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Interview with a Yogini
by Deborah Saliby

The following interview with Janet McCloud, an Iyengar Yoga instructor, was conducted by Deborah Saliby, who is herself a yoga instructor in the East Bay.

Deb: What is your background in yoga? What attracted you to yoga?

Janet: I first started doing yoga when I was in London in the late seventies. I was actually looking for something to focus my mind, to learn to concentrate better. I had problems with being too scattered. I went to a lot of classes but they didn't seem to help me at first. But then I went to an Iyengar class and stood in the mountain pose for half an hour and I was sold.

Deb: That was in the beginning days of Iyengar when you were taught to stay in the postures for a really long time, it was very hard in the beginning. That's why it was known for being so different.

Janet: And it was also the fact that Mr. Iyengar had developed a teaching style that actually taught people how to do the poses as opposed to some places where you would just be told to do the pose without any instructions. He gave a lot of very precise details about how to get into a posture, so that the physical body would be safely grounded and aligned before moving into the more subtle elements. He believed in being firmly grounded in the earth, in the body.

Deb: So you liked that approach of being in a posture for half an hour?

Janet: Well I liked that you could spend that amount of time engaged in a position, that there was that much to it. That you weren't just standing, but standing in a mindful way. That was what attracted me so to Iyengar yoga, that my mind actually joined in with my body in a focused way. I really liked the precision of it.

Deb: How did you come around to wanting to be a yoga teacher?

Janet: First I got into just doing my own practice at home. I realized that it made me feel very different and very good in a grounded way. When I came to San Francisco I started studying at the Iyengar Yoga Institute for Teachers which had a two year teacher training program, and I started that program in a way to deepen my own practice. Then I got drawn into teaching pretty quickly, opportunities arose, it just happened.

The scale of yoga was so much less then, not like today where you can train almost anywhere quickly and hold classes for 30 people. I don't know if it's actually such a good thing because people really haven't developed a very good base for themselves for their own practice. I had a more natural evolution. When I started teaching I had just a few students in my house, so my evolution as a teacher was moving along slowly as the classes moved along. I had a slow and steady grounding. Today yoga is very in and people are looking at it as just a physical exercise, but it is so very much more. That's the thing about Mr. Iyengar, He himself has focused so much on personal practice and has passed on to everybody the importance of personal practice. Because how can you share something that you don't have? You have to have the knowledge inside of you from doing it and then you have something to share, as opposed to it simply being a verbal thing or intellectual thing.

Deb: How have you seen yourself progress in life by doing yoga? What has it done for you over the years?

Janet: It's been the most important thing I've done. It's something I do everyday, and I feel that it makes everything else I do possible, because I believe that I have this sacred time that's my own and that allows me to get centered, and I feel I have that nourishing time to myself. Then I have time to be out there in the world and do all these other things in a very focused, in the body, way. It makes my entire day much more meaningful and conscious.

Deb: Some people think that yoga is an out of the body sort of thing. But really the idea is to get in your body, and to be with your body. That's the union of yoga.

Janet: I think that you can approach yoga from so many different ways, it can be a spiritual practice, you can also use it if you are not feeling well. There are a lot of practical applications. For example, if your immune system is getting a little weak you can do inversions. Whatever you have you can work with it with yoga, digestive problems, respiratory problems, anything. It's like a preventive medicine. You can do it for relaxation, or in a cardiovascular way or whatever. It's got such unlimited applications.

In India yoga is part of the whole culture. There's food connected to it, there's sound connected to it, it's based in philosophy. It's an avenue to be still, meditate and look at your world through. I think that one of the other important things about doing yoga is that it affects everybody around you because of the changes you are going through in a positive way. You just become more sensitive to yourself, and in turn get more sensitive to others.

Deb: Anything you would like to say in closing?

Janet: I think it's an interesting time for yoga now because there are a lot of people working in the more traditional way while at the same time there's a fashionable side of yoga. It's being offered everywhere, even insurance companies are beginning to offer it. I believe that what we are beginning to see now is that yoga is going to become an important part of modern day American culture. And I think the challenge will be for the few who are teaching to keep the essence of it. These days all kinds of people are doing yoga even firefighters and police. As something gets so big it gets harder to maintain the purity of it. We have to ask ourselves what are the important parts of yoga that need to be taught and expressed so that doesn't get lost.

Deb: I also think that the way the planet is evolving, the new age coming about, people are opening up more too. They may not really realize why they are being attracted to yoga, which is really more than just physical exercise, but somehow they are being led in that direction. People are becoming more aware and open to alternatives.

Janet: I believe that people have gotten a bit disillusioned with western medicine. Alter-native medicine, which puts the mind and body together, is finally catching on and yoga does this. We are hopefully becoming a more sensitive, conscious people, thank God. 

Janet McCloud currently teaches in San Francisco. For more information please call (415) 468-7448

Deborah Saliby currently teaches in the East Bay. For more information please call (510) 597-1395.