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Show Transcription >>

Nitesh Batra
Hello, and welcome to another episode of The mindful initiative podcast. Today we are very honored and privileged to have my first Ashtanga Yoga teacher, as our guest. His name is David Ingalls.

David Ingalls
Meditation now, or what I teach in class, or what I teach in a yoga class is quite different than what I’ve learned. But it is about essentially quieting the mind. If you can quiet the mind. You can see what it’s doing. If you can’t quiet the mind, you’re just a slave to it. There’s no separation in my life anymore. From what’s yoga, what’s not yoga, ever. So there’s no goal. I’m not trying to get some place. It just isn’t like that anymore.

Nitesh Batra
And without further ado, welcome to the podcast.

David Ingalls
All right, thanks.

Nitesh Batra
So usually when we do these podcasts and interviews, my first question is to ask a little bit about the background of the person, their upbringing, and how they got to the place where they are. We can keep it brief, especially something about your upbringing.

David Ingalls
Well, starting with upbringing, basically, from upstate New York, Christian background, was drafted in the army in 1969. So that’s Vietnam air, didn’t have to go to Vietnam was stationed in Alaska, I became friends with an Episcopal priests. And he told me I thought, like an Easterner not a Westerner. And that was a pivot point. Because once I found that out, and I found out there were other people who thought whatever Eastern thinking happened to be at that time, I immediately started looking in that direction. And within a few years, I became a TM practitioner, a TM teacher Transcendental Meditation (TM), taught for 10 years full time. And it sort of went from there. Eventually, I was always teaching something. I’ve had a dance studio, I became a coach, I became an elementary school teacher, I became an Ashtanga teacher. I became other yoga teacher. So it’s always teaching has sort of been at the core.

Nitesh Batra
Well, thank you that gives quite an insight into the last very many years of what you’ve done. So I believe Transcendental Meditation came to you in about 71. If that,

David Ingalls
Yeah, somewhere, it’s right in there. And by pretty quickly, I went off to teacher trainings, which were quite interesting because you spent 8, 10 or 12 hours a day meditating then. So my introduction to yoga was through meditation, not through an asana practice, where we had a small asana practice, but a small pranayama practice. But the emphasis was on being quiet.

Nitesh Batra
How was life back in those days, when this was all sort of alien and foreign to this land? Did you go and study with Maharishi Mahesh Yogi (founder of TM) or with someone else?

David Ingalls
No, we had to study with Maharishi. So we started with him, even though he had people under him. But we were on. Basically, a minimum was a one month course. I don’t even remember what they were called. And then I was in Italy for three months, doing the actual teacher training becoming, quote, unquote, certified. It was the middle of you know, everybody was a hippie then so we had to dress in suits. We had to wear a suit. That was our big thing. The men had to wear ties, sort of counterculture to the counterculture.

Nitesh Batra
While doing meditation, you had to be in suits.

David Ingalls
Yeah. No, no, not while but while teaching so we were presentable. And there was the start of sort of this scientific error backing up the spiritual practice. Chopra (Deepak) walked in at a certain point, he also became a student of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi

Nitesh Batra
Deepak Chopra?

David Ingalls
Deepak, so there were lots of people coming in to the practice Joe Nemeth, who is the other one, the big TV guy. I can’t remember him. But lots of stars were doing it. Lots of people were starting paying for the practice. Those of us that were full time teachers, we didn’t get rich, but we made a decent living. And part of our money. One of the interesting things then was part of our money was actually put towards taking further courses. So you were constantly invested in spending more time meditating for very little money. And it was quite a gracious system. As long as that lasted.

Nitesh Batra
You mentioned about your thinking was like Easterners and you were told that now, you know, what that taught brought up in my mind was, was there something at your home your upbringing that made you think like that? Or was it your environment? Or were you inherently just gravitated towards that kind of spirituality?

David Ingalls
So growing up Christian, I can’t find a pivot point. Nothing happened to me. But I wasn’t, even though I was in youth groups active in the church. And that was just the environment of my small community. I never was mentally I did everything that they wanted me to do. But I was never particularly comfortable with the philosophy of Christianity. Only certain people get into heaven, all this kind of stuff. It didn’t make sense to me. So when this Episcopal priest, who was a good friend said you think like a Westerner, it just opened up because I didn’t know what I didn’t even know there was a West at that point. I was 21 or 22. (East) Yeah. Sorry. You think like an Easterner and I had no idea what that meant. So my first book was Tao Te Ching and just just reading it made my mind relax the words, the presence of the words, it just, it was like, Oh, this really is comfortable for the way I think. And it was the first time I’d ever felt any comfort, that way that there was something else other than what I’d learned. And it was really quite, it was entirely natural. Then I started meditating.

Nitesh Batra
What did meditation mean to you, then? And what does it mean to you now? It’s been 40 plus years, they have been doing it now.

David Ingalls
Yeah. So when I first started, I was really enchanted by the idea of enlightenment, whatever that met, and, you know, we would read about it or Maharishi would talk about it. And I was sure, I would get enlightened. And in many ways, that was sort of a personal goal, even though I didn’t know what it meant. Honestly, over the years, the practice has gone through a lot of changes, it’s gotten lighter, as gotten more comfortable. And it’s gotten less fundamental about really trying to get any place in, in at the end at this point in my life. I mean, I’m 70, all of that’s gone, the goal is gone. And I meditate or I don’t meditate, mentally, meditation now, or what I teach in class, or what I teach in a yoga class, is quite different than when I learned but it is about essentially, quieting the mind, if you can quiet the mind, you can see what it’s doing. If you can’t quiet the mind, you’re just a slave to it. However, you get there. And it might be in svasana us and it might be in a headstand, it might be in a posture, but generally, and it might be using the breath, which is kind of what I teach. Now, if you can get some control of the breath you can have, you can see the mind soften.

Nitesh Batra
Absolutely. And I think something interesting about the meditation part is the idea of managing your thoughts or managing your mind with the thoughts that are coming in, whether that’s quieting down, or if there are urges that are coming in just controlling those urges in whatever form or fashion that you think will help you. Now, in your 20s you were you were doing Transcendental Meditation, but it didn’t involve much of active physical practice. And is that the reason why you started moving towards more of dancing style or eventually going towards Ashtanga or was there any other reason that moved you towards that direction?

David Ingalls
In my late or mid 40s. As a runner, my time is really were going down. I was getting stiffer and stiffer. I was never a flexible person, always athletic. I always had a natural gift to practice. So whatever I took on, I would eventually get good at it. Just through practice, repetition and practice, whether it’s meditation, something physical, it didn’t matter. But as I found myself getting stiffer and stiffer friends of mine in the meditation world said, oh, there are some physical yoga practices out there that you might like. And in those days, Bikram (Yoga) was mentioned first. Nobody in this area taught it. So I tried to get it from a book, and I wasn’t very successful. Then they sent me a videotape of Richard Freeman, doing Ashtanga and that started to make more sense to me. So eventually, I took a year off from running and just experimented with yoga to see what I would feel like, let me see if the yoga really works.

Nitesh Batra
And you mean the asana practice?

David Ingalls
Yeah, the asana practice, what basically people were calling yoga, no meditation to it, none of that. And I felt like I already had all that. So it didn’t bother me I was looking for. I was actually looking for flexibility.

Nitesh Batra
And were you teaching in the elementary school at that point of time, when asana practice became part of your life? Yeah. How did that change your relationship with not just yourself, but how you taught as well? Because this was probably the first intense asana practice that you got involved in?

David Ingalls
Yeah, absolutely. It would take me. It took me three or four years to integrate the asana practice into my daily life, I mean, within two years or something like that. So when you’re, first of all, there wasn’t anybody in this area, teaching that type of yoga. So I would go to New York for a class. I’ve eventually once I took a summer and went out to Richard Freeman, that was my first class. And I found class to be extremely different than trying to practice on your own.

Nitesh Batra
And this was in Boulder

David Ingalls
Yes, it was in Boulder. Okay. And then next year, I decided, I mean, none at all. This was quite spontaneous. The next year, I decided, oh, let me go to Indian and meet this Pattabhi (Jois) guy. Let me see what’s going on. Because I wanted to track it back to its source. Because I’d already had sense there was still a lot of there was a lot of conflict and how it was being taught different people teaching different ways. And what and I wanted to find out Well, what’s the difference here, between what’s being taught in India and what I’m getting in all these other places?

Nitesh Batra
What year was this in?

David Ingalls
I don’t know. 98-97 like that,

Nitesh Batra
Oh, at that time, they were still in the old shala.

David Ingalls
Yes, the old shala 10-12 people practicing at that time. So I did all that. Eventually, I came back and I started teaching every now and then I would just teach some postures in a phys ed class to my elementary school. And of course, kids loved it. I mean, some of the boys like to balance things we didn’t do a lot, we just did little pieces. And every now and then, like we would be running laps on a field. And I’d say I teach him bow posture. So I’m ready to lay down on the grass and do a bow posture. And you could actually hear spines cracking, and elementary kids doing this posture, they would jump up and go, I feel really good. And go run their best lap. And it was really fascinating to me to watch how their nervous system changed immediately with some posture. And that was a big learning a big turning point for me, is that oh for these kids, so now backbends bring energy into the system. So if somebody else wants that energy, we can do some backbends and it doesn’t have to be a full hard backbend, then it can be an easy backbend then. So eventually, those type of things begin to the practicality of using a posture for specific effect begin to percolate for me, because Ashtanga doesn’t really teach it that way. and spending time with Pattabhi. It was my style. I’m good at practicing. I’m good at doing what people tell me to do. But there was in the Ashtanga world, you almost had to make up reasons about the postures because Pattabhi didn’t talk about it. He really didn’t. You went to senior teachers and just try to figure out what they were saying. And eventually, I had to find some other source for how to talk about the yoga.

Nitesh Batra
You were the first to open an Ashtanga studio in the DC area. And this was the only one for many, many years, a lot of us who have practiced Ashtanga or were introduced to Ashtanga have gone through the studio learning from you. But eventually, you thought there was more to the asana practice. And is that when you started looking out for even further sources, is that the right way to ask when you when you started looking? I think AG Mohan and Indira Mohan, were the ones that you went to, or was there anyone else?

David Ingalls
I became frustrated did with the Ashtanga practice as being a yoga practice because I wanted it to be more. Where was the meditation, where was the quietness. And as much as I love the physicality of Ashtanga, I kept looking for where’s the yoga, because everybody would adopt it as a physical practice get in shape and all that type of stuff. I felt like the breathing wasn’t deep enough, it just didn’t feel like it was quite correct to be all that it could be, if I could use that sort of term. So eventually, and I don’t even remember where I found them. I did discover the Mohans, maybe through a book, found out, they were gonna teach a course in India. So off I go. Immediately, just even talking to them, I really sense they had a much different feeling about doing their yoga, they had a yoga feeling about doing the yoga, not just jumping, not everything just being physical. And they were really good at using language to integrate the intimacy of what a posture can be like and what it can be like inside and not just going from one posture to another sort of in a robotic type of way. So using common words, now, it became a much more mindful practice. And to do that, I had to slow it down. So when I slowed down, and I brought it back, lots of people didn’t like it. In there became a conflict in many ways in the studio and a conflict between what I wanted to teach and what people wanted to practice because they were used to the old Ashtanga. So some people got comfortable with it, some people didn’t. But eventually, I became much more comfortable as a teacher, teaching deeper breath work with the Ashtanga system. And I still keep the Ashtanga system. Because I think in a lot of ways, it’s absolutely correct. Just slow it down. Not everybody’s gonna do all the postures. I mean, these are all things I had to learn. Because with Pattabhi, everybody did every posture. But eventually you figure that out. And Mohan’s gave me, I’ve been to him quite a few times. They really gave me that permission to deepen my understanding about how postures work specifically for different people at different times in their life, how to teach it, how to apply it.

Nitesh Batra
So that takes me to the teacher of the Mohan’s, Krishnamacharya. There are very many students who are all different, whether it’s Mr. AG Mohan, Indira Mohan, I don’t know if she studied with him or not, but at least I think they knew each other. And then Pattabhi, Jois and then BKS Iyengar, a little bit, but he considers Krishnamacharya to be his teacher. Now, I think, from my perspective, the greatness of Krishna Acharya, is that based on the student, his teachings changed and based on his age, as well, his understanding, also changed. So that’s what he taught. But from your perspective, from your experience of teachers and students, how do you think he taught his students and how do you bring that into your practice, if you do?

David Ingalls
So AG Mohan spent 18 years with Krishnamacharya. He went from being an engineer to eventually stopping the engineer practice and became a yoga teacher. His wife, Indra, became the first woman to actually receive a PhD from Krishnamacharya for yoga. So they’re very invested in what Krishnamacharya taught. They understand the Ashtanga system. They actually they learn some of it. I think Mohan was in his 30s when he started. He’s actually he’s just a few years older than I am. So we have a lot in common. And he’s really good at explaining that. Yeah, different Yoga is meant for different people at different times of their life. In the yoga should be adaptable, it should be modifiable. It’s not just one size fits all. And so they teach that way. If somebody wants an athletic practice, then they might refer him to an Ashtanga system or Ashtanga like practice, but they teach all postures individually. Not in a group class. So it’s never everybody doing one thing and a group class when we practice we do maybe 10 postures maybe 10 or 15 minutes of breath, work and then resting so It’s really quite simple. And they do that because they really understand that people should be taught individually. A group teaching really has some limits to it. Everything they did with Krishnamacharya was individually, but meaning every now and then they had one, two or three people, but he never taught them in a group class.

Nitesh Batra
The explanation that Mohans give about yoga, and they start with the first sutra itself, Atha Yoga Anushasanam. When I heard their explanation, that yoga starts whenever you start thinking about it, whenever you’re mindful about it, is something that has just been imbibed in my life. But what is yoga, according to you, now that you’ve been practicing very many different aspects of it, the asanas, pranayama, the meditations? And also it’s evolving for you. But what does it mean to you? And not just going inside, but in relations to life as well, because we have to live a life outside rather than just being inside.

David Ingalls
There is a there’s no separation in my life anymore from what’s yoga, what’s not yoga, ever.

Nitesh Batra
Thank you for mentioning that.

David Ingalls
Yeah. So there’s no goal, I’m not trying to get some place. It just isn’t like that anymore. Whether we use the term mindfulness or not mindfulness, I tend to be really, really comfortable with sort of Advaita philosophy. I’ve spent a lot of time with Ramesh Balsekar in Bombay is kind of where I am mentally. So I just kind of, you know, I accept my mind, I accept what it does. I accept what happens. And that’s it.

Nitesh Batra
So one of the things that happened to you a few years ago, I don’t remember the exact year that you were diagnosed with cancer, right? And it was a difficult part of your life, from what I understand. And Yoga has helped you tremendously go through it. Can you talk a little bit about that?

David Ingalls
Yeah. So it’s interesting because it brings up your mortality right away, and you have to deal with it. And even though I had non Hodgkins lymphoma, I went through chemotherapy, after my cancer doctor used to say you’re the healthiest cancer patient I’ve ever had. And I kept up my practice, I never didn’t practice having the practice, both mentally and physically at that time. And it’s been, I don’t know what it’s been 10 or 15 years now made a huge difference in how my body reacted to the chemotherapy and all that kind of stuff. So, but once again, you know, it happened wasn’t anything I could do about it. I continued to teach everything, I just continue doing everything like I normally would, and you know, if something was gonna happen, my attitude was okay, so you know, if I’m, if I’m gonna die, I’m gonna die. That wasn’t my experience it’s coming. Yeah, so the, the meditation, the yoga made a big difference. I’m really happy. I had it at that time in my life.

Nitesh Batra
Not an easy experience to go through mentally, physically, in every aspect.

David Ingalls
No, but no experience is really that easy. You know, if you accept it, it gets easier. You stop arguing with the experience. You know, lots of things are hard in life. And one of the great things with Ramesh Balsekar used to say everything is created in what do we say opposition in your life, sometimes you you know, you have these extremes operating. You can argue with it, or there it is, you know, I can be with it. Stop fighting with it. And same thing with a yoga practice. Stop fighting with a yoga practice. Once you figure those things out. You get to be inside even though all this outside stuff is happening. And it’s delightful, even with cancer.

Nitesh Batra
So we’re getting towards the end of our time. We’ve talked a lot about the past, where do you see yourself in the next let’s say 15, 20, 30 and 40 years!

David Ingalls
I’ll just hobble along and teach whatever whatever it is. You know, I’ve been going to Bali twice a year for the past four or five years. I still like to surf I like to do I like to go skiing. I like being active. And I like teaching. Teaching centers me more than any other activity I do in my life. So teaching remains.

Nitesh Batra
So before we close, we usually do a small Rapid Fire, a few questions that we ask they can be just one word answer. And these are three or four questions that we ask go. So our first question is one childhood memory which brings joy to your mind.

David Ingalls
Being on boats with my parents,

Nitesh Batra
One person that you would like to go back and meet in history,

David Ingalls
Maybe Thomas Jefferson,

Nitesh Batra
Any song or a movie that that you absolutely love or any book that you absolutely admire?

David Ingalls
I’ve always liked the music from South Pacific. I like musicals. books come and go. I don’t have one favorite book.

Nitesh Batra
And one final question. If you had to travel to one place and go right now, where would that place be?

David Ingalls
I think I’d go back to Bali.

Nitesh Batra
Good choice. I love Bali. Well, thank you so much for doing this. David. I absolutely enjoyed talking to you. I learned so much more about you than I knew before. And I’m sure our listeners will learn a lot more by listening to this podcast and in this interview. Thank you so much.

David Ingalls
Namaskaar

Nitesh Batra
Thank you so much, everyone for tuning in to our show. If you like our podcast, please rate us on iTunes and don’t forget to share this podcast with your friends and family. Thank you so much.

 

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