Draze Jul/Aug 2015 Issue 5

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I N T ROD U CIN G T HE

“Truly Versatile” LIFO R M E T R AVE L M AT

THANK YOU BEX FETHERSTONE EDITOR

BEEZ from 106STORIES CREATIVE DIRECTOR

CONTRIBUTORS AMBRA VALLO BRIOHNY SMYTH CARMELLA RACKHAN CELEST PEREIRA CHELSEA ROFF CHLOE ROSE CHRIZTINA MARIE DAVID NEALE HANNAH BLOOMFIELD JAMES ARMITAGE JASON REINHART JEAN HALL KAITLIN MORRIS

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KAREN YEOMANS KATIE LINDRIDGE KAYLA ANN LAURA KASPERZAK MACKENZIE MILLER MATT CONTI MIKE ADAMS NOLAN CARROLL PAO SANCHEZ PAT BAILEY RIVA GDANSKI ROBERT STURMAN SAMANTHA CHILD SOPIHA HERBST

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CONTENTS 12

Editor’s Letter

Ambra Vallo by DAVID NEALE

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32

And Then I Discovered Yoga

Ambra Vallo

by The Accidental Yogi

Flow, Ballet & Dharma Mittra

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22

38

Cycling & Yoga

Karen Yeomans

Laura Kasperzak

Photographer Interview

Interview

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28

Music

Feature

Summer Sun Salutes

Body Battles

Pat Bailey

44

NFL Meets Yoga Sports Interview

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EDITOR'S LETTER Sunny Sunday afternoon

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ummer has come, and we realise that grunting and groaning your way into bends and balances on a sticky mat indoors might not be everyone's idea of a well spent sunny Sunday afternoon. So we challenge you not to. We challenge you not to fall into doing what you know just because it's easy, but to bring a little bit of something new to your yoga routine. Whether it's dragging your mat into the great outdoors or taking up something new (kung fu on the beach? power lifting in the park?), give something you'd never normally try a go and show yourself what you're capable of. From bikers (p. 38) to ballet dancers (p. 32), with some big American footballers (p. 44) and even a cheerleader (p. 22) to boot, we're providing the perfect athletic inspirations. We just need you to have little faith in yourself and have a little fun. So pack your mat and a motivational attitude and whether it's on or off the mat, see how much you can transform your yoga.

Bex Fetherstone Editor

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Chloe Rose by KAREN YEOMANS

KAREN YEOMANS Photographer Interview

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hrow together over twenty years of yoga practice, a passion for running and a curiosity for cameras which began in childhood, and you get Karen Yeomans. From her studio in North London, Karen captures images of the body in action to showcase the empowering effects of sports and fitness. From boxing to capoeira to yoga, check out Karen’s sports photography at www.karenyeomans.com and @karen_yeomans When did you start on your photography journey?

What made you take that first shot? My fascina-

tion with photography began at school when a teacher agreed to show a friend and me film and darkroom processes in after-school classes. I continued to study art throughout my education and the pull to photography remained with me; I felt it touched a spot I couldn’t reach with anything else.

When did you start photographing yogis and why? I

started practising yoga twenty years ago and it naturally began to infuse into my work. The exploration of conscious movement and energetic awareness in my own practice inspired me to shoot those concepts, bringing new layers of sensitivity to my work.

You photograph other sports too - what is it about sports that draws you and your camera? I love that

sports and fitness build communities and em-

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Celest Pereira by KAREN YEOMANS

power people. They help people to see, achieve and believe that everything is possible. The positive effects of people coming together to move energy through their bodies is so powerful.

What parts of yoga and other sports are you trying to shed light on with your photographs? I want to inspire action

through my images. I’m naturally drawn to photographing strong, inspiring women and I want to celebrate the beauty of the human body, capturing form and grace, yet allowing the viewer to find the images inspiring rather than inaccessible and threatening.

What's your opinion on sports and yoga photography always portraying the thin and the super fit? I’ve always

wrestled with a personal battle over my love for fashion photography against the effects these images can have on body image. Nearly everybody wants to be photographed in the most flattering way, and why not, don’t we all want to look our best in pictures? However I firmly believe that people should be portrayed in a healthy shape and my subjects are of all different shapes and sizes. Media images often promote health and fitness as the same thing as thin and of course that can be very off-putting. Anything that puts people off exercising is damaging.

Do you take photos for yourself or for others? Both. My aim is to communicate a mood, a message and also to fulfill the brief, that’s a given to make a living from my trade. I work with my clients in a bespoke manner to understand their vision so that I can best translate it into images. I believe that shooting is about creating a mood that allows the subject to give me what I need from them, resulting in what we both want. It’s an energetic exchange that lights me up.

What do you want people to take from looking at your work? To see strength and feel energized to explore

and get the most out of life. I’d like people to glimpse under the surface of what a fit and healthy life can offer, not only physically but also spiritually, and with that glimpse I want people to feel inspired and motivated to go out and do something for themselves.

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Jean Hall by KAREN YEOMANS

MacKenzie Miller by JASON REINHART

SUMMER SUN SALUTES Playlist

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ummer is finally here! Stick this playlist on in the park whilst you and your friends laze around eating cucumber sandwiches and drinking Pimms. Then when the moment takes you pop off the picnic blanket and start saluting to that sunshine and before you know it, you'll be leading a park yogathon. Send us pics...

Track

Posture

Dayvan Cowboy Boards of Canada

Warm Up

Why did we fire the gun? Waldeck

3 x Sun Salute A

Sandcastles Diesler

3 x Sun Salute B

Agonia Bocafloja

Standing Postures

More Mess On My Thing The Poets of Rhythm Roubada Saravah Soul Not the Same Italian Secret Service Pushing On Freddie Cruger

Seated Postures

2 Tha Left Dynamic Syncopation Lebanese Blond Thievery Corporation

Finishing Sequence

You Wish Nightmares On Wax Suzuki Tosca The Last Man Clint Mansell

Svasana

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AND THEN I DISCOVERED YOGA WORDS THE ACCIDENTAL YOGI

“All those years I’d been throwing my shot put backwards”.

I

’ll be honest, sports was never my bag, and that’s if we’re understating the issue. I was the last to be picked in netball (after a full five years of practice I still hadn’t grasped the rules). In athletics I excelled, being the only pupil who consistently managed to throw the shot put backwards, and cross country was my idea of hell. I vividly remember traipsing through muddy fields chanting ‘slow and steady wins the race’ with my asthmatic and/or overweight crew. Needless to say it didn’t. In fact slow and steady got us a redfaced, panting and humiliating last place. Always.

Once the painful memories of school changing rooms, inadequately cool trainers and forced physical exertion had dulled, I lolled around in a blissful haze of inactivity. I got away with it because I was skinny and always had been. At university I expertly avoided all team sports, and even feigned an inability to join in group running excursions due to its (completely fictional) effect of rapid weight loss on me.

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And then I discovered yoga. I won’t go into the details of how I was bullied into that first class, but it changed everything. I learnt to look stupid, to be uncomfortable, to sweat and to enjoy the tired ache of muscles the morning after. I learnt not to think of being first or last, but just of being. Years later, with a stubborn injury which rendered me temporarily yogaless, I found myself getting fidgety. I donned my trainers and, of my own free will, went on a jog.

I listened to my body and went at the pace it desired, I used my breath to combat the threat of a stitch, and when my legs told me no more, I told them how to carry on. I wasn’t on my mat and I wasn’t in chair pose, but I was most certainly practising yoga.

It suddenly dawned on me that asana classes had not taught me sport, but mindset. All those years I’d been throwing my shot put backwards and flailing around muddy fields I could have been doing yoga, if I’d just changed my mindset. It’s not about what you do, whether you’re pedaling, planking, running, rowing or simply just carrying your shopping home, it’s how you do it that makes it yoga.

Riva Gdanski by JASON REINHART

Laura Kasperzak by ROBERT STURMAN

Laura Kasperzak Interview

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ith over a million followers on Instagram, where she uploads daily doses of handstands in high heels and downward dogs with her ‘mini’ in matching leggings, Laura Kasperzak is the lady to follow. But she’s not all poses and pictures - Laura Kasperzak has earned herself a reputation as the yogini making advanced yoga accessible, offering clear explanations and step-by-step guides to building up strength and flexibility. So how’s it possible to hang out in hollow-back handstands like you’re stood on your feet, yet be able to remove the mystery from ‘advanced’ yoga and make getting back to basics seem just as Instagram worthy? Laura Kasperzak tells Draze that she was a beginner once too...

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Laura Kasperzak by ROBERT STURMAN

How long has your yoga journey been so far? I started

yoga when I was 19 years old, so believe it or not, I’ve been practising yoga for half of my life! It wasn’t a daily practice for most of those years and I mainly incorporated it as a supplement to my other workouts. After the birth of my daughter in 2009, I started to pick up my practice and in 2012 I decided to commit myself to a daily practice - I haven’t looked back since!

What first got you practising? The way I started yoga

is really pretty funny! I was babysitting at my sister’s house and had put my nieces and nephew to bed. There was nothing on TV and nothing to do.

I spotted my sister’s yoga VHS tape and decided to give it a try. The rest is history! I ended up stealing (or was it borrowing?!) that tape. My first actual class wasn’t until 2003 when I joined a gym. It was actually amazing! The teacher introduced me to my first arm balance, bakasana. I remember so clearly being made to try a supported headstand for the first time, I kept rolling right out of it!

We know you have a background in gymnastics and cheerleading, which must have helped you to start with, but what parts of yoga seemed alien or difficult when you first began? Everything! The only true benefit of

having a gymnastics background was that I knew how to fall so I had no fear. Other than that, I was a beginner like everyone else when I started. I had to learn the basic flows and postures, and learn how to breathe. Fear of falling holds a lot of yogis back from trying new things. Once you conquer that fear, progress comes much quicker.

How can we conquer our face-planting fear though?!

Being upside-down is my favourite thing to do! I truly believe the most important thing is to get out of your head - stop letting your mind hold you back. Stop creating stories about why you cannot do something. I hear it all of the time as a teacher “not strong enough, too heavy, too skinny, too this,

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too that”. If we believe those things about ourselves then we have already failed.

This issue we're all about combining yoga with other sports - do you do other forms of exercise? I don’t actually, however, I am an avid

snowboarder! I’ve been riding for about as long as I’ve been doing yoga. I am extremely strong just from doing yoga and this has definitely given me much more strength to ride longer and harder. The flexibility the comes from my practice also means that I’m not sore after riding all day long.

Incorporating your family into your practice is a big part of what you do - how come? In-

corporating my family into my practice just makes it more exciting and fun. Of course, I still love to wake up early and get on my mat before the rest of the house wakes up, but there’s definitely something special about practising with kids. They are so excited to try new things and the trust they show me is inspiring. We can learn so much from kids and I am constantly thinking about new ways to include them and new things to show them.

How has teaching changed your practice and how do you manage to explain things so well when they're so easy for you!? Hahaha…

some things may look easy for me but I can definitely say that they are not. I think the trick as a teacher is to keep explanations simple and easy to remember. Becoming a

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teacher has definitely pushed the boundaries of my practice. I’m always excited to share and show my students more, and in order for me to do that, my practice has to progress and keep changing.

Was there ever a time when you couldn't manage all the postures you can now? Of course!

Most of the advanced postures or transitions I can do now have only been learnt over these past five years. Something important that I love to share with my students and followers is that I was a beginner too, just like them. I certainly didn't start out where I am today - that took a lot of time, practice and patience!

You're famous with the yogis on Instagram!

How do you think Instagram has changed yoga and what would you hope your followers get from being able to watch your journey? I

definitely don’t like to think of myself as ‘famous’. I like to think of myself as lucky to have found my passion in life and blessed to be able to live it. Instagram has definitely made yoga more visible to people from all over the world and from every age group. I think it has helped to break down so many stereotypes and barriers about what yoga should be and who should be doing yoga. Yoga truly is for everyone and that is what I hope my followers get from me. I am 38 years old, a mother and wife.

If I can make time for my yoga practice, get in shape, and become a happier individual, then anyone can.

Laura Kasperzak by ROBERT STURMAN

Body Battles

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t thirteen years old Kaitlin Morris had decided that she was “too fat and too ugly”. Determined not to stay that way she began to concentrate on her diet and take up exercise. Kaitlin’s parents supported her seemingly sensible decision to focus on her health, but rather than seeing this loving encouragement for what it was, Kaitlin saw it as confirmation of her own fears, and was driven to exercise more, exercise harder, exercise for longer and to eat less and less. The same thoughts that had convinced her she was fat and ugly, were telling her that her parents' support meant that she needed to keep striving for something else. With a huge amount of weight lost, a daily schedule of vigorous exercise and a severely restricted diet, Kaitlin still wasn’t satisfied. She’d become addicted to a= feeling of control and progress and was constantly seeking out new boundaries. “I began to exercise more and seek out alternative ways to tone and strengthen my body, whipping it into a shape that I could accept. I tried weights, aerobics, cardio machines,” Kaitlin explains, “and then I tried yoga.”

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Kaitlin dabbled with yoga for a few years, enjoying its positive effects on her mental health, but couldn’t shake off her desire to “lose more weight, go further, to seek a more distant ‘edge’ both physically and mentally.” She constantly searched for new styles of yoga and new teachers that might offer her something more physically challenging to further reduce her body to a tight nub of muscle and skin.

It was on her quest for more that Kaitlin walked into a new yoga class on the recommendation of a teacher who knew she enjoyed a challenge. “It was here that I found what I had all but given up hope of finding,” recalls Kaitlin. She had found a practice so different and so beyond her ordinary boundaries that it allowed her to temporarily forget her worries and to just listen, move and be. She stuck at it and the confidence that her new practice gave her, meant that when new opportunities arose she had the strength to take them, and to succeed - a domino effect for her self esteem. “I felt my life unfold, new opportunities arose, and I leapt at them,” Kaitlin explains. “My eating disorder became something that I could work through with breath, consciousness, and the new-found courage that the practice gave me.” And with that courage and determination, Kaitlin’s eating disorder became an obstacle, rather than the defining feature of her life.

Kaitlin is not alone in her struggle. Current figures estimate that 1.6 million in the UK are affected by an eating disorder and this figure rises to a staggering 30 million in the US. Despite eating disorders carrying the highest mortality rate of any mental illness, sufferers often face long waits for treatment and the Guardian recently reported that the shortage of resources in the UK can mean that sufferers are deemed 'not thin enough' to get care and many wait more than a year after diagnosis before receiving treatment.

Eat Breathe Thrive™ is a US-based non-profit organisation aiming to fill the lacuna in eating disorder treatment by preventing negative body-image and aiding recovery from disordered eating through yoga-based programmes. Founder Chelsea Roff, knows the story of coming back from the brink of collapse caused by disordered eating all too well.

“Fifteen year olds aren’t supposed to have strokes,” she says. But after a five-year battle with anorexia nervosa Chelsea’s body had reached breaking point and its systems were shutting down. The valves of her heart were leaking, her skin was yellow from liver failure and she was dying. Chelsea was taken into hospital, but far from being grateful at the relief of rescue, she was angry and convinced that nothing was wrong. “I used to tell the other patients that my mum was coming to pick me up the next day, while I was hiding any food the nurses were trying to give me in my underwear.” She recalls having the nurses turn her over to tend to her bedsores places where the skin was so thin that her tailbone was starting to protrude through her flesh. “I was ashamed and disgusted with myself. I didn’t want to live anymore,” she recalls.

Chelsea spent the next sixteen months of her life in hospital. She finished high school through a distant education programme and talked her way through hundreds of hours of therapy, “slowly, painfully” working to bring her body and mind back to life.

Little by little, her body grew more accustomed to receiving nourishment, she became more trusting of the staff in charge of her care and the happy, vibrant person she’d been before anorexia began to shine through. Almost a year and a half later it was time for Chelsea’s discharge.

Several months after leaving the hospital Chelsea took her first yoga class. “I wish I could say that I went to yoga because I had some inkling that it

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would offer me something deeper, because there was an inexplicable spiritual tug, because I was looking to reconnect with my body and begin the real process of healing,” says Chelsea, “but actually it was quite the opposite. My motivation were almost entirely pathological. I was looking for a quick fix, a sneaky way to burn calories without arousing the suspicions of my treatment team.” And with that in mind, Chelsea headed straight for a ‘power yoga’ class. It was by some stroke of fate that she wandered into class to find her teacher gliding around the room, completely comfortable with her voluptuous figure. This was not the image of yoga Chelsea had seen plastered across adverts and magazines, instead what she saw was “a woman who could hold all two-hundred pounds of her sweet self up in handstand with ease. A woman who inhabited her life-given figure with confidence, compassion and fierce femininity.”

Kaitlin and Chelsea were lucky. They stumbled upon compassionate teachers and the classes that worked for them, and turned yoga into an empowering tool for self-healing. Not all are as lucky. In the world of modern yoga, where suited and booted business types want their fix to be sweaty and hard and packed into fifty minutes, it’s easy for teachers to succumb to the pressures of those who use yoga as a workout. Of course there’s nothing wrong with wanting a physical challenge, but studio-culture, media images and the modern world can often mean that other incredibly important elements of yoga are lost. For those suffering from disordered eating, yoga can be perilous territory. A competitive studio environment can unintentionally reinforce dangerous weight-control behaviours as students are congratulated on their increased strength, flexibility and ‘health’, and are surrounded by imagery which celebrates perfection.

“Yoga can be unhelpful for individuals with eating disorders as it can become a means of acting out

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disordered behaviours”, Chelsea tells me. “It’s not so much that the practice of yoga itself is a double-edged sword,” she continues, “it’s more that the culture surrounding which can both encourage and provide a mask for disordered behaviors. I can’t tell you how many times I go to class and hear something along the lines of ‘bikini season is right around the corner so let’s get onto our core sequence’.” Chelsea goes on to explain that the combination of our body-conscious society and the detoxes and juice cleanses so often promoted by western studios, is another dangerous aspect of yoga culture for those struggling with disordered eating. These types of diets and cleansing exercises can serve as a ‘healthy mask’ for sufferers to hide a disorder beneath and they encourage different modes of starvation.

So what’s the key to utilising yoga, a tool which seems to have the capability to both exacerbate and heal disordered eating? Experts often link disordered eating with extreme levels of disconnection from the body and one of the keys to long term recovery may lie in rebuilding body awareness.

Chelsea couldn’t agree more and tells me that she knew from the outset that yoga wouldn’t be helpful to individuals with full-blown eating disorders if it was given “out of context”, but that but that an integrative programme tailored to the needs of those with food and body image issues might be able to assist recovery. I ask her what sorts of things she means and she reels off a list of helpful tools she uses with her students, things like “meditations that help students tune into hunger and fullness signals; simple, gentle vinyasas that allow them to regulate the nervous system; and intentional cues that encourage them to attend to present moment experience.” Chelsea adds that “many people with disordered eating struggle with depression, anxiety and post-traumatic stress,” meaning that when they feel nervous or panicked, their coping mechanism is to starve, binge or purge the difficult emotions away.

With yoga the aim is to teach different coping skills.

“Yoga helps our students build the mental muscles needed to be present with the emotions rather than avoid them in a self-destructive way,” Chelsea explains.

“Yoga is valuable at all stages of recovery”, Chelsea tells me, “but we’re not talking about the kind of yoga you see taught in many modern studios.”

Chelsea reminds me that yoga doesn’t have to involve asanas and vigorous exercise. For Eat Breathe Thrive's most vulnerable patients, yoga means breathing exercises, meditations and simple mindbody connection exercises. Programmes in colleges and community centres (as opposed to treatment cetnres) are only offered to people struggling with eating disorders at a non-acute level as Chelsea is adamant that for those at their most vulnerable “yoga is not an alternative to treatment, but an addition to it, a tool that people can access in addition to clinical solutions, therapy and counselling.”

With renowned teachers across the world such as Briohny Smyth and Tara Stiles sharing stories of their own struggles with disordered eating, it’s unsurprising that many of the teachers trained by Eat Breathe Thrive train are survivors of disordered eating looking to build supportive communities for others going through what they recognise as being a terrifying and isolating time. Instagram yogini Briohny Smyth, who suffered through years of the horrors of anorexia, chatted to me about the value of a ‘supportive yoga community’. "The feelings that initially caused my eating disorder, the lack of self-value and confidence, they never go away. There really isn’t anything that can actually ‘fix’ you,” she explains. “Now, with social media, we can find beautiful images of others at our fingertips, which definitely makes it more challenging to stay mentally healthy. It has certainly been hard for me not to compare myself to the beauty and success of others in the yoga community,” Briohny tells me.

Yet this same community, she goes on to say, also

hold a great deal of positive power. “The moment I realised that I had a choice, that I could follow those who inspired positivity in me, social media platforms like Instagram became a source of community and support,” she explains. “It's with that inspiration that I slowly gained the tools to be less reactive to negative feelings,” Briohny recalls.

It seems critical then that the yoga community speaks in the language of self-acceptance and love rather than of self-criticism, and acts with a great deal of sensitivity towards disordered eating. Teachers must look out for the signs of eating disorders, students who are excessively thin and compulsive about their practice and they must allow students to push their boundaries at the same time teaching them that the real aim of the game is not to nail crow pose but to be comfortable in not yet being able to nail it. It’s the growth of supportive teachers, studios, communities and environments that Chelsea promotes the most. “Our mission at Eat Breathe Thrive is to make these resources available to anyone struggling with food and body image issues, not just people in treatment. We want to see programmes offered not only in hospitals, but in spaces like universities and yoga studios as a preventative measure,” she explains. “We are training clinicians how to offer a very simple yoga-based programme as part of their recovery programme. In colleges we’re training counselling departments and in community settings we’re training yoga teachers.” For Chelsea, it’s all about making eating disorder awareness a norm in the yoga community, and making yoga a norm in eating disorder treatment.

“I learnt to channel all the stubbornness and determination I used in my eating disorder toward helping others,” Chelsea tells me. “I just want people to know that there’s another way, that you can recover.

You can find a sense of home in your own body and you can transform what might have been the darkest moment of your life into something amazing.”

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Ambra Vallo Flow, Ballet & Dharma Mittra

Ambra Vallo by KAREN YEOMANS

A

mbra Vallo (@ambrasana), former principal ballerina with the Birmingham Royal Ballet, left her family home in Italy at the age of just twelve when she was awarded a scholarship to attend a leading dance school in Cannes. This move signalled the beginning of Ambra’s 25 year long career, during which time she danced for the Royal Ballet of Flanders, the English National Ballet and the Birmingham Royal Ballet. After two years in Cannes and a further two in Antwerp completing a second scholarship, at the age of 17 Ambra received a full-time contract with the Royal Ballet of Flanders joining the company, unusually, as a soloist. Several years later, her move to England began with a three year tenure at the English National Ballet where she quickly attained promotion to senior soloist which was awarded to her by the Patron of the Company, Princess Diana.

Sadly, whilst dancing with ENB, Ambra suffered a major injury to her foot. She was forced to stop dancing for a year and during this period decided to hang up her pointe shoes and quit dancing altogether. “I was very young and it was a big decision” recalls Ambra, “but I’d made up my mind,” and so she resigned from the company.

A few months later and leading a normal life, fate took a new direction and Ambra was approached

by Birmingham Royal Ballet’s new Director, David Bintley. Though still injured, he offered her a position in the company. Ambra laughs as she tells me that it wasn’t the most conventional start to a new chapter of her career, “I’d entered the first company as a soloist,” she says, “and I entered this one on crutches!” After building herself back up, which she describes as “a very humbling experience”, Ambra rapidly moved her way up to principal ballerina, a position she held for 17 years.

However dancing puts huge amounts of stress even on the strongest of bodies and Ambra’s career continued to take its toll on hers. “I was injured a lot as a dancer,” she recalls, “throughout my career I had a foot operation, a knee operation and stress fractures

in both feet. You name it, I had it.” Whilst recovering from knee surgery a fellow dancer invited Ambra to join her at a yoga class. She apprehensively accepted, expecting mostly “chanting and meditation.” The reality was, of course, completely different and Ambra started to attend regular hot yoga classes which she found helped her to relax and realign her body. “You know when you brush your hair before you go to bed?” Ambra asks me, “I felt like I was doing that for my muscles when I started yoga.”

It was a few months after taking up hot yoga close to home that Ambra embarked on a fateful trip to Thailand where she got the yoga ‘bug’. She discovered Ashtanga. Recalling her first Ashtanga class Ambra laughs and tells me “I hated it! The class was given entirely in Sanskrit and at that stage I didn’t know the difference between Mukha and a Mocca, so I couldn’t understand a thing the teacher was saying. I heard a word and being a dancer gave it my interpretation! He walked up to me and said ‘I’ve got no idea what you’re doing but everybody in the class is following you and now I’ve got no idea what they’re doing either!’” Ambra giggles as she recalls running away blushing after class!

Ashtanga was alien compared to classes back home, but as a dancer Ambra could see similarities with classical ballet and could relate to the more disciplined nature of the strict Ashtanga practice. Feeling drawn to this, and unable to ignore her dancer’s mind which relished the challenge, she started to seek out Ashtanga classes. “From when I started doing Ashtanga I felt a transformation. The journey of the breath with the movement made my practice so meditative” she explains, “a pose must be done in a certain way, with a certain alignment and a certain breath, everything is linked. In this way it resembled my dance life very closely.” She started to enjoy yoga and noticed as well that the more she practised, the fewer injuries she was getting as a dancer. “It started out as a healing process from injuries,” she explains, “but then when those injuries had healed I began reaping even more benefits and my body, my mind and my dancing seemed to be becoming stronger

33 Laura Kasperzak by ROBERT STURMAN

Ambra Vallo by KAREN YEOMANS

than ever.”

Ambra was curious, she wanted to know why, and the answer came along unexpectedly. She was studying for a Masters in Philosophy in tandem with the latter years of her career and her thesis was based on the idea of ‘peak performance’ and brain function in athletes. Ambra investigated the idea of ‘Flow’, an extraordinary state of consciousness reached by a dancer when they are fully immersed in their performance, a state which allows them to function at the limit of their physical and mental ability. Ambra explains that ‘Flow’ is essentially what athletes globally describe as being ‘in the zone.’ “I felt this experience sporadically in my dancing," she tells “Through yoga, I me, "and when I felt it, it was as though all of my energy was want to focused on the task in hand. I had so much concentration transport people and involvement in my performance that even the hardto somewhere effortless." Ambra est step felt almost explains that her that’s beautiful, experience of those “magic performances” where she felt but that’s also man didn’t seem to almost super-hucorrelate to preparation, food intake, real” sleep or anything else she could pinpoint. "I wanted to know why sometimes it happened and sometimes it did not," she tells me, "I wanted to understand the conditions associated with the occurrence of this particular state of consciousness.”

She started studying ‘Flow’ from a very scientific perspective, wanting to improve her performance, but Ambra explains that she began to see a similarity between the deep sense of concentration that she sometimes experienced in her performances, with what in yoga is described as the withdrawing of the senses into a meditative state. With this realisation the link between her increased level of performance on-stage and her consistent yoga practice off-stage began to make sense. Ambra was learning how to control ‘Flow’ by practising yoga and the more she studied and practised yoga, the more she

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was able to access her peak performance. “Whether I was on my mat or on pointe, as a result of my yoga practice, I was treating what I was doing like a moving meditation,” she explains, “as my ballet career was maturing, I was becoming more relaxed, my performance was improving, and my enjoyment was actually increasing too.”

As she approached the end of her ballet career, Ambra’s yoga started to take centre stage. She developed the desire to become an instructor and undertook further studies and teacher training courses in Ashtanga and other styles inspired by it. She added trainings in Rocket and Dharma Mittra to her repertoire, also branching out and sampling other styles whilst travelling, including Iyengar, Forrest, Yin, Jivamukti and Shadow. Keen to maintain the scientific aspect to her research and performance training, she also enrolled as a Yoga Sports Science trainee.

Speaking about Dharma Mittra, Ambra’s favoured yoga practice and philosophy, she says that “people often come because the postures can be extremely challenging, but really what it teaches is an emphasis on, spirituality and self-reflection, and that’s what has been so useful for me to learn post-dancing.” Ironically, after years of striving for perfection in her dancing, the reminder that Ambra communicates to her students after every class is that they are here to get stronger both mentally and physically, not to get to the Olympics, “you don’t need to be perfect”.

Ambra explains that the greatest change she has experienced as a result of her Dharma Mittra practice is “the movement away from chasing the physical aspect of the practice and being more conscious of treating all beings, and that includes myself, with greater compassion.” A dancer’s view, she tells me, is that if they’re not harsh on themselves then they won’t improve, but Ambra acknowledges that yoga has taught her to look further than that.

Her greatest passion now is sharing what she has

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learnt, both during and after her dance career, with others. “I’ve only had a glimpse of the knowledge that’s out there”, says Ambra, “but I’m trying to shine the light of this little bit of knowledge on other people.” She explains that as a dancer the focus was on her, but that now all she wants to do is facilitate her students’ progress, both physically and mentally. “If people are coming to yoga for the physical side then that’s great, that’s what I started with. The more they come, the more they will discover and yoga will become what they need when they need it, just like it did for me.”

Ambra explains how she loves to see students work through what they perceive as physical limitations and come to the realisation that there’s more to their postures than muscle strength and flexibility.

“I absolutely love to work with people who are terrified of arm balances and inversions,” she tells me, “because it’s something we think is physical, but so much of it is actually mental.” Ambra goes on to tell me that, rather unbelievably, she used to be terrified of being upside-down, until one of her teachers asked her what she was scared of. “I’m scared to hurt myself, I need more control” she answered.

Her teacher responded by asking her to go away and think about what she needed to control, and what she was scared of hurting. “I really thought about his question and realised that I wasn’t trying to overcome a physical limitation, it was a mental one, and suddenly when I’d broken that barrier, I was in handstand.”

That simple lesson is what Ambra strives for in her students and what she sees as the ultimate progress from her long and successful dance career. “On stage I was a character,” Ambra recalls, “it was great to watch because what I created was a dream and I could transport my audience to somewhere unreal and beautiful. Now, through yoga, I want to transport people to somewhere that’s beautiful, but that’s also real. To learn to control their own mind so that they can take themselves to places they never even dreamed of.”

Ambra Vallo by KAREN YEOMANS

Pat Bailey

Cycling & Yoga

A

s someone who begrudgingly swings their leg over a rusty and battered bike most mornings because it’s cheaper, and ironically quicker, than public transport, I’ve never seen much of a similarity between the bliss of my yoga mat after a hard days work and this rickety morning routine. On my bike, I bump and swerve along to my destination, willfully forcing myself not to get off and walk up the big hills, breathing in London’s delightful pollution and regularly flailing around angrily at inconsiderate occupants of cars. Yogic I am not. But according to Pat Bailey, avid San Francisco cyclist and yogi, that’s all in my mind. With a sizeable and ever-growing Instagram account (@patbailey) Pat has been woo-ing the world with her stunning yoga photos, which, more often than not, incorporate her beloved bike.

We chatted with Pat about how those angry city cyclists who find their zen on the mat, might just be able to take their yoga to the saddle and make cycling work for them...

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Photo PAT BAILEY

What were you up to before yoga came into your life? I

took my very first yoga class at Indiana University while I was in college, after growing up with gymnastics and volleyball and track. Before my daily practice became really solid, I was also runner.

How did you first get into yoga? I have always had a sense of spirituality, and I have always been active and athletic. My first yoga class was in college, but it wasn't until about five years ago that I began a really solid home practice. Part of what got me properly practising was a knee injury from running, but I also had a sense of wanting to get into a practice that allowed for spirituality and self-reflection.

Do you remember your first class? What was it like? My

very first class was a basic vinyasa class at Indiana University that I took as an elective. I remember being completely in awe of my instructor, but it wasn't much more than an asana practice for me at the time. That elective class inspired me to go to a local studio in my college town, an ashtanga studio where my instructor was a beautiful yogini with a rich knowledge of yoga and the spiritual side of the practice. After that first visit I practised there regularly for years and I have fond memories of practising by candlelight in that studio, and of the beginning of a very deep spiritual practice.

We know you love yoga and cycling now but were you always sporty? Yes! I was a tomboy growing up, the

oldest of five girls. I played with matchbox cars in sandboxes, and taught my sisters how to ride a bike.

I had bruises and scraped knees all of the time and played endless amounts of sports in high school!

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Cycling and yoga seem pretty different to us - how do they match up or complement each other? People might

be surprised to learn that cycling and yoga are actually very similar. Cyclists need to be very aware of their breath and what’s going on inside their body and they have a deep sense of connection between their body, breath and motion. The actual act of cycling is quite similar to the flow of a yoga class where there's a warm-up, a peak and a cool down.

Cycling for miles and miles can be very zen too. I've also recently started mountain biking, and the similarities with yoga spill over into this type of cycling too. One of the most important aspects of yoga that translates into mountain biking is the drishti. In mountain biking much like in yoga (and in life!), drishti (gaze/focus) is so important. I had to learn the hard way that if you look where you don’t want to go on a mountain bike then that’s exactly where you’ll end up!

Does your yoga help your cycling and vice-versa? Yoga is an incredible tool for cross training and recovery as a cyclist. The miles spent on the bike close your body and tighten some of your biggest muscles. It is super important to incorporate yoga into your training as a cyclist to open your heart and shoulders, reversing the effects of the position on the bike. It also helps to open the hips and stretch the hamstrings, quads and calves as these contribute towards improved pedal stroke and speed, as well as lessening the chances of injury. And then there’s the improved core strength that yoga provides, which is where bike handling skills come from. Looking at it the other way around, most of what translates from my cycling into my yoga practice is about breath, drishti and balance. Cycling helps me to find each

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of these things better in my practice.

What would you say to the 'super-fits' who think that yoga is all old ladies and chanting? For the

sceptical fitness athletes and those doing serious training or competing, there is now proof that yoga, when combined with a cross-training or recovery program, is extremely beneficial and lessens the frequency of injuries.

Many professional teams are adding yoga to their required training programmes. That, said, there’s one quick way to get somebody who thinks that yoga is all old ladies and chanting thinking differently, and that’s to send them to a ‘power yoga’ class. They might find buff old ladies but it’s unlikely they’ll find any chanting and they’ll definitely be in for a shock at the level of workout they get!

Nowadays there are so many different types of classes and studios, that yoga really can be for everyone, and is more accessible than ever before. The sceptics might also be surprised at what they learn which they can put to use off the mat. I teach a lot of bhakti yoga (yoga of devotion) and this, along with other aspects of yoga, can really help people to view their practice as more than just asanas and to learn something that’s bigger than just exercise.

Are there any specific bits of yoga that cyclists in particular can benefit from? Yes there are

many beneficial poses that are especially important for cyclists: hero/reclined hero, half pigeon, heart openers, forward folds (seated and standing), and core postures to name a few. Half pigeon is my go-to posture both pre and post ride for opening the hips. I also love heart openers when I get off the bike, it instantly opens your shoulders, reversing the miles that they were closed!

Your top yoga tip? Practice yoga on and off your bike, and do both with deep passion.

There are benefits to doing anything mindfullly and passionately and bringing yoga on to the saddle will add rich layers not only to your cycling, but to your life.

Photo PAT BAILEY

Mike Adams by the INDIANAPOLIS COLTS

NFL meets

YOGA

featuring Nolan Carroll, Mike Adams & Carmella Rackham

F

or me, the concept of American football conjures up images of extremely padded clothing, extremely muscular men and the likelihood of extremely painful injuries, as the aforementioned men pile head first into each other using a combination of wilful determination and brute force. No amount of persuasion, cajoling or bribery could force me into a game of American football or even remotely near the field. It’s hardly surprising then that for America’s NFL players, the yoga mat is equally far away from their sphere of comfort and most likely conjures up images of incense, chanting and bendy women with their legs behind their heads. All the more impressive then that NFL players are turning to yoga in increasing numbers to improve their game. We spoke to Carmella Rackham (@BrazilYoga), the lady who can be credited with getting some of NFL’s biggest names into downward dog, and two of her NFL students Nolan Carroll (@carrollcity) and Mike Adams (@mDotAdams), about the trials and tribulations of transferring touchdowns to trikonasanas and points to pranayama.

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The guys...

How long have you been playing American football?

Nolan: I have been playing for about twelve years

now.

Mike: I have been playing since I was ten years old, but also for about twelve years professionally.

How long have you been doing yoga?

Nolan: I began yoga earlier this year so I’ve been

practising for about four months now. That said, I had been contemplating it for a long time, even as far back as college, but for some reason I was always hesitant to try.

Mike: I’ve been practising on and off for about seven years but just recently made it a consistent feature of my training as I saw the benefits it was giving my body as a athlete.

What finally got you on the mat?

Nolan: I desperately wanted to gain more flexibili-

ty. I’d tried stretching on my own in previous years but it had never had quite the effect I’d wanted. This year I decided to give yoga a chance because I was becoming more aware of the stress I was putting on my body. Once you stop playing football you feel aches in the vulnerable parts where the sport is hitting you hardest. This season I knew I needed to loosen up my back and to keep my knees strong and stable. Yoga seemed to be the way I could stop the aches turning into something more serious.

Mike: Honestly? My head coach from a past NFL team made it mandatory!

Obviously you were both already super fit when you started out in yoga - was it really easy for you or were there bits you found hard?

Nolan: Of course there were challenges! Many of

the poses where my legs needed to be straight and aligned were tough for me when I started. After working my flexibility over time though, I got to know what ‘lengthening’ actually feels like and the poses started to come more easily.

Mike: Yes, absolutely it was hard! I still find parts of yoga hard now, even when I am in tune with my body and have proper alignment. Staying focussed is actually the challenging part of yoga for me because I have so much going on in my day to day life, I’ve had to learn to calm my mind to be totally engaged in a yoga session.

Are there any similarities between your sport and your yoga?

Nolan: Mentally there are definitely similarities.

Sometimes when you try to do a pose you find difficult you forget to breathe, once you’ve forgotten the breath then it becomes difficult to to balance or get your legs straight or whatever else it is you’re trying to do. Then you get frustrated. It’s the same with football, there might be a technique or a play that you are trying to get, but if you force it, it won’t come. It can only be done with practice and calm and the knowledge that each time you get it wrong you’re also getting better at it. When I began yoga I kept getting frustrated because I rarely managed to get my body into the postures, but Carmella kept reminding me just to breathe, stay calm and forget about the idea of ‘getting it wrong’. I learnt that all I had to do was allow my body to adjust and breathe and the rest would come. This mindset has helped me progress with my football too. When I practice I feel much more fluid on the pitch and I have far fewer aches and pains.

Mike: Being mentally prepared is the main similarity for me between football and yoga. In addition to practice of course! One must practice at both consistently to become great.

What would you say to athletic guys who think that yoga is just for skinny, flexible women?

Mike: I’d say, “you’re wrong!” It is for everybody that

wants to help themselves mentally, spiritually, and with the longevity and performance of the body.

The stretching aspect of yoga has made my body so much more open and loose, which means I can move quicker on the field and recover more easily from a hard workout or game.

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Nolan: Get that out your head! Yoga is for every-

one, but the problem is that athletes who don’t do it, and this is particularly true for football players, think that it’s not a ‘manly’ thing to do. Some guys are afraid that if they go to a class and can't keep up with the women then they’re no good at yoga. But the longer I practise, the more I realise that being ‘good’ at yoga is not the point at all.

What's the best thing about taking up yoga?

Nolan: Yoga helps you to clear your mind, relax

and focus on being free. If you can be free then everything else will come.

Mike: The relaxation definitely. When I do yoga I'm at peace and I can't be hassled or touched because I am in a state of internal stillness.

The girl leading their way onto the mat...

How long have you been teaching NFL players? For a

year and a half now. I fell into it after working with one NFL player who referred me to other players after experiencing how good his body felt and how much faster and explosive he was on the field after just a few months of yoga.

What have you found most different when working with athletes? They really want to get the poses perfect! I

have to stress to my athlete students that yoga is a process - there’s no endgame. They have such competitiveness instilled into them that it’s challenging at times to remind them that it’s not a final score at the end of a yoga session that matters, only the hope reaping the many benefits of yoga. I try and tell them to not stress about poses but to allow the body to flow naturally into a pose over time.

Did you face any challenges in adapting the practice for these guys? Yes! An athlete’s body is so different to

any other kind of body. Most athletes come to yoga

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extremely stiff, with multiple past and present injuries and with a whole lot of wear and tear. I made it my mission to understand the body of an athlete and so I took a few specialist anatomy courses and a sports yoga workshop. These have helped me to gain a better understanding of how to introduce an athlete’s body to yoga for maximum results in injury prevention and flexibility. My sessions make use of ashtanga, vinyasa flow and yin yoga.

How do you think yoga can help athletes? An athlete

deals with a completely unique type of stress and demand on the mind and body. Yoga provides them with a quiet peaceful time to do something for themselves. Most athletes don't get a full hour to shut the world out and feel no pressure to perform or be scrutinized. Yoga helps an athlete gain so much peace and calm along with flexibility and injury prevention that when they step back into their game they can perform at the peak of their ability.

What do you think are the false perceptions about yoga that stop athletes from entering into it?

The two main misconceptions I hear is that yoga is for woman and that it’s boring. This is changing though and yoga is becoming a go-to practice for lots of pro sports with many major athletes beginning to implement yoga into their training programmes. In my experience athletes start to feel the benefits immediately and their performance in sport begins to correlate directly and consistently with their yoga practice. NFL player Tony Parish was one of the first to speak about how much yoga helped him, back in the days when yoga was considered a feminine practice that had no relevance for male athletes. Now fast forward 9 years and NFL teams have yoga instructors who come in to give yoga classes weekly. The results are undeniable. Yoga is not a quick fix, but it is an undeniably rewarding practice for all athletes who stick with it and trust the process.

What's the most fun bit about teaching your NFL guys?

I learn more from them then they do from me and they don't even know it!

Mike Adams by the INDIANAPOLIS COLTS

STUDIO STOCKISTS LONDON

LONDON CONT.

BIRMINGHAM

Triyoga Soho, Chelsea & Camden

Special Yoga Kensal Rise

Yoga Haven Solihull

Yoga Centric Crouch End

Yoga Sweat Town Centre

Lumi Power Yoga Hammersmith

Barefoot Harborne

Jivamukti Yoga Kensal Rise The Life Centre Notting Hill & Islington Hot Bikram Yoga Balham, Fulham & London Bridge Yoga Haven Clapham, Islington & Richmond Fierce Grace City Evolve Wellness Centre South Kensington Stretch London Fields & Shoreditch Good Vibes Covent Garden & Fritzrovia The Light Centre Belgravia & Moorgate

Samsara Wandsworth Yogarise Peckham Victor’s Lab Peckham Union Station Yoga Clapham Down To Earth Tufnell Park The House of Yoga Putney Oakside Yoga Honor Oak Trip Yoga Hackney

Planet Yoga Absolute Yoga Bikram Yoga

ABERDEEN Love Yoga

East of Eden Walthamstow The Refinery Hackney

Yotopia Covent Garden

CAMBRIDGE

The Power Yoga Company Fulham

Ethos St Andrew's St

Embody Wellness Vauxhall

LIVERPOOL

Thank you to all the studios who’ve supported us! To join this list contact: beez@106stories.com

Kayla Ann by JASON REINHART

Ambra Vallo by DAVID NEALE