TEACHERS : Matthew

By nature, for as long as I can remember, I have always been very inquisitive. As a child I never had trouble entertaining myself, and it got me into trouble on many occasions. It earned me a reputation for mischief. My mother would say I was never satisfied with answers to my questions and my parents were very patient. You could say I've always gravitated toward the natural world, toward the exotic, the esoteric, the east and so India had been on my mind for a long time. My chance came in November 1999. I was having coffee with friends who were planning a trip to India. I decided to join them. I dropped out of school, and a couple of week later I was off the ground. There wasn't even time for an Indian visa, that I collected in Malaysia.

A school friend was doing geological research, collecting very old rocks, 2.4 billion year old rocks, and I became his assistant. We traveled all over to remote places, old places, geographically, geologically, and culturally old places, seeing a lot of diversity, and collecting literally more than a ton of very hard and very black rock. After he left I stayed and continued to travel with an Austrian friend, who was crazy about chess. We played a lot of chess with each other, the Indians, ex-pats, people from all over the world. In Jan 2000 I turned 27 on a farm in a forest preserve in central India and that was to be the first of many birthdays in India.

After coming home I finished my degree, started a business in the trades, and started planning my trip back to India. In the interim, in 2003/2004, I started practising ashtanga yoga at the loft. Rameen was in India at the time and it was this Indian connection in part that grabbed me. the dynamic physical aspect and the breathing system created subtle altered states, euphoric, in ways like the states experienced in athletics but different, non-competitive, rejuvenating. I wasn't that flexible but I could breath. If you’re interested you’re paying attention, and I was interested, more and more so every day. Practising started to become the highlight of my day.

In less than a year after starting practising at the loft the focus changed from just India in general to Mysore India in particular, to meet up with Rameen and Sarah there, to practice with Pattabhi Jois, affectionately and respectfully called Guru Ji. His practice space or Shala is called the Shri K. Pattabhi Jois Ashtanga Yoga Institute (KPJAYI). It’s where his daughter Saraswati and nephew Sharath taught with him in the shala. I spent my 32nd birthday in Mysore on that trip. I stayed there for 4 months, daily practice 5 a.m., away for almost 8 months, practising with many senior ashtanga teachers.

After that first trip to Mysore, feeling a broader connection with a yoga community, feeling a deeper connection with the people involved in the practice, feeling a deeper connection with myself, I developed a whole new appreciation for the practice, for what Rameen was cultivating at the loft, for the practitioners and teachers there and all over. I spent the next 3 winters in Mysore, it became like a second home. In May 2009 I was there with Rameen for Guruji's memorial. I feel blessed to be a part of things here in Edmonton at the loft, to be part of things at the Shala in Mysore, blessed by all the people I've met and close friendships I've made, closer to my sister who also traveled to Mysore with me to practice. I am grateful to my parents (my father has started practising) for all their support and encouragement over the years.

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