Yogi AtmaSanyam

On Wedensday night I met up with Yogi AtmaSanyam. Looking at him, it wasn’t hard to guess that he’d just been through an intense workday, a lot of yoga – teaching and guiding. Even though AtamaSanyam seemed a bit tired, his satisfaction was noticeable, his smile was calm and wide.

In a yoga center with many rooms, the smallest of them is the one where AtmaSayam feels the most at home. In this modest room with two wooden chairs, a small table, a yoga mat, and a painting of a tree with deep roots, AtmaSanyam poured me a cup of tea and waited patiently for the questions to begin.

It appeared to me that AtmaSanyam has been practicing yoga since the day he was born, so I had to ask:

Romi: When did you start practicing yoga?

Yogi AtmaSanyam: Just like most people that get to know yoga. [he said and smiled again] I only found it as an adult. Most people in the western world don’t have the opportunity to go and practice in ashrams at the age of 8, and neither did I.

What was your life like before yoga? Was there something or someone that led you to make this change?

I used to work as a counsellor for young people. I especially loved working with teenagers. In a way I was an educator but not in the conventional sense. I wanted to help those that I worked with to develop the tools to better help themselves. I saw it as my mission to seek out a tool-set or series of guidelines that could help them make sense of it all.

Then on weekends, I worked as a scooba diving instructor.

[I looked at AtmaSanyam and he looked right back at me.]

Scooba diving? I can see the connection between yoga and seeking a self guidance tool-set for teens but how did scooba fit in?

I used to do free diving, for that I had to hold my breath for long periods of time. I guess it was a combination of my desire for physical balance and control over my body, along with my passion for working with people that brought me to yoga.

Where did yoga take you first?

After over a decade of looking for answers about how I could become the teacher I wanted to be for my students, I found myself in Rishikesh, India. I stayed there in an ashram called Yoga Nikatan for 6 months. Later on I went to the Bihar School of Yoga in India and eventually found myself studying at the Satyananda Academy in Australia.

I’ve heard you repeat the phrase “found myself” quite often, did you also “find yourself” teaching yoga?

[As I asked AtmaSayam smiled.]

This is not as tricky a question as you think. I believe that we as people have the ability to choose for ourselves. I believe that there are no wrong choices because every decision leads us to experiencing yet another aspect of our being. Though within these choices lies the option to decide to elevate ourselves – to carry us forward, or to make us feel stuck. It is when we permit our nature to be our guide, that we allow great things to happen to us. When we first experience this, it can feel like a surprise, but the reality is that it’s just our first taste of the fruit of sincerity.

So yes, I did, as you said, find myself teaching yoga. But I didn’t intend on doing so at all. At the time, it happened that a friend of mine was working in a gym that was looking for yoga teachers, she told them that I was a great teacher, I think she forgot to mention that at that point in my life I had never instructed yoga before. I was hired that same day, and before I knew it, I had a few hundred people coming to my classes each month.

What inspired you to open your own yoga center?

By that point, having unintentionally amassed this following, the students began requesting that I open a place that focused more on yoga, that offered more yoga classes and more yoga oriented activities.

Emotionally I was going through a rough patch in my life. I was teaching yoga and travelling back and forth to the ashram in India. I didn’t have a full-time job or a house of my own. Then having returned from my latest trip it became clear to me. I figured the right thing to do was to get a place where I could rest my head, to sleep at night, and at the same time I could use that place to conduct yoga sessions during the day.

So what you’re saying is you made yourself a home and invited people to come in and share the yoga experience with you? Do you think it made their experience better? More authentic?

You ask one thing but allow me to answer something a bit different. Home is something a person carries with them. Some can feel it only at their own house, some can feel it everywhere, and some cannot feel it at all. I gave what I could, my home and my heart is what yoga is about for me. I offered that to my students, but how they felt is something that you would be better off asking them”.

[AtmaSanyam had that smile again. I understood that even though he was not going to say how other people feel around him when they practice yoga, we both know that by coming here they feel a little closer to being at home.]

Can you tell me a little about what kind of yoga you chose to teach and practice?

I teach and practice Satyananda yoga and consider myself one of Swami Satyananda Saraswati’s disciples. It’s a kind of yoga that I learned to practice in a closed environment – in an ashram, and as you can probably tell, I don’t live in an ashram. I found ways to combine my life experiences with this kind of yoga, to develop tools that I find helpful in our day-to-day lives. I also believe in yoga practice that tends to be a bit slower than the norm, so that we can take the time to observe and breathe in the pose; and then to feel the difference between when we are in the pose and once we have left it. I think that this way my students can feel a difference in their sense of “being” after a relatively short period of time.

What does it take to be a Yogi? What does being a Yogi mean to you?
I see myself first as a person. Swami Satyananda Saraswati once said, and I paraphrase, “The only differece between a Guru and the person cleaning the street is awareness”. I am not a Swami or a Guru. Maybe one day I will reach that level of awareness, I’m not sure. What I do know is that I have dedicated my life to yoga and decided to share my experiences with everyone around me, and for me, that’s what being a yogi is all about.

If I want to be a yogi and dedicate my life to Yoga, do I have to give up my life as I see it now?
Absolutely not. Swami Niranjananda Saraswati was asked this question. It’s actually a really common question. He said, and again I’m paraphrasing, “We do not need to give up our current life to adopt a yogic lifestyle. We can say a few mantras in the morning, perform a few stretches during the day and then meditate before we go to sleep. What we do in between is up to us.”

If I want to know more about yoga, what should I do first?

You can read books, attend lectures and search online. There are many ways to expand your knowledge of yoga, but if you truly want to grow as a person and be able to attain more strength and balance, there’s only one thing you should be focusing on at this point, and that’s simply – practice.

AtmaSanyam, maybe just one more question, if that’s OK with you. Do you have any plans for the future?

[AtmaSanyam looked very sincere and focused, it seemed like a fresh breath of air brought joy to every part of his body]

All I know for sure is that I can’t wait to see where I’ll find myself next.