(From YogaUK People Page January 2001)
John Scott
How did you first come to be involved in yoga? I was searching for something, but I didn't know what I was searching for. I believe that people who are doing yoga were destined to be yogis. When I came to yoga I was an industrial designer, but it wasn't quite right for me. I was also looking out for what it was that I was going to teach. I knew I would be a teacher. I discovered yoga by meeting the late Derek Ireland in Greece. While on the Greek island of Skiros, where Derek was teaching, I saw the life force, the essence of yoga in his personal practice. It took the energy of someone else, through a display of yoga, for me to say "wow" I want to try that. He was a former footballer, but I still couldn't believe that a person with his physique could, for example, do the splits. I had a misconception that strong muscles or big muscle were tight muscles and couldn't be long and stretchy, but Derek dispelled that with his Tarzan body. I was taught by Derek as he did his personal practice. He got me started. But perhaps the biggest gem that Derek ever gave me was that he said I should go and study with the master, Pattabhi Jois, as soon as possible. So when developing your yoga, you took the motorway route? Absolutely. I went to Mysore in India in 1989 to work with Pattabhi Jois for three months. He told me to come back a year later, but I returned in six months, and then again four months later. It was a life changing experience. I even found myself picking apples to save money for my trips to India. How quickly did you start teaching? After my first visit to Mysore. I worked in America and used to share what I had learned. But it wasn't formal teaching at that stage. And I hadn't asked Pattabhi Jois if I could or should teach. I was very much still a student. I had done some drawings of the practice sequences and they started to get spread around different people. But not all the postures were in the correct order, and Pattabhis Jois started to get students who were doing the sequences wrong. He demanded to know who had been teaching the postures incorrectly! So I went to Guruji and said they were mine and that I knew some were wrong. We changed them and he more or less approved them. About that time he said the students that I was sending to Mysore were very good and gave his support to me to become a teacher approved by him. He required students to study with him for ten years before awarding them a teaching certificate. At that time I'd studied with him for about eight years. What brought you to Britain? I met my wife Lucy while teaching in India. Our daughter, India, was born in New Zealand. When she was five months old we moved to England and began doing workshops around the country. I then started doing regular classes in London, including an early morning class at the City Yoga Centre and, later, the Homeopathic Hospital in London, where the Yoga Biomedical Trust is based. Then you moved to Cornwall? London didn't seem the right place to bring up children. So when India reached school age we were looking around. I was introduced to some yoga people in Penzance, including the Iyengar teacher Elizabeth Connolly. We liked a particular school down here, so we sold up in London and bought an old house, that was once a shop, in Chapel Street. We have converted the ground floor lounge into a yoga studio, and established a separate entrance to the family space. How does your centre work? I model how I work on Pattabhi Jois. There's a clear distinction between what's home and what's for the students. We don't house them. They stay in bed and breakfast accommodation. And Lucy and I only work with small groups of students. I want people to come and work with us for a period of a month, or thereabouts, because that's how it works in Mysore.
I think we are in quite a spiritual phase at the moment. But also a physical phase. When people experience an Ashtanga class, they realise that the breath is the thing. And with the use of the victorious breath, or ujjayi breath, we can conquer the mind. For a lot of people they find that it's a system that helps them in a variety of ways. Sometimes they don't know what it was they experienced, but they do know that they went inward and saw something. They saw themselves. And they want to explore that a little bit more. Why does Ashtanga yoga have this celebrity following? Sting was the one. He introduced Madonna to yoga. Sting had a teacher called Danny Paradise (who's also a musician). In fact Danny has a record out which Sting and Paul Simon sing on. Sting is a yogi. He doesn't teach it, but he introduces so many people to it. Madonna is a very devoted student, a daily practitioner. Sting and Madonna are both incredible people in the way they run their lives. Their yoga helps them prepare for the immense amount of work they have to do. Madonna got interested when she walked in on Sting when he was working with Danny Paradise. She tried it and she found "the breath", like in Sting's song "Every Breath You Take". These celebrities are human, they are on a journey like the rest of us and the yoga helps them to connect with their spiritual side. They may be celebrities, but I find that I'm trying to protect their right to be students who are as ordinary and everyday as everyone else. Some people say Ashtanga yoga is elitist because it's so physically demanding. Is it? Not when you work with Pattabhi Jois. He takes students one step at a time. You need stamina, strength and flexibilty, but that comes gradually. If you give people thirty postures all at once, like some teachers do, the students will get sore. Traditionally, it's not taught like that. Lucy and I work one-to-one with beginners. I have two asthmatics in my class at the moment. If we get halfway through the surya namaskar sequence and they need to rest, we stop, rest and start again. Pattabhi Jois works with people for a minimum of three months and he only gives them what they're ready for. He doesn't want his yoga to be an insult to the body, or an assault on the body. This respect for the body is part of the yamas and niyamas. So the correct method, the traditonal method, is very gradual. For more information on John Scott's teaching programmes, see his website www.ashtanga.co.uk |
Why is Ashtanga
yoga so popular at the moment?