Studio of the month - Red Door Yoga Shanghai - interview with Rob Lucas, Part 1

We are very happy to start a new tradition here at Core Yoga Community - "Studio of the month" - where we will sit down with a yoga studio owner / teacher and chat a little about many things on and off the mat.

Our first chat was with Rob Lucas from Red Door Yoga here in Shanghai. 

Since we had quite a long chat with Rob, we have decided to publish the first part today, and the second part will be published in next month's "Studio of the month".

1) How did discover yoga?

I was 17 and had no idea what yoga was when my older sister dragged me along to a yoga class.  To be honest I was pretty skeptical: she started by showing me some crazy contortions she'd been learning and it all looked impossible.  Somehow she managed to convince me though, and I was surprised at what I found.  I think that originally it was the sense of calm and strength that came after the practice that really struck me.  There's something about the practice that puts the mind into this place where whatever you're thinking about just disappears and everything seems easy.  I found myself stepping forward in my life in ways that had seemed impossible before.

2) What is the best tip you can give for beginners?

Take things one day at a time.  The words I remember most from my teacher in India are "slowly slowly you are practice...".  In the beginning it's easy to either get overwhelmed and give up, or to get over excited and push yourself too hard too fast.

3) What would you advise advanced students to do in order deepen their practice? 

Continually challenge yourself.  Don't do this by forcing things to come quickly, but instead notice the places where you are letting yourself rest and see if you can push into them.  A yoga practice should develop step by step, which means that some aspects of the practice can be left for tomorrow, but it also means that when tomorrow comes it's time to put awareness into those things.  The  great things about that is the it means that the experience of practice tomorrow becomes completely different from what it is today.

For instance, when someone first starts practice it's important to develop the basic physical postures foundations: learning how to do them correctly in order to avoid injury.  But once that understanding has developed it's time to start to learn to breathe with those postures, to bring awareness into the breathing and use it to get into and out of postures.

But that's not the end, as this develops it then becomes important to transition from controlling the breath and using it to help move into poses to feeling what the breath is doing on it's own and letting the postures move around that.  

My experience is that there are always new layers to delve in to and the experience of practice changes and deepens as we move into each layer.

4) What brought you to China?

When I first left Canada in 2001 it was to teach yoga in Hong Kong as a way to make my way to India to train there.  After India I eventually went back to Hong Kong and enjoyed it there but was intrigued by China and wanted to get a deeper experience.  Shanghai was just starting to develop it's yoga community and it seemed like the perfect place to explore that.

5) The yoga scene in China is relatively new, and constantly changes, how would you as an owner of a studio in Shanghai describe it? what has changed since you started? what do you think is missing? and how would you like to see it evolving?

As you say yoga in China is relatively new, when I first arrived here seven years ago that was even more true.  At the time most people that I encountered saw yoga as basically a trendy new form of exercise.  Of course, that's still true to some extent, but the idea that there is something more to this practice than just another way to lose weight seems to be slowly making it's way through the public consciousness, and happily for yoga teachers that means it's making its way through the minds of our students as well.

Yoga is, to a large extent, a practice for the mind.  An opportunity to exercise and challenge the mind to, for example, relax in places of discomfort.  So many people come into a yoga class and either want a workout or want the equivalent of a massage: to turn off and just relax, but the practice of yoga means developing the ability to find peace and calm not just when you are in a relaxing environment, but in any environment.  These days I've started to see these sorts of understandings much more common, and it's making my job much easier.

6) What is your favorite Asana, and Why? how do you teach it?

Aside from everything else it is, I think yoga practice should be fun, challenging, and safe, all at once.  For this reason I love to teach Pincha Mayurasana or "Peacock's Feather Pose", which is a challenging arm balancing posture that gives the invigorating opportunity to be upside down.  Those who don't often practice inversions are missing out on the amazing sensation of not really knowing where your limbs are, of having the world turned upside down, and it's a lot of fun.  The nature of this particular inversion requires quite a bit of core strength, and it's a real challenge to hold oneself as well as develop the balance in the posture, but happily with the use of the wall and modified postures to develop the strength and sense of balance it's also entirely safe.  The wonderful thing about such challenging postures is that the mind becomes completely engaged in the present moment: there's no effort in releasing distractions here, it's a natural reaction to the challenging nature of the pose.

I actually prefer Pincha Mayurasana to something like headstand while headstand must be done with proper technique (otherwise weight and pressure goes into the neck) Pincha Mayurasana keeps the weight completely on the forearms, and thus the neck is free and safe.

I teach the pose in multiple stages, starting students with the feet on the floor and working on the strength to lift the head and shoulders.  As they progress they can start to walk the feet closer to their arms, and try lifting one foot or the other off the floor.  Once they begin to feel stable and understand how to maintain the lift that will support them in the full pose, we start to walk the feet onto the wall: this is a completely stable position where they'll work on the strength and get used to the feeling of being upside down before having to jump into it.

At this point we start to jump into the pose facing the wall.  The jump itself requires a certain amount of technique and it generally takes time to develop, but as it develops we start to work on controlling it, hitting the wall more softly until eventually there's no contact at all.  After this point it may be possible to move further and further from the wall until it's no longer there at all.  And of course yoga is an unending process, even within each pose, there is always another way to challenge oneself, when the wall is gone this just opens up more possibilities.

In the meantime I have plenty of tricks to help students understand the underlying movements necessary to figure out different aspects of the post by working on other postures as well.

* Part 2 of the interview will be published next month, in the meantime, check out http://www.reddoor-yoga.com for more info.

If you would alike to recommend your studio as "Studio of the month", please send us an email at coreyogaasia@gmail.com