practice and then pranayama again and then go find a place for dinner.  

Interviewer:  You said it was intense can you say a little more about how it was?

Brad:  It was painful. extremely painful. I don’t think there’s one part of me that wasn’t sore.  He wasn’t as restrained as he was in the US there on his home turf, so it was transformative.  That’s where I really got my leg to stay behind my head and that took a lot of torque, a whole lot.  I felt like I was being dismembered almost.  My body, it was changed.  

Interviewer:  Why do you think we allow ourselves to go through so much pain?  

Brad:  The benefits I guess. when you can feel it working, you can feel the quietness after.  And I don’t think it’s the endorphins or whatever, it’s because the system (yoga) really works.  You can almost hear your mind shutting down.  Even the pain, if you give that up to God, I think that’s part of the practice really.  I don’t know.   Well Manju always says no pain, no gain.  And there is a great element of truth there I think.  The pain is almost necessary.  The pain is a teacher also.

Interviewer:  Usually pain, you take that as a message to stop what you are doing because you are about to do some damage.

Brad:  Yes that’s the American way, probably the rest of the world is the same way, but for Americans especially. in a lot of schools of yoga, if it hurts you are doing something wrong.  And if you were a perfect physical and mental specimen already then I can see how that might be true.  If you are altering the status quo in an unpleasant way you might want to stop, if you were already perfect.  But if you feel growth coming from it and see things changing that need to be changed… the series is just a mold towards a body that meets the requirements for spiritual advancement, I believe.  I don’t think you can get there without pain.  I never met anybody who really did.  Even David, I know, in India, he had pain. everyone did.  Now for his own practice probably he doesn’t do anything that hurts him.  But for me it was never that way.  It hurt from the first day to the last, at least something hurt, there’s always something.

Interviewer: I think for everyone there comes a point where the pain get moderated, you learn how to practice in an intelligent way and sustain yourself rather than trying to break through.

Brad:  That’s true, it does get better.

Interviewer:  It’s a hard lesson to learn and a difficult one.

Brad: it hurts just to do it sometimes even to make the effort is painful

Interviewer:  Why do you think that is though?

Brad:  It’s the nature of the beast. for people to evolve, it’s a birth process really.  

Interviewer:  I guess it’s one stage more awake than total dullness and total ignorance. the pain is the beginning of the signs that the body and the mind are waking up. things are moving: Evolution. And an important part is giving it up to God and making that part of the practice.  

Interviewer:  Guruji says that a lot doesn’t he?  He tells us pray to God.  

Brad:  Yes when it hurts put your mind on God instead of your pain. whatever your concept of god is – whether he is the great architect, the basic element of the universe - what all this is.  It’s all the same stuff. that’s God.  What everything is made out of.

Interviewer:  So I guess the purpose of that is take your attention away from your personal experience and be with the universal, to get away from your personal suffering

Brad:  Yeah that’s what practice is. getting outside the little voices in your head.  “This hurts!” or “oh, I gotta do this” or “I’m going to be late for that.” to make those still, that’s an optimum.

Interviewer: Clearly you felt that he was your teacher but he represented something very unique as a yoga practice.

Brad:  Energy. That is something you feel; the rightness in things, when things are right. Bajans are a great way to practice too. God songs. They get you very close very quickly. that’s an important part of Sadhana also.  

Interviewer:  Did Guruji instruct you or tell you about doing pujas and so on?

Brad:  He gave me the mantra that I use and the instructions for its use.  I wake up at night, 3 o’clock’s a good time, it depends on your sleep schedule, really, but it’s supposed to be kind of unnatural, you know, it’s not a time you would choose to get up.  So that’s part of the sacrifice too: take a little bath, do pranayama completely and then do your rounds (of japa).  Start out with 108 work up to 1008. As long as you can stay awake and sit in lotus, that’s good.  And after a while you lose yourself completely, it’s not sleeping because you’re in lotus.  It’s a little difficult to fall asleep in lotus, it can be done but uh…  At night it’s easier to lose yourself, things are shut down more, so there is no nervous little chatter and then the mantra takes away the rest.  It’s a complete empty slate there.

Interviewer:  Did you explore Guruji’s family background, his connection with the Smrta Brahmin and Shankaracharya lineage?

Brad:  No I didn’t.  It didn’t seem important to me.  At that time the prayer we started with started with God: nārāyaṇaṃ padmabhavaṃ vaśiṣṭhaṃ …  the whole lineage of Gurus from God on down to vande gurunam .. 

Interviewer:  Oh. he had you doing that as part of the opening mantra for the asana practice?  

Brad: Yes.

Interviewer: Lately he used it just for the pranayama, it seems.  

Brad:  But he still starts with Vande gurunam, it’s just one little piece of that. That’s about ¼ of the whole prayer.  It’s time consuming to do the whole thing before you start but It’s beautiful.  Before pranayama we would do it again - that was one of the hardest parts.

When I started, lotus posture was very painful.  To hold it, even to sit there for a few minutes and say the prayer was difficult. by the time the prayer was over I was already dying and then we’d have to do the pranayama.  And learning pranayama from Guruji - it’s a pretty wild experience, because when he holds his breath, a lot of times he just goes out.  You know he’s not there anymore, he forgets to count. So everybody’s there dying, you know, and finally you hear him go onto the next one. 

He’s a classic, that’s a mark of success in practices: Kevala Kumbhaka – you don’t need to breathe, there is no urgency about it.  It’s like sleep apnea, but if it’s ingrained in your practice there’s no panic when you come out of it. You don’t gasp for air or anything like that and you just realize you stopped breathing and you just continue where you left off. Or if you forgot where you left off, then you go back to the last place you remember and start there.  So it was a hard way to learn but it was worth it. It’s an important adjunct.  The practice can be nerve irritating, over stimulating kind of.  

Interviewer:  You mean the asana practice? 

Brad:  Yes, and then the pranayama is partially the antidote for that, it’s like the cooling down period for an athlete.

Interviewer:  Normally he says he wants to see padmasana perfect (before teaching pranayama) but obviously in your case he felt that you were advanced in some other way …

Brad:  It wasn’t perfect, but close enough I guess.

Interviewer:  I mean he says you should be able to sit in it for 3 hours.  

Brad:  Yep.  It got to the point where I thought it was more comfortable than sitting like this, but in the beginning stages …

Interviewer:  I heard you had a high level of concentration. when people saw you practicing; they said they had never seen someone with such incredible focus.

Brad: I got lost in it.  I would lose myself in it.  I got everything I wanted to get out of it.  

Interviewer:  You felt that in the moment or after practice?  

Brad:  I feel it right now.  

Interviewer:  When you say you got everything you wanted out of it, I presume you don’t mean just the physical practice.

Brad:  No. I mean the place where it put my mind.  It may not appear perfect to anybody else but inside I’m very comfortable and I feel that I have achieved the goals that I have for myself.  Really it’s all preparation for your death moment, that’s the whole idea behind it.  Because if you can put your mind on God while you are hopping around on the floor doing mildly painful things, that’s practicing for the last moment of greatest extremity and if in your death moment you can put your mind on God, the theory is, you save yourself a whole lot of birth(s), you save yourself many travails. 

Interviewer:  Did you feel that you came with an idea or feeling for divinity to India, or did Guruji help you, or did your practice help you to deepen that feeling or experience?

Brad:  I think it was immersion in the practice with Guruji, because of the slokas he would quote, the verses he would recite, the little poems and the stories – it was part of the immersion into the spiritual side of life.  I wasn’t particularly spiritually oriented before and I don’t even consider myself so spiritually oriented now.  But I feel that by that immersion, it’s like baptism would be to a Christian, you know, like you’re saved.  Okay I’m saved.  Now I’m saved forever, you’re saved.  I can’t get lost.  Krishna tells Arjuna: ‘Arjuna, it doesn’t matter how far you go or what you do. You do yoga, you do it as much as you can.  If you can’t do it anymore, fine, next life you get to take up from there again. You can’t lose ground.’ That was Krishna’s promise.  Some people believe it, some probably don’t.

Interviewer:  Did you feel it to become real through practice? did that become an actual experience?

Brad:  I think it’s real. Yes. I truly believe that that is real. And underlying all the little stories, you know, those are the Hindu bible stories, really, the universal truth is there, and that order of things makes perfect sense to me now.  Before yoga it would have seemed a little hocus pocusy, you know, kind of mythological, but now there’s an underling reality and that becomes apparent through the practice.  And the practice changes your life and the whole point of changing your life, I believe, is to become spiritually comfortable. 

Interviewer:  That’s an interesting way of putting it. It really means just ‘comfortable with the self’ or ‘knowing the self’.

Brad:  Yes you can’t be lost.  

Interviewer:  It takes a while to come to that …

Brad:  It varies for everyone. some people, they say, that if the parents were yogis, then the child, if he was born into a family of yogis, that’s a great blessing, that’s one of the greatest blessings a child can have and that is the mark of a soul who has done the work in the past.  They get that bonus, that little head start so they can make further progress. 

Interviewer:  How do you characterize what Pattabhi Jois actually teaches?  

Brad:  He’s a great technician.  Manju is even better at the physical adjustments.  Guruji has the transmittable power that’s through his lineage. if you recognize him as Guru then the benefit is in his touch as much as what he is touching.  It doesn’t matter where he is putting your leg at the time, just being in contact with him there’s a flow. it goes back and forth too: the guru also gets nourished by a good student.  So the circle gets flowing, that energy circuit, and that really can only happen with your guru.  Teachers can help you physically but the transmission of power is usually exclusively the province of the guru.  You have to accept that person as your own guru for the circuit to be complete and he has to accept you as his student. that’s the natural order of things 

Interviewer:  You mentioned the fact that he is empowered by the lineage, perhaps it’s possible, just by mutual acceptance of those roles: student and teacher that the same transmission could somehow happen.  

Brad:  He would have had to have had it from Krishnamarcharya.  He would have had to have had his batteries charged, so to speak, or had his terminals polished, so that he could impart that to the students who chose him and that he chose. and really when it happens, neither the guru nor the student has a choice: that’s like the pull of a magnet.  If they are meant for each other they attract.  If they are not, there is some repulsion there. 

Interviewer:  I asked Guruji about karma and the fact he is my teacher. somehow the way I came to him wasn’t really a conscious process. I was drawn towards him in some way and I asked him: is this karma?  And he said no, no that’s a complete misunderstanding.  Implying to me that the choice of guru is a free choice rather something that is programmed.  I don’t know if I misunderstood him.

Brad:  That’s not the way it seemed to me. I don’t see how, what’s the other solution? where’s the free choice come from?  I don’t know it there is such a thing as free choice. that’s a debatable point and it might be just semantics, you know, what is choice?  What makes you chose this or that?  But I think to find a teacher is very rare. most people never do. so to recognize one when you find him, that also is rare, and for him to recognize you?  Everything has to work out. so I would say there is at least an element of karma involved.  That some past life conjunction, not necessarily between those 2 souls but within the whole gestalt, the whole dynamic of spiritual progress in the world, that at this time these two people will have the guru - shishya relationship. extremely rare.   

Interviewer:  They also say when the student is ready, the teacher will appear and it’s interesting to me that Guruji seems to have students that are right across the range of preparedness. when I was there, there were people with no real interest in spirituality at all and those deeply connected to that already and he seems to have had the ability to speak to such a broad spectrum of people.

Brad:  That demonstrates the powerful energy reservoir doesn’t it?  To be able to open himself to that broad spectrum of people, it’s very hard to do.  I always liked to keep things as small as possible. I never saw the advantage of a huge class or to have to use a microphone or something.  It just doesn’t make much sense to me. I can understand, logistically, after achieving a certain level of notoriety, it’s the wrong word, but you know, world fame, just being known, having students spread around the world, that large classes become necessary. I don’t know how he does it, I don’t know how a lot of these people do it.  It seems to me that the level of transmission would be affected but for Guruji people keep coming back so he’s doing it right.  He was doing it right I suppose.  

Interviewer: I studied initially in the old shala when Sharath was just beginning to teach with Guruji, so there were 2 of them and there were 8 of us in the room, so you got a lot of attention physically and obviously it was very intense. And then I didn’t go back for 7 years and then went to the new shala and there were 60 students in the room.  But what was interesting was that in spite of receiving many fewer adjustments, the observation was there of you as a student, and I felt in many ways that, equally, the power you felt in the room was very, very strong.  

Brad:  Yeah it’s interesting. that shows that it’s not necessarily diluted by numbers

Interviewer:  Do you feel it’s mainly energetic, the transmission?  

Brad:  I don’t know what else it would be, but it’s physically perceptible.  When you get the direct transmission it’s like a … things just close off, it’s like tunnel vision.  It’s definitely an energetic phenomenon, I don’t know what kind. maybe that’s what spiritual energy or shakti is. It’s very difficult to explain.

Interviewer:  Presumably you were able to understand Guruji better than many. he does teach philosophy and the theory part, the 1% as he likes to call it.  And it occurs to me that some of the transmission has to also come through that channel.  

Brad:  I think it really does help to study … I studied enough Kannda to be able to read the street signs.  Now that’s a hard language to learn to learn to write, isn’t it? - the writing is just little squiggles and it’s very hard.  Sanskrit makes a lot more sense to me.  And I had my Sanskrit dictionary and a few books on beginning Sanskrit and I studied enough to get the basic terminology, all the important terms that he would use that there is no literal translation for in many cases.  I think that’s part of it too: receiving a clear transmission, you need some kind of common language, some kind of pidgin that you can operate on.  

Interviewer:  So Guruji encouraged you to study or directed you in certain directions.

Brad:  He’d recommend the books, but he didn’t care at all.  He thought it was kind of funny actually that a white guy would even attempt to learn Sanskrit because it took him 26 years or something to get his full vidwan degree.  So he thought someone dabbling in Sanskrit was a joke he thought it was pretty funny. he would teach us these little poems and then he throw in some tongue twisters and I’d say them back and he would just end up cracking up at my accent.  It’s like us listening to a hillbilly or something or deep, deep south there was just something slightly amusing about it to hear your language mangled like that.  Amma was a sweetheart she was very helpful with the language part, the Sanskrit accent. she was always singing - a beautiful contralto voice and she knew so many God songs.  In a way she was partly my teacher. I think that was part of his energy too.  I learned a great deal from her.

Interviewer:  Can you say a little bit about how Guruji was influenced by her?  How his teaching was supported by her?

Brad:  She was his student. He said she went through Advanced B.  She learned all the postures and she took great care of him, she ran the house like a commanding officer. outside the house he was definitely the boss.  He would do a lot of the shopping, boss her around a little bit, but in the house he was truly respectful.  She was in charge, it was quite clear.  She was a beauty.  She used to say that when she started (practicing yoga) she was a baby elephant.  I guess she lost a lot of weight.

Interviewer:  I can just hear her…

Brad:  “Me, baby elephant.”  She was so cute.

Interviewer:  It seems that family life was pretty important for Guruji and as the way this yoga has unfolded in the west Guruji was always telling people to get married. So we kind of came with the impression that yoga was for renunciants, people sitting in caves…

Brad: True. I think that’s one way, one way of the sadhana. the householder way, traditionally you take care of that first.  You set up your household, raise children, produce your heir, accumulate wealth and then retire to the forest.  That was the old style: husband and wives go to the forest together after their children were raised and their householder duties were finished. Now, I don’t know, if it’s the descent of the ages because we are still descending into Kali yuga, the old patterns are broken … all the greatest gurus were renunciates, but we don’t always hear about their early life, whether they had experience as householders. 

Vaishista, Vishvamitra - these guys that would hold poses for a thousand years to curry favor with their Gods, they may have been householders in their early stages we don’t know. Sri Shankaracharya, at one point there was a female preacher talking in town and he went to hear her and she said ‘you don’t know anything about life you are still a virgin.  What could you possibly know about the human condition?’  So Shankaracharya sat down in meditation and he told his students to look after his body for a while and he traveled into the body of a great king in the north of India and enjoyed his harem and his wealth, raised children and did the whole experience in the most fulfilling way possible - he could have anything he wanted as a king. So he experienced the world that way, then went back to his body and continued his life as renunciant.  So both systems are valid I guess. 

Interviewer:  And then he beat her in the debate right? 

Brad: Yes, we know that story. That was a great one. There’s another part to it too which I left out.

Interviewer: It seems that Shakaracharya was very important to Guruji.  It intrigued me for a long time that the Ashtanga Yoga, as presented in the Sutra is a dualistic model –purusha/prakriti duality, wheras Guruji’s interest was really coming from the Advaita, non dualist perspective. And I wondered for a long time about this blending or merging of these traditions and also about Krishnamarcharya’s lineage of Ramanuja - how do you think these different perspectives merge?

Brad: I think it’s all one. Theology is just another way of fixing your mind on the issues.  I don’t think it really matters what you think about it because there really is only one way and in the end it’s all one thing. So these different ways of looking at it are just ways that are more suitable for the individual, each individual chooses a way.  And it doesn’t really matter a whole lot which way that is. you see, there’s not right or wrong - it all resolves into one. It’s interesting to ponder though.  

Interviewer:  I asked Guruji about it more recently and he said the external angas of Astanga Yoga were dualistic in nature and the internal ones were Advita (non-dual), the internal experience of God or self-realization, which made sense to me.

Brad: That’s true. Yama and niyama are external and with asana and pranayama it begins to be internalized and the rest (of the angas) are all putting your mind on God, concentrating on God.  That’s where duality ends.  Even in asana there is right side, left side, right way or wrong way - these things can be dualistic but after pranayama there isn’t a right or a wrong, a this or a that, there’s just one.  

Interviewer: In mastering the asanas too, there’s that overcoming of the sense of duality.

Brad:  That’s true. that gets back to what we were saying: you lose yourself and there are no extremes as long as breath, movement and bandhas are locked up, theoretically, if you practice, that stillness is available to you, and that’s the essence of non duality, that stillness. There is no this or that.

Interviewer:  It seems to me that from an early stage what you were looking for was not out there but something internal.  It was not a search but just becoming comfortable with the existing reality.

Brad:  That has to be true. You can’t find happiness out there. It’s just not out there to find.  

Interviewer:  It takes a while for people to realize that … or perhaps forever.

Brad: It does.

Interviewer:  Had you been studying philosophy and yoga before you went to India?

Brad:  Not at all. Before David I read exactly one book about yoga - that Richard Hittleman 28 day plan. It was just real baby stuff you know, a little cobra, a little locust, no breathing you just lay on the floor and do it.  You know, maybe do it a couple times, no counting breaths or anything like that. You’d just hold it for 10 seconds. It didn’t say anything on how to breathe except blow your stomach out when you inhale, you know, balloon breathing, a lot of mistakes. But even that was enough of a teaser. By making my body feel better afterwards, it opened me up to more complex stuff. everybody has to start some place.

Interviewer:  So you were starting with the purely physical as your interest?

Brad:  Yeah, until after the first time I did the series and I felt that silence ringing in my head and that was way different.  That was a new thing.  

Interviewer:  Did that inspire you to study more?

Brad: It’s addictive and that’s the way it works.  Nobody would go through that unless it was addictive.  

Interviewer: Would you say something about Guruji, the way he teaches and how he motivates people?  

Brad: I don’t know how he does that, I guess his power proceeds him.  Any good teacher can motivate his students. Any good teacher can make the student want to please the teacher because they know that is pleasing themself. He was exceptionally good at it because of the power he had inherited and accumulated, as we were talking about before.  He was special. He’ll be back.  

Interviewer:  Some people think he had a physical mastery, he had the ability to understand the body and move it.  As far as you are concerned it seems to be more of an energetic …

Brad: It was energy I think. He was a good technician. But Manju really is a better technician, smoother, fewer injuries; deliberate or undeliberate, whether it’s good for you or not.  If you want somebody to make steady progress you don’t have to rip them apart the first time you see them, you can kind of tease them into it. That’s each one’s dynamic.  Manju’s just smoother. Guruji was a little rougher but I think he too was looking at energy fields instead the body. What he was seeing wasn’t “oh if I step on this guy’s knee, he’s going to scream and he’s going to be out of action for a couple weeks.”  He was seeing energy circuits: “Oh this needs to go there” and I believe that sometimes he was not conscious of the physical dynamic at all.  That wasn’t what he was looking at and that’s the way it’s supposed to be with a guru.  A teacher has to be more aware because unless you have the psychic cachet, to see a person past whatever infirmities they are going to suffer because of your ministrations, unless you have enough voltage to get them through that, you should not be messing with them. Unless you have the power to do that you can hurt people. It’s against human nature.

Interviewer:  You think Guruji acquired that shakti through his asana practice or his connection with Krishnamarcharya or you think he was born with some amazing energy?

Brad: Well it had to be a high birth for him to get where he was going, even to meet up with Krishnamarcharya. I think he got the transmission from Krishnamarcharya and that upped his voltage. His practice certainly did, that’s part of it too. But any single element, birth, transmission from guru or practice, any one of those by themselves wouldn’t explain the power, it has to be a combination of them all.

Interviewer: How do you understand this transmission of shakti?

Brad: You can feel it, you know when it happens. When he gave a mantra, like I said, it’s like tunnel vision, it’s a direct conduit, it’s accompanied by physical sensation, a coolness. Part of working with the guru in the asanas, is you can feel heat coming off his hands and electricity, so that’s part of it. The direct transmission, when he is telling you something special, some part of this power is being passed to you and that’s a special feeling too and it can’t be mistaken. It can’t be mistaken for anything else.  

Interviewer:  Presumably that would be a cumulative thing over a period of time.  

Brad: I think so. You couldn’t handle any amount of direct voltage until you have had a lot of little jolts to purify the conduits. A lot of nadis need to be cleaned before they can even carry voltage. One thing that was interesting in our practice when we were in India was every Saturday would be neti (kriya) day. When I got there he was using his old neti string, a really old one, a piece of bicycle valve tube, what we call surgical tubing, but black like bicycle inner tubes are made out of, and one of his old threads, his Brahmin threads. He’d double it and roll it on his leg and spiral it real tight, and it felt just like sand paper – it was course linen. 

So every Saturday we line up at his little sink in the yoga shala and he made some of the Indian people come too: if they were snorting in class or blowing their nose or something they’d have to come and they were the first in line.  We always got there as early as we could because the sink was just cold water. The first time I went there, this little Indian kid, I think his dad made him come or something because he had a kind of asthmatic sound to his breathing, really clogged up, and the kid was practically crying “no, no”. And they were rattling back and forth in Kannada and Guruji was like “hey, you get up here!” and the kid is crying and screaming and Guruji say “open!” So he puts the tube up the kid’s nose and reaches in to his mouth to grab it, and Aargh! Throws up all over Guruji who jumps back and starts yelling at him. So he does the other side on the kid - and I’m next!  “Oh no, don’t worry!” (says Guruji) and runs his hand over it like that (to clean off the neti string).  

Interviewer:  Did you ever contract any infections?

Brad:  No. A little bit, because they were still burning a lot of dung at that time.  So there was a little bit of respiratory congestion.

Interviewer:  But not from the string.

Brad: No I never did. That’s another sign of great energy.  Actually I thought I’d be sick as a dog.

Interviewer:  Did he teach you any other kriyas?

Brad: Nauli, We always did that. Manju was big on nauli also.

Interviewer:  What was his suggestion about practicing nauli?

Brad: He liked it between sun salutation A and B everyday.  

Interviewer:  Did he say specifically why he was teaching it to you guys or how often you should do it?

Brad:  Manju said everyday. Gurjuji wasn’t concerned about it - that was part of your private function: to make sure that your bowels were moving correctly and so on. He figured that was not his business and if you couldn’t take care of that then what are you doing here, clown?  But Manju was pretty specific about it because in a way it demonstrated that you came prepared. You’re not loaded up with breakfast at Denny’s. That makes sense. It’s also good to know you are as clean as you are going to get before you start delving into your series for the day.  

Interviewer: In Yoga Mala Guruji says to do nauli in kukutasana which is fairly challenging.  

Brad: That sounds interesting. Yoga Mala, that was a great book and what amazes me is all the vinyasa numbers were there in his first book, the exact method was right there.  And I can see that with the time constraints in India, especially the Indian men, they didn’t want to spend hours going through the full vinyasa numbers.  It’s very time consuming to do that, takes twice as long as flipping from side to side with the occasional jump back. But it’s really worth the energy - I think cuts down on injuries drastically. 

The physical benefits are hugely accelerated, the body comes to neutral between every posture at samasthiti. If your back was bent forward before, now it straightened up, again, if it was back-bending before, now you are back in neutral and ready for the next thing.  So the vinyasa part, is essential to the series and I think that’s why it works so good. Breath with movement, there is no movement without a breath. There’s not one thing you do that doesn’t have a number and an inhale or an exhale attached to it. That being the case, there is no place to chat, stop and scratch yourself, drink from your water bottle - there’s no place to do that. It’s one uninterrupted flow. And I think that’s where you really achieve the quiet where you lose your monkey mind.  

Interviewer:  Did he teach you the full vinyasa back to standing?

Brad: Yes. when they first came, David and Nancy learned in the Indian class with the Indian people. So they were doing sometimes just side to side with the jump back between postures. I don’t know if they observed the full vinyasa. But when my friend David Swenson and Paul Dunaway came back from India that was just before I left to go there they had a white people’s class and he taught them that. So when I went, I asked to learn that way - in the white people’s class that’s the way he taught. Now I understand they abandoned that to some degree, but again, I think that’s probably time constraints. With vast numbers it would be really hard to control, takes a lot more space too.

Interviewer: It has struck me more and more over the last few years that what is really being transmitted is energy, heart or whatever you want to call it. people are able to practice in all these different ways and still receive from Guruji the same essence.

Brad: I hope that’s true that it doesn’t matter which way you practice, but I can only speak from my experience and I’ve seen people make their optimum progress with full vinyasa in the shortest time. 

Interviewer: Well, he seems to have changed and he seemed to have taught people in different ways.  

Brad: Then I feel very fortunate that I got what I got.  

Interviewer:  Do you have any sense of the origin of the practice?

Brad: Just, he would tell the story of the Yoga Korunta, written on palm leaves or something like that. Now that’s possibly something apocryphal but there’s other mentions of the Yoga Korunta. I don’t know if he saw it or not. I’m sure Krishnamarcharya saw it.  

Interviewer:  Which other mentions of the korunta have you come across?

Brad:  It was one of the old books. I don’t have those books anymore so I wouldn’t remember the name. It was cited also. It was a very antique reference probably from the  last age (yuga), so all references to that have been lost. I don’t know if they actually saw the leaves or not.  

Interviewer:  The academics tend to believe that the asanas are a very modern invention.  There’s no pictures …

Brad:  Yes I’ve heard those skeptics.

Interviewer:  Can you say something about the importance of food for the yoga practice?

Brad: I think that’s one of the first things that has to change unless you are already vegetarian like David Swenson, he’d been a vegetarian all his life when I met him. Beautiful young boy. Paul Dunaway too. Their whole lives, somehow, they were raised in an environment that was vegetarian, so that’s a sign of a higher birth. That’s one of the signs that you start out with a good diet. If you don’t start out that way, it’s the teacher’s job to give you a little guidance on what’s acceptable and what’s not, just to get you started. and then you have to do your own research and explore the different methods. 

One of the seminal pieces of literature that helped me change my diet was Arnold Ehret’s “Mucusless Diet”. It’s radical, a really radical thing and you go through some transitions that are similar to the ones you experience in asana. It doesn’t always feel good. When you start eliminating some of the residue of past indulgences it’s quiet unpleasant. So in a way that correlates to the pain you experience as you progress through the different asanas and work on clearing different parts of the body.  But food is basic for the beginner at least. 

The regular practitioner should know exactly what they can and can’t eat instinctively. They will be able to tell by their practice, so they are guided in that way.  For the beginner it’s the teacher’s job to give them a few clues. If you were having a stiff day Manju would say: “Oh you had cheese last night!” - probably true too, but after a while a little cheese won’t kill you.  You grow into your diet like you grow into your practice.  And the same is true with the devotional aspect, the bhakti. You need to experience that through a teacher also, to feel the power inherent in worshipping God in song. And that too is addictive. It’s like we were saying, you feel that upwelling, that’s an emotional cleansing, I think. And the tears that come are proof that something is moving. it’s not because you are sad or unhappy it’s because it’s beautiful.  

Interviewer:  Do you think bhakti is important for everybody?  

Brad: I think everybody is devoted to something.  I know devotion to money doesn’t work very well for most people.  As far as bringing happiness I would say it’s an important tenet of they whole thing.  Guruji was scrupulous about his prayers. He was a big believer. Even when he’d be reciting some slokas or something and he’d have no book in front of him but he’d recite for a while and you could see his eyes go… like he’s turning the page in his mind as if he’s actually seeing it in front of his face because he’s gone over his little book so many times. It’s just totally ingrained. It’s part of their Brahmin training. But for him, I think that was just part of his life. Everyday. I don’t know how many times a day.

Interviewer:  I just wonder if it performs a different function, or perhaps it has an amplifying effect on the asana practice. Can the asanas bring you to a similar place or does one really need the addition to open the heart?

Brad: I believe they do because I have seen people that are so good with asanas, you know, circus people are great, they can do impossible physical things, but it’s not yoga because the asana is posture not just of the body but it is a mental posture too.  And I think that part, the mental posture, has to go some place, and that for me is devotion. That leads back to what we were talking about before about putting your mind on God. It’s going to go someplace until you learn to shut it down. So bhakti is like the temporary reservoir for that. And for some people that becomes more their practice than the asana. That is their meditation. There’s a great story about Ramakrishna: his was pure devotion, there was no practice involved. He drank wine until he was silly, sang songs to the (divine) mother, that was his practice.  So for some people they can take it to that degree. Americans less so, it’s just not ingrained in us.

Interviewer: The beginning of the sadhana pada says: tapas, svadhyaya and isvara pranidhana, 3 elements are required - purification, study and devotion are, perhaps, the 3 essential elements of practice.

Brad: Well put.

Interviewer: You just mentioned that food brings you pain, but also the practice brings you pain. Is there a way of distinguishing between pain that is caused by incorrect diet and the pain which is just a by product of transformation through asanas?

Brad: I think that’s a matter that requires scientific observation and exploration for each person. Once you know what foods are bad for you, and you eliminate those from you diet and you do a little sweating and enough work so you are fairly confident that the pain you are feeling isn’t all uric acid crystals or whatever your excuse would be for whatever you ate in the past. In my case I think that’s what it was. In my family it wasn’t a meal unless meat was served. So that required a long period of elimination and the pain during asanas was worse. When I had corrected my diet to the point where I felt good with myself then the pain in the asanas got less on the gross level. But it would change and get more severe on the nervous level, it just shifts between the bodies. First Yoga Chikitsa, Nadi Shodhana and Sthira Bhaga. First you have to do the yoga therapy on yourself with the primary series. Then with the Nadi Shodhana, with the intermediate, you are reaming out your nervous system, then finally with the advanced, sthira baga, you build strength not just physical but emotional and spiritual.  

Interviewer: I’ve been pondering how the pranic body and the physical body are related to each other. And it seems to me that yoga chikitsa is very much concerned the muscles, organs, circulatory systems and so on. And nadi shodhana is concerned with cleaning the nadis. Are these nadis physical or are they in the pranic body?  

Brad:  I don’t think you can dissect a corpse and point to a nerve bundle and call it a nadi. It’s not like that, it’s more like the acupuncture model of the human body. There are energy channels where the power flows… I’d say it’s more the pranic body.  And for that reason the pranayama element of the practice is really important. One thing about asanas: we were talking before about circus people that are too good to be believed. They are too loose to be a standard specimen of a human being. In many cases like that, the ego grows out of proportion to the amount of spiritual development. So you end up with an egotist instead of a yogi. You should have a baby yogi developing, but instead you have a blossoming power tripper. Have you experienced that?

Interviewer: In myself you mean?

Brad:  No, not in yourself necessarily, but for many teachers their image is important to them and that to me demonstrates imbalance. Or maybe they really are important and I don’t see it.  

Interviewer: It’s been one of my questions all along. Does advanced practice necessarily imply advanced spiritual development? And does that then imply that those who are only able to do a few surya namaskaras have less opportunity to have that kind of insight?

Brad: Yep, that’s the big quandary. But from my experience your progress in asana has only a minor role in your spiritual progress. Asanas are really the first step, yama and niyama are much harder than asana. But for some people even asana isn’t possible at all, like in Heather’s case. But that’s not to say she couldn’t be a spiritual giant, that’s just not the way it works. The body should be shined up to the best degree possible, as far as you can take it. If you can get to an advanced level, that’s wonderful but it’s not vital at all.  That’s not a requirement. Asana is still kindergarten: you are playing, jumping around. 

Interviewer:  It seems though, to some extent, that yama and niyama naturally happen. They are sort of integrated in the practice in the sense that if you are aggressive and ambitious you hurt yourself and so you learn how to soften, if you eat the wrong things, the body becomes impure, and you become aware of that - there’s a feedback system that helps you evolve to some extent.  

Brad: That’s true. That’s why Ashtanga yoga, when it’s done correctly, is a self teaching system. All the steps kind of sneak up on you at once. It’s not like: I gotta work on this limb today and next year I’m going to concentrate on that limb. You teach yourself what you need at the time.

Interviewer:  What about the bandhas?  Can you say something about the bandhas and how Guruji teaches them?

Brad: That was one of the major things about the Astanga Yoga that grabbed me. It immediately made sense. I was really fortunate: on Guruji’s first trip to America his English was pretty pitiful. So he explained it as best he could in English. But then while teaching, if he could see you weren’t holding mula banda correctly, he had no qualms whatsoever about reaching behind you and just putting a little squeeze on the rectum. The reflex is to pull it tight immediately, to tighten up.  And then when teaching pranayama he was very strict about uddiyana bandha he would have each person sit in front of him and he would press in very hard on that section you needed to hold very tight to keep that air locked properly.

People who don’t do pranayama don’t understand the importance of uddiyana bandha a lot of times. Because it’s locking up the energy so it goes to the right places. That and the chin lock are very important, and using the 3 together, it’s like playing the piano and using the pedals on the piano. It’s all one piece. To make the music come out properly, it’s absolutely vital that some degree of mastery be attained to play. And it’s hard during asana because you are moving and shifting position. It’s much easier when you are sitting in lotus.  Like you were saying kukutasana would be a great place to practice nauli, you know, it’s challenging. 

So after learning pranayama, control of the bandhas comes easier during asana practice and as you shift position (vinyasa).  Mula bandha is just vital. That’s one thing that separates Astanga Yoga from most other systems. If you are holding mula bandha properly and you keep breathing, you can try to pick up a piano. Either you will be able to pick it up or you won’t, but the likelihood of you hurting yourself is very slim. It’s just a protective device, it prevents hernia and all manner of displacement of organs. It’s vital, the system wouldn’t work without it. And teachers who don’t concentrate on it, they are not doing their students a favor. Their students will progress anyway in spite of the lack of knowledge, but it will be nothing like the pace they could achieve if they had a little instruction. It’s the cornerstone of the practice really.  

Interviewer: What is your understanding of Guruji’s teaching with the mula bandha is it just a contraction of the anus or is it the perineum or…?

Brad:  It’s a pulling up rather than a squeezing close. It’s not exactly like fighting off a bowel movement. I think it’s pulling up, yes in the region of the perineum.  

Interviewer: I asked him about ashwini mudra which is the action of pulling up on the anus and he said absolutely not, so that would imply that it’s further forward.  

Brad: Yeah

Interviewer:  Everyone seems to have their own opinions. I found him giving instructions in uddiyana bandha in primary series for instance in uttitha hasta padangustasana, he’s emphasizing squeeze with the hand at the waist.

Brad: Yup

Interviewer: Also in Prasarita padottanasana B, again squeezing the belly with the hand, I’ve seen that a number of times and repeatedly emphasized.

Brad:  He’s a big one on that.  That’s an important part of that posture.

Interviewer:  So it must be the combination of the 2, and generally speaking he doesn’t speak about it very much, does he?  If he does, it’s more about mula banda rather than  uddiyana bandha, except, as you said, in pranayama class.  A lot of people read that book Swami Satyananda’s “Mula Banda the Master Key.” 

Brad: We have a copy of that it was a great book. We really got into it you know. He’s a cool guy.

Interviewer:  I also thought it interesting that Guruji would say not “contract your anus” he would say “control your anus” which to me has a much greater implication, control your whole digestive system. What about Guruji as a healer?  Do you see him as a healer?

Brad:  I wasn’t really there for some of the research he did with diabetes and various other aliments. I’ve seen the system work wonders with scoliosis. I don’t know how much of that was in his healing powers or just in the efficacy of the series but he was quite remarkable, he could have been a great doctor too. Well he was a doctor just not of medicine, but of yoga therapy. He didn’t deal a lot with sick people, he could have but that’s very time consuming and you have to be on that mission. He chose to bring it instead to people who were starting out in basically good health - they just needed a little tuning up and that’s the way he was able to reach so many people. If he would have been concentrating on the healing of diseases his output would have been much more limited because it’s more time consuming. Progress is slower.

Interviewer:  And he did work a lot therapeutically particularly in the earlier years in the Ayurvedic College and so on.

Brad: He was an expert. I missed that part of his work he never talked much about it. He spent so much time in so many schools.  

Interviewer: It’s easy to forget that he had a whole life before we even met him.  

Brad: A whole life, yeah

Interviewer:  You said you observed him working with Heather can you describe that?

Brad: Her mom would bring her to class and he would carry her up the stairs and lay her out on the floor. Then Guruji would just go through a whole range of motions, he would move every part of her body just like physical therapists do today, move her legs back and forth, back and forth, work all the joints, work her feet, walk on her hands, because you know how they tend to curl up a little bit, all the limbs do with disuse. And he would do it for about an hour, go over every part of her body, probe really deeply at all the organs, work on her spine. I think that’s where he was mainly using his energy instead of a physical application cause there was nothing that could be corrected physically, it was more in the pranic body and for that he used the more delicate energy. It was amazing to watch, like a very good physical therapist combined with a natural healer, almost a faith healer.

Interviewer:  What about humor?  Guruji’s quite a funny man.  

Brad: He was, he cracked me up. He was quite the joker, he loved to laugh. We would take walks and he would point out different plants and there was this really common weed “that one very good for teeth.” “Yeah? that’s good for your teeth? what do you do with it?”  “Rub on teeth, shining white!”  So I was okay I’ll try it, picked it up rubbed it on my teeth - it was the worst thing I ever tasted, just sickening like echinacea, the way it tingles in your mouth, but worse than that, it had little thorns or something like that that stuck in my gums. Guruji was like: Good? Good?” he thought it was funny, he was quite a character, he and Manju laughed a lot together. And Amma, she was just sparkly, she was very witty.  Manju got a lot of her sense of humour too.  

Interviewer:  What do you see as the role of humour in teaching yoga?

Brad:  If you don’t laugh Guy, you’ll end up crying. Even when dealing with people, if you don’t keep a light touch about it they can really get you down. So a little humour goes a long way.  

Interviewer: Most people end up crying at some point in the yoga practice.

Brad: That’s true. I did. usually after. When I was trying to get into the bathtub. Crawling in.

Interviewer: I remember, as we used to leave the shala there was a lady who cooked for us, Nagarathna, perhaps after your time… and these healthy Westerners used to come to the shala and then we used to just stagger out and limp over to her place for breakfast. A trail of us at dawn, the sun was rising and one was holding a hip, another a knee, the other a shoulder …

Brad: Invalids; march of the invalids 

Interviewer: Any special memories of Mysore?

Brad: David and I had the same experience, he used to talk to me about it. He’d be sleeping and then in the middle of the night he would wake up and say to Nancy as she was stirring “what posture are you on?”  “Janu sirsasana c” – “well I’m way ahead of you, I’m on Marichyasana D”. We were just dreaming of it, it went so deep. The intensity of it, that was special.

Interviewer:  What would you say is the most important thing that you learned from Guruji and the practice?  

Brad: Persistence, just keep at it, just do it even when you don’t feel the same eagerness that you felt the day before. just get up and do it again, for as long as you want to. Did we cover it Guy?

Interviewer:  We covered quite a lot, anything you want to add?

Brad: No messages to the universe from me, just keep on doing it. I don’t know if this is really the decent into Kali Yuga - you heard all the theories like that there are another 428,000 years to go into Kali Yuga. I’m not sure - I pray for a hopeful outcome for the world. I really see things getting minutely better and Guruji is partly responsible for that.  He certainly reached a significant percentage of the population. Before him, what was there? This turned into a big movement because of him, bless his name.

Recorded in Maui 2009