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Peter
Guttridge writes:
The
photographs on this page are of Derek Ireland (1949 – 1998),
who was my yoga teacher in Crete and Goa for five years. He was
a great teacher, who meant a lot to many people. He talked about
this remarkable yoga in a “Life In The Day” I did with
him for the Sunday Times in 1997. Here’s an abridged version.
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“I
get up before the sun at 5am. The Goans are walking past our house
carrying pots of water for morning ablutions.
I’m not into meditation. I don’t believe in chakras or
kundalini. I’m not a guru worshipper – I know they’ve
grown wise but they’re still only human and all they know is
some southern Indian village. I didn’t get into yoga for spiritual
reasons. I go for the movement and the breathing, called pranayama.
Prana is a little more than air; it’s the life force.
After water, coffee and spirulina, I practice breathing for an hour:
an invigorating breath, to get oxygen into the blood, a calming
one and a cooling one.
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I take my first class at 7.30am with about twenty students, who
all have some experience. This yoga has to be done in the heat;
it helps you get into the extreme postures more easily. The practice
is a couple of hours of nonstop movement, and you sweat out your
toxins. I like to work hands
on. I look on my teaching as bodywork therapy. I’ve worked
with a German guy who had over 50 broken bones but is now on the
second series – the yoga has six levels or series. I learnt
it in Mysore from Pattabhi Jois, who rediscovered astanga vinyasa
in the 1930s. There are other people teaching this yoga on the beaches
in Goa but they tend to be more drug-oriented – they skip the
balancing poses!
Astanga vinyasa – the true, original yoga of which other hatha
yogas retain only the fragments – is a cross between gymnastics,
aerobics and a contortionist’s nightmare. It’s a yoga
without dogmas: 99% practice, one per cent theory, 100% sweat. I’ve
called it “no bullshit yoga”. Restful it aint.
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During
a 90 - 120 minute practice the postures are arranged in a sequence
that allows the skeletal system to go back into correct alignment
and the muscles to open out. Performing the basic moves (the Primary
Series) exercises the whole body, detoxifying, stretching and strengthening
it.
I usually do my own practice to music. I used
to do it with weights on my wrists, which upset a few purists. And
I had a weighted jacket, but I got rid of that after I did a handstand
and nearly killed myself when it slipped down and hit me on the
back of the head.
Practising on the beach attracts customers. I got 50 people that
way last year. My practice takes over two hours and I’m surrounded
by Indians in five minutes. They haven’t seen this style of
yoga before. Some plonk babies on me for photographs but I try to
carry on and stay focused – I only get uptight if they actually
walk on me.”
I got into yoga in the late seventies. I spent six months with Pattabhi
Jois doingthis yoga in Mysore and I try to go back there for a few
months each year. He’s 81 now but still starts his six-hour
teaching day at 4.30am. People of all ages can do this yoga. Well,
almost. Jois’s favourite saying is “Practice, all is coming
– but don’t bother after you’re 77.”
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