Posted on December 12th, 2011

 Inspiring. Warm. Loving and kind. We were honoured to talk yoga with Judith Lasater.

Judith has taught yoga since 1971. She holds a doctorate in East-West psychology and is a physical therapist. Judith is president of the California Yoga Teachers Association, and has been an advisor on three NIH studies on yoga and health. She’s also one of the co-founders of Yoga Journal.

Her yoga training includes study with B. K. S. Iyengar in India and the United States. She teaches ongoing yoga classes and trains yoga teachers in kinesiology, yoga therapeutics, and the Yoga Sutra in the San Francisco Bay Area. Judith also gives workshops throughout the United States, and has taught in Canada, England, France, Indonesia, Japan, Mexico, Peru, and Russia.

Other articles about you mention your defense of what might be called the integrity of yoga. Can you talk a bit about this?

I think the basis of the practice of yoga is about respect. If we cannot act with respect we cannot practice yoga. It is the bottom line: to treat each person, each object, each animal, each yoga prop, everything we encounter, with respect.

My inspiration is the Dalai Lama. He does treat people with respect. I know that from friends.

It’s that attitude that I want us to bring to the mat, first to ourselves. When we feel respect we will experience a space in which we can evoke compassion, and kindness and humility. I don’t even like people to toss props to each other in class. Respect is respect.

How did you get into yoga?

It’s a combination of chance, or karma, and recognition. I was a teaching assisting in graduate school, and decided I wanted a new part-time job for fall. I was walking down the street, saw the Student Y and felt called to go in. I went in and asked if they had any part-time jobs. They had just decided they needed another program assistant. I got the job. There was  a new yoga program there, and it was a staff perk to take the class. It was a deep soul-level recognition, a deep sense of coming home. I got up the next morning and practiced what I remembered. Ten months later I took over a 200-student yoga program.

It was a recognition for me. Everything made sense. My whole body, and mind and heart and soul said yes.

What have you gotten out of yoga?

Friendship. A living.

But most importantly I have gotten the continuing unfolding of my tiny understanding of the nature of what life is about. The practice of yoga—asana, pranayama, meditation and study—has been a window that has helped me see inside myself.

It has given me joy and travel and a continual pleasure in being alive. It has been a friend. It has shaped the way I regard myself and others, has shaped the way I parented, the way I’m moving into getting older, shaped my language, my thinking and my heart.

When you talk from what you know, there is an intrinsic integrity to what you say. And if effects people, not just their pose.

If you want to be a teacher with something to offer to the world, you have to live the practice, you have to embody it, you have to become it. 

You mentioned that you “have gotten the continuing unfolding of my tiny understanding of the nature of what life is about.” What is the nature of what life is about?

Laughs: You think I know? Life is mystery to be lived, not a problem to be solved. What guides us is our deepest values and to continue in every moment to live those values. To use our practice, whatever it might be, to create a space to let compassion arise in our heart.

What I hold in high value is contributing back to the world. I believe we are all on a metaphoric Titanic, that life is a sinking ship. The question is not “Are you going to drown?”; the question is “What are you going to do with the life you have?”

Being aware is not hard. Remembering to be aware is hard.

Practice is a process of reminding yourself of your divinity. When you are connected to your own divinity, you see it everywhere.

I think the job of a yoga teacher is to mirror back the inner radiance and inherent goodness of each human being. The only way we can do that is to find it within ourselves.

If you could share five yoga asana tips with readers, what would they be?

1. Lie down on the floor and relax every day for 20 minutes. There is nothing in your life that won’t be better if you’re relaxed.
2. Do one pose every day that you don’t like, with equanimity.
3. Do one pose every day that you love, just because you love it.
4. Spend some time sitting quietly. Be still and alone and present with your breath.
5. Find enjoyment and beauty in as many places as you can every day. Because that will make your life rich.

If you could share some philosophy-related tips with readers, what would they be?

Nobody has a clue. No one knows the answers to the most important questions, because the answers don’t come from the intellect. Science can tell us what, but it can’t give meaning to our lives. All of the philosophies and religions that I’ve studied all point to the same thing: treat everyone with respect including yourself. See unity instead of division. Don’t be afraid—you’re going to be ok, even if you’re not ok.

More on Judith, including where she’s teaching next is at www.judithlasater.com.

Tags: Judith Lasater, Yoga Journal, Co-Founder Yoga Journal, yoga workshops, yoga training Judith Lasater, yoga teacher immersions, Judith Lasater workshops

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