Hell-Bent (37 page)

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Just as with Bikram’s Teacher Training, the second half of the day is spent learning how to teach in small groups. However, instead of memorizing and reciting a script, Tony has his students lead a mini-class of their own design. Each group is asked to select a section of asanas from the Ghosh advanced series, not unlike what Bikram did when creating his Beginners Series, and then teach that section to the rest of the class. Tony will usually watch the instruction, but occasionally bend along as a student.

When he does, even these mini-classes become special. Despite being surrounded by students half his age, there is no doubt whose postures are the most advanced. At fifty-six, Tony has a body that looks preposterous, computer-enhanced, especially when juxtaposed with his crinkling face and balding hairline. During one afternoon series, I look up to find him holding a lone handstand in the room, body perfectly still, like an arrow shot straight into the ground, long after everyone else has collapsed out. His shirt, slipped down by gravity, reveals back muscles like six-pack abs.

After the students teach, there is a public debrief. Discussing the advantages and disadvantages of the sequence, what additions or rearrangements could make it more powerful. The student-teachers are often put on the spot, forced to justify their choices, the specific wording of their instructions. It is surprisingly aggressive, closer to a third-year law student’s lawyering class than a yoga training. During the exchange, Tony sits silently
on the side, maybe you think even drifting off, until suddenly, he interjects to correct an explanation or tweak a recommendation.

When this period of public feedback has been exhausted, there is a break. Paper is handed out, and students offer the student-teachers a private, anonymous reflection.

Tony reviews the instructions for me, “We score everyone on the basis of Projection, Confidence, Knowledge, Timing, and Clarity. Be honest. Be harsh. But be descriptive so that nothing you say comes off as cruel.”

Later he will tell me, “There is a phony code of ethics that has developed in the yoga world. It says you can’t say anything bad about another yoga teacher or a different yoga class, unless,” he laughs, “—unless they were trained by someone else. … If yoga is going to evolve, it needs to change that. I want to encourage freethinking and individuality, but that comes with debate; it requires rigor and well-thought-out decisions. Sadly right now, we are at a time when neither of those attributes are really emphasized in the yoga world.

“Most teachers rely on humility because they are ignorant. They surrender to someone else who calls themselves an expert or a guru, and they never gain the knowledge necessary to critique or grow.”

He pauses. “Do you know why yoga teachers get sued by Bikram? Because they don’t know anything else. They only know the crumbs that Bikram has fed them. So that is all they can teach.”

In between classes, the trainees sit around on their towels, gossiping. The atmosphere can feel a little like a Bikram support group.

“The first few days were basically just throwing up Kool-Aid for me,” a current Bikram studio owner tells me.

“I honestly became addicted,” a former studio owner chimes in. “I always wanted to be in the hottest spot in the room, I wanted to push my self further, drink more water, go deeper into stretching. … For me, Bikram was the Source. I was addicted to his authenticity. And I got off on practicing with three hundred people, the feeling of community.”

“I was addicted too,” a second Bikram studio owner says. “When I found
Bikram, I was in finance, I needed to be reached constantly. And within a few months, I put all that aside. I was doing two classes a day, every day. I would take a weekend and do a triple.”

“This training,” a current Bikram teacher says, “is the first time I haven’t tried to go one hundred percent. I mean, it’s no secret most of us are type A. We like the struggle. And I came here really worried that I would lose my postures. I would lose muscle mass. But the exact opposite has happened. Every day I grow stronger.”

“The hardest thing for me,” the second studio owner says, “is how to transmit this knowledge to my students. They want the heat. They demand it. It produces this huge rush of energy, but at the end of the day, it is just like a sugar rush. … And it may be in my head, but I think the Bikram name adds a lot to my bottom line. I can’t just walk away.”

The teacher nods understanding. “But you know what? This is what it should have been like. Tony is who Bikram should have been. I don’t mean that in the sense of what a yogi is supposed to be. I mean it in the sense that Tony knows the yoga better than Bikram. He still practices. He is unafraid to modify it if he finds it hurts him. … If you look at all of the dogmatic senior teachers out there, none of them have a strong practice anymore. … How can you trust them?”

“I was so angry the first few days I was here,” a third studio owner says. “We were cheated. I learned more in one day here than I did at Bikram’s entire Advanced Training. And no one was belittled here. No one was yelled at once. We were empowered. We were helped and taught to help.”

“And watching Tony with Sandy. It is so inspirational.” As she is speaking, this studio owner begins crying. “At my training, Bikram would knock on doors, looking for women. Here Sandy comes here every day and supports Tony. I don’t know if they have a dark side. How could I? But he checks on her, he cares for her. I can see that. I imagine them going home after the morning class. She makes him lunch, they talk about how it went, and he comes back to teach us. …”

And as she is saying this, Tony has walked into the room. He is standing on the far side of the room, leaning against the door, listening to his
student crying and smiling and detailing her personal fantasy of his lunch-time domestic bliss. As the teacher continues on, I glance up at Tony again. He has turned away, and I think he is going to walk off to give her some privacy. But when he turns back briefly, I notice it’s because he has tears in his eyes too.

On the afternoon of the penultimate day of his training, with everyone in a great mood, the last small group of student-teachers teach their series. It is very non-Ghosh: covering a tangle of different styles—flow yoga, Qigong, calisthenics, Bikram—all jumbled together with choppy directions. Portions of it work, but many represent the sloppy extreme of eager individuality: an imbalanced, poorly planned class where you could hurt yourself. I take class along with the rest of the trainees and find myself thoroughly confused the whole time, craving the precision and stability of the Bikram dialogue.

During the debrief, Tony remains silent, watching as other students express their confusion and as the student-teachers defend their decisions. Although everyone in the room looks to him for a reaction after they speak, he never interjects once.

His response comes the next day. Tony simply teaches. Or rather, he reteaches. Instead of his normal morning series—an enhancement of the ninety-one-posture Ghosh advanced series—he leads the room in a series that while not identical to the day before, clearly addresses the same aspects of the body. The overlap is quiet but explicit, respectful and firm. It is also tremendously clarifying. Through the juxtaposition, I learn more about which commands are critical for getting into and out of a posture than I did the entire Bikram training.

The experience is nuanced and respectful and treats his students like adults: it strikes me as something Bikram is simply incapable of producing under any circumstances.

Then, when the class is over, his training concluded, Tony does something else Bikram is incapable of: He invites everyone out for margaritas.

Once, almost as if out of a dream, Tony bumps into Bikram on the street. They haven’t seen each other in fifteen years. Bikram is in San Francisco for
a seminar. He is sitting in his Rolls-Royce at a red light when Tony walks past. They make eye contact and Bikram jumps out of his car, leaving it idling. He rushes to Tony and hugs him. Bikram mentions nothing of their falling out. He tells Tony only that he needs them to be friends again. They go out to a series of dinners; they catch up. They examine X-rays from anatomy books and debate the potential dangers of locking the knee. Bikram asks him to demonstrate for his students and Tony agrees, modeling several non-Ghosh postures for the group. After two weeks, Tony decides this is how he wants to leave their relationship and withdraws. He has not spoken to Bikram since.

Don’t Stop Believing

When I finally sit down next to Hector to talk yoga, it is after an Advanced Class. Both of us have the well-drained, well-polished look that comes after smearing your face against a sweaty carpet for two-plus hours, struggling like a man in a straitjacket against your own limbs, and then taking a nice long shower to wash it all away.

We shake hands awkwardly. Hector has been my teacher for a long time; I have spent hundreds of hours bending half-naked in a room with him, listening and respecting his every command, but we have zero social relationship. Which is, generally speaking, perfect. But it does leave me wanting: to fill in the gap between the professional world where we interface and the more defined world in my head. I want to let him know the job he does routinely is a treasure to me.

Instead, I drum the table between us. Make a joke about the slow service.

Hector looks impressive. His face has the broad proud lines of a charcoal etching. It is ruddy from the yoga we just practiced, but otherwise looks ready to be bronzed. I study his jaw while he talks; there is no trace of his stroke.

“Yoga came into my life right when I needed it,” Hector tells me. “I was at the end of a twenty-year dance career—Broadway, off-Broadway,
traveling companies—when I tore my both my ACL and MCL in my left knee. It was a total ego injury. I was teaching a class and tried to model a jump. Just landed wrong.”

I’ve stopped listening, however. A twenty-year career?

Which leads to the first monster revelation: Hector is forty-eight! This is almost disturbing to me for some reason. I had him pegged in his mid-thirties.

Hector shrugs. “The yoga keeps you young.”

We talk about his introduction to yoga (“I thought I was in great shape—and ten minutes in, I was down on my mat, watching this one-hundred-ten-pound girl next to me up in the standing splits”), we talk about Teacher Training (“Holy shit!”), and his old injuries coming up (“They will come back. They will hurt. You are never finished healing.”). Finally I ask him about his health.

“At first, it’s a leap of faith,” he tells me. “You learn by watching other people go through the same process. But at this point, having taught thousands of students, I simply don’t believe you can get hurt practicing this yoga. Maybe in the hamstrings, if you are very reckless with your body. But for the most part, the range of motion in the Beginner Class is so gentle. … If you compare to something like running, there is no contest.

“I actually don’t think you should be teaching,” he says, “if you feel differently. That strikes me as very cynical.”

When I ask about his stroke, he nods.

“There are a lot of people who walk away when it turns out the yoga hasn’t made them immortal. They think the yoga has let them down. They have poured so much effort into their practice that they feel like they have been betrayed.

“But it is not a promise. It is a practice. … If you do it for long enough, maybe it gives you the self-compassion to deal with your mortality. Maybe it makes you more accepting.”

Then he holds out his index finger. It looks oddly bony and wrinkled, not unlike a hot dog left to dry out in the sun. “Guess what this is.”

I don’t say anything, but I imagine it is dehydration left over from our class.

“I have a very serious kidney ailment. It turns out my body doesn’t make a certain protein. And because of that protein, I have trouble regulating my water balance. I store it. I lose it. If I go without medication, I become a balloon. It’s a small thing now that I have the right treatment.”

He looks me in the eye. “The first time I went to the hospital for this problem, when I was diagnosed, they had to drain the water from my body. I eventually peed out ninety pounds of water. Can you imagine?”

I can’t.

“The yoga is not an immunity card against disease. At best, it can help us deal with that fact.” Now he drums his hands against the table. “The previous owner of my studio was a woman who got breast cancer. She left very disenchanted. She felt betrayed by Bikram.

“And I understand that mentality. I get it. But the truth is, if I wasn’t doing the yoga, it might not have been a survivable stroke,” Hector says. “If I wasn’t doing the yoga, who knows what would have happened with my recovery. I have my face back now. … You know, when I went to the doctor with questions about what turned out to be my kidney disease, the doctor couldn’t believe it. He told me I shouldn’t be walking. By the numbers in my blood work, I should have already been in the hospital.”

“They started me on seven drugs for my kidney; today I take one. I pin that on the yoga. Afterwards, when I was lying in the hospital, I asked the doctors what caused it. It was frightening. I wanted to know what to change. I told them about the heat. I told them about the yoga. I was terrified it might have been the ten Advil a day I took while I was a dancer. I’ve done my share of drugs too. Cocaine. I’ve made lots of mistakes with my health. I told the doctors all that, and I wanted them to connect those dots.

“And you know what they said? ‘No cause.’ Not the yoga, not the heat, not the Advil, not the drugs. ‘No cause.’ Just me. Just my life.

“I am sure there are people who would see it as failure. But I see the miracle. I see the strength the yoga has given me. I walked into that hospital when the numbers said I should have been comatose in an ambulance. I am forty-eight, survivor of a stroke and stronger than ever.”

And sitting across from him, I believe it is all true.

One Point, Two Instances of Intersection