Without knowing too much about it, except that they did raw food, my Aussie friend, Susan, and I wanted to try out Bahay Kalipay for some time and, when she suggested we go in June, I told her to inquire with them about possible retreats that they might have. As it turned out, there was a yoga retreat with Clayton Horton happening around the time we wanted to go. Ashtanga yoga.
It was probably around 2002 that I began my search for a yoga guru. I tried out Sandy Arando, Robert Dario, Rina Ortiza and Anna Price. And then, in early 2003, I found Bela Lipat.
She was a bit of a yoga nazi. She chose her students. I turned up with a friend and, after class, she came up to me and told me that I could come back but that my friend couldn't. She didn't like her attitude. (Seems that while Bela was demonstrating certain poses, my friend would put her hands on her hips and cock her head. Bela didn't like it when her students didn't stand at attention.) She told me, "You'll see. She'll tell you I'm not the teacher for her either." True enough, as soon as my friend got back from the bathroom, she hissed, "I don't like her! Let's go!"
Bela shushed anyone talking in the shala and reprimanded students texting on their mobile phones while waiting for class to start. She wanted you to be focused as soon as you stepped into her domain. If she found out you joined her class to get a yoga butt, you could be sure that you wouldn't be attending any more of her classes.
And that's precisely what drew me to her. Her total dedication and demanding perfection. She lived and breathed yoga. And she expected her students to do the same. The wild, undisciplined child in me is attracted to people like her - those with an unyielding drive and uncompromised principles. To her credit, and to ours, all of her students, at some point in time, tried becoming vegetarian.
We started out with Sivananda, until Bela got into Ashtanga and we shifted to that. I remember walking out of her class, breathing deeply into the night air, exhilarated by yoga.
But my practice was, at best, inconsistent. I was shuttling back and forth from Siargao and could never get into self-practice. So I went whenever I found myself in Manila. I would go to her classes as faithfully as my time would allow.
When Bela wrote an article on Vipassana, in October that same year, I joined the fourth Vipassana meditation course in the Philippines.
She held yoga retreats with Moching Yip and with Paul Dallaghan. Paul was a revelation as he was fun and wacky and showed us that yoga didn't have to be serious. Eventually, Bela started loosening up. She would still call out to Rosan and me not to drink or smoke too much when she knew we would have a night out. And, one evening, when she joined us for dinner at Geni Psinaki's then restaurant, Mati, as she watched us clinking our wine glasses, I could hear her telling herself quietly, "My students are drinking grape juice."
Me and yoga buddy, Rosan Cruz.
But she got busier and spent less and less time at the shala. Her student-teachers were gradually taking over her classes for her. By the time, I joined my second Vipassana course in October 2004, I too was wavering. I hardly spent any time at yoga and everyday that I was at Vipassana, I had to keep fighting the urge to quit.
Eventually, travel and work took over and, for some reason, contrary to all that Vipassana teaches, I developed an aversion to yoga. Ashtanga yoga in particular. None of my friends could get me onto a yoga mat. I didn't mind Bikram yoga, as I didn't and still don't consider it yoga. It's McYoga, unapologetically and undisguisedly commercial. Purely physical. Nothing spiritual. I tried it for a month in 2008 and liked it, before disappearing to Siargao again.
And so it was in April this year that I found myself faced with the quandary of the Clayton Horton retreat. Susan, who is half Austrian, half Japanese but born and raised in Australia and now lives eight months of the year in Siargao, is one of my travel buddies. We've been to Cambodia, Thailand, Laos, India, and China together. But since she had a baby four years ago, it's been harder and harder to find travel time together so, for old time's sake, I grudgingly agreed to the retreat.
Susan Brandstetter and me in India. (Photo by Rocio Magana.)
To warm up for it, literally and figuratively, I took up Bikram again for a month in May. (Went to a total of 19 classes, as I spent one long weekend in Taiwan and another in Macau, and was hungover for two days and too lazy to go for one.) I wanted, at the very least, to be able to touch my toes.
By the time my mat was face to face with Clayton Horton's, not only was I able to touch my toes, but my mind was open to Ashtanga once again.
One thing I've always believed is that, when a student approaches a new teacher, that student should always have the humility to unlearn what she believes she knows and be open to the new teacher and what he or she has to offer.
To my surprise, I found that I missed Ashtanga. Clayton is a an excellent teacher. Very clear, precise and nurturing. After he left, I got to practice with Claudia Maciulis, a Swedish instructor also living in Boracay, and her compassion now compels me to find myself a new yoga guru in Manila.
Pi Villaraza, Clayton Horton and Zemfira Khayrullina preparing to do pranayama on a hilltop.
But I've committed to doing CrossFit this June and boxing in July so my quest will have to wait till August. I am faced with the dilemma of knowing almost all the Ashtanga teachers in Manila as I practiced with most of them under Bela. I am hoping that, by August, my mind will be open to having one of them as my guru.
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