Richard Freeman returns to Telluride for Yoga Fest
[click "Play" to hear Richard Freeman]
Freeman is a teacher's teacher, who lost his principal teacher last month, Sri K. Pattabhi Jois, 1915-2009, the smiling, pot-bellied man who favored Calvin Klein shorts and famously said, "Do your practice and all is coming." Yoga is 99 percent practice and 1% theory.
Yoga has entered the mainstream in the West, particularly in urban centers: everywhere people who drive Priuses and eat organic veggies are practicing one of the many flavors of Hatha yoga, the yoga of action. Devotees are divided into tribes: Iyengar students obsess about building precisely articulated poses with straps, blocks and bolsters. Ashtangi just go for it: they tend to be ripped from all the stretching, toning and balancing moves of the six series. Freeman, originally an Astangi, is no exception – but with a mind as toned and flexible as his body.