A Conversation with Michael Coleman: On yoga, wellness and language
By Liza Osoteo, graduate intern
In my last blog, I talked about wellness and who we looked to for role
models of wellness in the modern world. I look to yoga teachers as leaders
of wellness. Yoga has definitely gone mainstream over the years. It has
trickled into my neighborhood supermarket where yoga tapes and DVDs are
sold as a “lifestyle product” (next to the organic food section). It has
even informed fashion. Forget the loose clothing, you can now put on “yoga
pants” and if you want to tote around your yoga mat like an accessory,
there are yoga mat hand bags. Despite lending itself nicely to savvy
merchandising, which I’m certainly not immune to, yoga still maintains an
authentic wisdom that speaks to me. For me, what sets yoga apart from
“going to the gym” is the meditative aspect, the awareness of breath that
forces me to be more conscious and grounded as I practice.
Michael Coleman also sought yoga as a way to ground himself. He did not
initially set out to become a yoga instructor. He was introduced to yoga
during a challenging part of his life when he was struggling to finish his
dissertation. Now, Michael Coleman, PhD in Scandinavian Literature, is an
instructional designer, teacher and part-time yoga instructor. Teaching
yoga taught him how to integrate his practice into his informed way of
being. I recently had a conversation with Michael Coleman on wellness,
yoga and how practicing these concepts are very much like learning a
language.
What prompted you to start your yoga practice?
In the past I’d been very much “within my body.” I danced in high school
and when I first came to Berkeley as an undergraduate I had contemplated
getting into some dance classes but it never really happened. I kind of
moved away from that and would do things like biking and hiking, but I
didn’t really do anything that involved any integrated movement that had a
pattern that I found grounding. When I was in graduate school for many,
many years, about halfway through the process, I felt very ungrounded
again and I wasn’t sure what was going on. I felt I needed something to
re-ground me.
I was having a conversation with someone in a café who was taking yoga
himself. And I was describing this feeling that I felt like I needed to do
something, but I wasn’t quite sure what. And he said, “Michael, I do yoga,
and you have the perfect yoga body. It would be something that I think you
could really enjoy getting into.” So, based on his recommendation, I said
“Okay, let’s try this out.” I signed up for some yoga classes at my local
gym and I was hooked after a short period of time.
It was kind of strange, because during that period of time it almost
became a balm or salve that I really turned to— not to the point of
addiction, but it was almost like, I had to make sure I had my yoga fix.
Three times a week at the least and it just felt very awkward if I didn’t
do it.
Would your body miss it?
It was more like my brain would miss it rather than my body. Graduate
school started making me crazy. This became the anchor. It was a little
bit weird; I think it almost became an obsession of sorts, not quite. And
then what happened, a friend Liz had came out for a visit and we were
talking about yoga. She said, “While you’re really getting into this,
maybe you can teach yoga.” And I said, “Wow, maybe.”
Your friends have a way of getting you into trouble.
Yeah. She said, “Hey, I have a really dear yoga teacher who is starting up
a teacher training program, maybe it would be something you can do.” I
said “Oh, okay that sounds cool.” I was a little skeptical. Then I went to
meet this woman and she seemed to have a really nice vibe. And I said,
“Okay, I guess this will be another aspect of it.”
It was interesting because it was during that time that the “obsessive
quality” about the yoga practice had left and it became more of an
integrated practice where I would know, “It’s probably not a good idea to
practice yoga for 2-3 weeks because something might be going on with my
wrist.” I learned how to step back from yoga as well as work within it. I
think it became a healthy, integrated relationship with the yoga practice.
That really was the course that opened up the yoga practice. Rather than
being a just physical asana it became the meditation and awareness that
allowed me to have a very healthy relationship with yoga. Even though I
might not practice the physical yoga on a regular basis, it still informs
how I make my way out to the world. And I love the physical practice when
I do get back into it.
There’s also the mental practice…it sounds like you do that everyday now.
Yeah, there are aspects when I would I do more meditation practice. As I
said, I’ve become a bit lazy about it when work demands come into play.
And I don’t necessarily feel overtly guilty about not practicing or
meditating. There’s a little bit of “I should be practicing…” but as I
said, it is within me as I move forward. Just being able to relax for a
moment or take a deep breath when getting frustrated or something like
that. That’s within me now.
How long did that take?
I think it was really during the teacher training program that I was in
for a year and a half. It was here in Berkeley with Julie Rappaport. It
was an amazing program. It was a great core group of people and it was
very experiential on how we approached it. We would have these great
discussions about what the yoga practice was.
What kind of yoga do you practice?
The particular type of yoga that I was trained in is called Vini-Yoga.
It’s kind of strange when people haven’t heard of it. They say, “Yo,
Vinnie!” It’s the type of yoga that makes a lot of accommodations for
people and where they are and their physical characteristics and general
health. With some yoga practices like Ashtanga, some people are very
specific about foot positioning. For example, it would be harder for
someone who’s larger in size to hold their feet in a particular position.
They might need to have a wider stance. And so the training that I
received was very much about moving in the vein of yoga, but being
accommodating. There’re meditative aspects to it too, like chanting. It
is within me now which is very interesting.
And as I said, I’m not as diligent as I could be in terms of the doing the
physical practice. For instance, when I’m riding my bike on a 3 hour,
20-mile mountain bike through the Santa Cruz mountains, I start the
practice. It’s funny because I even call the mountain biking part of “the
practice,” which it is. When I was starting out and doing this very long
ascent, that’s about 6 miles, a very moderately gradual ascent, I was
trying to be conscientious of the fact that I needed to conserve my energy
to be able to do the 3 hours. What I would try to do is move into this
mode of trying to focus inward as I was peddling. It was nice to enjoy the
beautiful scenery which is one of the great aspects of being out there,
but I focused a lot of energy inward to flush out a lot of the unnecessary
movements or dissipate the extra movement and to just think about what my
entire body was doing as it was moving forward. I would ask myself “Am I
being efficient with the posture, am I wasting or giving energy to places
where it doesn’t need to be?” It was a very conscientious method of
actually propelling myself up this mountain. It had this wonderful aspect
of hollowing out what was going on and just reassessing. It’s difficult to
describe, but it allowed me to work within and just check-in with the
body. If I had not studied yoga as much as I had and not had gone through
the teacher-training that made yoga an integral aspect, I don’t think that
would have happened. It may have, and I heard that athletes actually do
that. They kind of reach this zone state or and they just become “one”
with the movement that they’re doing. I think the yoga practice allowed me
from an intellectual standpoint to do that.
Did you ever get to the point where you just said, “I just want to get off
my bike and enjoy the scenery?”
Definitely. After an hour and a half into the climb I felt, “I’m just
tired.” With mountain biking I don’t have a lot of stamina at the present
moment and I’d work up more to that. Usually an hour, hour and a half of
rigorous cycling is where my body says, “okay”—and it’s not just tooling
around in the flatlands. At that point of time there was another process
of giving and relinquishing. At the very beginning I was trying to be
conscientious about where I was and what I was doing. Was I conserving
energy? And at another point, it was, “Okay--frick it. Whatever—I’m riding
along. I’m tired. I’m not focusing as much, but I’m not getting super
frustrated about it.” So that’s where the practice had moved to. It’s not
going and whining or complaining about it. It evolves, and that’s one of
the cool things about the yoga practice. You don’t always have to be the
“meditative mind.” You can even be pissed off and you can be frustrated,
but I think that it “informs” where you are.
What is your philosophy on wellness?
What is my philosophy of wellness? I think wellness is a lot like learning
a language. Having learned two languages myself, it’s a process that takes
time and commitment. When you learn a language, you have to learn the
vocabulary. But just learning the vocabulary is not enough. You have to
practice it and use it daily to become any good at it. And the more you
make it part of your life, the more it becomes integrated and a part of
you.
Similarly, wellness is a language that you do have to learn and you have
to have a moderate amount of commitment to it. It’s not just learning the
basic vocabulary of wellness like getting enough sleep, eating correctly,
exercising regularly, trying to maintain balance in your life, that’s kind
of the vocabulary. I think we all know this to a larger or lesser extent.
And we have our moments of the 3 Krispy Kreme donuts in a row that we then
swear off for the rest of our lives. So, we have that vocabulary, but then
there’s the commitment to actually putting it into practice. That’s where
the true practice of wellness comes into play: coming back to it (after
the 3 Krispy Kremes) and being somewhat disciplined. I know that’s a very
loaded term but being disciplined, to come back to it, is how you make
wellness part of your everyday life. And that takes time. There’ll be
moments where you’ll be better able to do it and less able to do it.
That’s my philosophy of wellness. It’s a language that you commit to and
practice on a regular basis.
Who is your wellness hero?
Perhaps the heroes of wellness that I have are the people who inspire me
to go the next level--to learn more vocabulary, learn more skills and take
myself a little bit further in terms of my practice. So those people are
my heroes.
How is teaching yoga different than practicing it?
Wow. One of the big things that my yoga guru said was, “When you’re
teaching yoga, it’s not your own practice.” There’s a different aspect of
it but you’re doing more of a service. When I practice myself I notice
that I don’t afford myself as much encouragement and positive feedback as
I do when I’m in the classroom. For me that becomes paramount: giving them
an example of how to move forward while also encouraging them in their
practice. I don’t do that for any particular strategy. It’s something I
simply enjoy. I often find myself giving a great deal of encouragement in
the classroom and maybe it’d be more appropriate to give it more for
myself. Also teaching is….I’m closing my eyes to think about when I’m in
front of the classroom… I think when I teach I want to make sure that I
give them something. And maybe the reason why I’m slowing down while I’m
thinking about this is that it’s making me think about my own practice and
what I give myself. I think I’m even more conscientious about where I am
and what I’m doing when I’m teaching, than for my own practice. Maybe more
of that can inform my own practice. Maybe I can be more of my own teacher
as well. I’m not quite answering your question.
I think you are. There is a difference. Because it seems like as a
teacher, you give a lot of wonderful feedback to your students which you
don’t give to yourself.
Yeah, which I’m beginning to realize through this discussion. Maybe that’s
the next part of my practice for me, to re-integrate a lot of the insights
that I’ve garnered through teaching and working with other people. You’ve
inspired me with this question about how this is different. You know what
I’m trying to say? That it shouldn’t be different.
So you’re realizing that it is [different]?
It is, yeah. Right now I do perceive a bit of a difference but maybe what
I’m ultimately trying to say is that there shouldn’t be a great deal of
difference between teaching and practicing…just that the practice may
involve more bodies. So thank you for letting me think about that.
What advice do you have for someone interested in starting a yoga practice?
There’s so many different ways to approach it. You can do it with a friend
or through videos. The one thing I would suggest is that I have a
suspicion that if I were someone new going to a yoga class (that was not
one of mine), and there was some yoga teacher barking “put your feet here,
you’re not doing it right”--I would flip out.
I would reassure that person that yoga is a lot of different things and
you can not only get something out of it but you can also contribute a lot
to it as well. When you bring yourself to the yoga classroom, you’ve
already done a lot. Find a community that you like, where you feel you can
contribute a lot and get a lot of. That may require sampling a lot of
different things. When I go to yoga, I consider myself pretty open-minded
in terms of yoga practice, and I go to classes where I say, “I’m not
coming back here.” Which is fine, but hopefully that’s also informed by
the fact that “This is not a good fit for me, maybe it’s time to move to a
different place.” Yoga could mean a lot of different things to a lot of
different people. Teachers practice in different ways. Just figure out
where you can fit in. You may find that you’re not into asana practice and
the whole physical practice, but you may be very much into the devotional
practice of chanting or meditation or service yoga. And now we get into
these interesting discussions of “what is yoga?” My suggestion is: make it
your own, find a place where you can contribute and a community that you
can enjoy.
Any advice for anyone interested teaching yoga?
I talk to people about their own yoga teacher training and I think I’ve
had a unique and wonderful experience in that it was very integrated and
broad in its reach and moved beyond just the physical practice of yoga.
There are people who are much more dedicated to it than I am. I skim the
surface and dive underneath from time to time. I’m not a professional yoga
teacher. But there are people who make it their living and are very much
dedicated to meditating on a daily basis and really integrating it. I’m
sure they get a very rich reward from their dedication from the depth of
their practice. For those interested in teaching, maybe this can go back
to teaching vs. your own practice: ideally, your teaching will also
reflect your own practice.
