LEARNING TO SEE: AN INTERVIEW WITH DEVON DEDERICH ABOUT TEACHING YOGA TO VIETNAM VETERANS BY ANNE-MARIE SCHULTZ
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evon Dederich (Intermediate Junior II) teaches an ongoing class for Vietnam veterans in Austin, Texas. AnneMarie Schultz recently talked with her about her experience, how the Yoga Sutras inform her teaching of veterans, and how these classes differ from other Iyengar Yoga classes.
Anne-Marie Schultz: Good morning Devon. Thanks for taking the time to talk. Tell me a little bit about yourself. Devon Dederich: I began practicing Iyengar Yoga in 1977 and have been teaching since 1980. Clear Spring Studio opened in Austin in 1990, and I’ve been a full-time Iyengar Yoga teacher since then. AMS: How did you first get involved with teaching the vets? DD: With my personal history nowhere near military service, it might seem an odd choice of jobs. But that is exactly why I chose it. After that enormous Gujarat earthquake in 2001, I became interested in the topic of trauma. Mr. Iyengar offered what we came to call “The Earthquake Sequence” to help survivors. Our own national catastrophe struck here on Sept. 11 in the same year, and I learned that the New York yogis were using the same or an adapted sequence in their regular public and special classes for survivors. Like a lot of us, I tried the sequence out, and I understood it after a fashion. I did not start using it right away, though. It was the first time I had seen any Iyengar Yoga teacher put Savasana at the beginning of a sequence. It seemed like a big departure from the norm, and it took until Geeta’s presentation at the 2010 convention in Portland for me to fully grasp what that sequence represents. After the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan began and then continued, many journalists started interviewing returned soldiers, telling their stories and raising in the public consciousness the matter of traumatic brain injuries, war trauma in general, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and the difficulties of readjustment to noncombat life. War trauma in all its forms was, and remains, large in the news. I thought Iyengar Yoga could be of use on many levels from the physical to the psychological to the spiritual. This idea percolated for years before I became convinced I should try to begin a class for soldiers with PTSD in Austin. I read several books on the topic. I experimented with my practice. I had conversations with students, one psychiatrist and 16
two psychologists, about trauma and PTSD—what happens to the mind and body, and what treatment methods they found useful. I asked if they thought the yoga they were experiencing in class might be useful. I experimented with my practice some more, and I talked to other Iyengar Yoga teachers who had experience teaching trauma survivors of various sorts. I talked to several long-time students who are survivors of physical or psychological trauma, and I experimented with my practice some more. I also read the writings of yoga and meditation teachers from different (non-Iyengar) traditions who work entirely with trauma survivors. Despite all of this reading and discussion and background work, I’m still not an expert on the topic. But it was a beginning. AMS: Are there any written sources you recommend? DD: Yes! With respect to war and battle trauma, I’d read War and the Soul by Edward Tick and Achilles in Vietnam by Jonathan Shay. Regarding healing trauma in general, I think the most famous source is The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk. Achilles in Vietnam is so well-written, it should be on everyone’s reading list anyway. Regarding Iyengar Yoga for trauma, I recommend looking over the series of DVDs from the Portland therapeutics convention. Everything presented there was meant to raise in our minds the importance of observation and of working with all the layers of an individual—from body to mind to the subtlest self. Here was the second place I learned about using Savasana as the starting pose in a therapeutic sequence. Geeta presented it as a means to observe the student physically and psychologically; to provide a customized, supportive “cocoon” to create physical and psychological stability where there isn’t enough of it on hand, to settle anxiety, and to bring in new energy to a depleted body before beginning the practice of asana. There are also DVDs of the Estes Park Light on Life Convention, where in several places Mr. Iyengar outlined ways of working with anxiety and depression—a large part of the PTSD picture. There has also been much written about yoga and pranayama for anxiety and depression in past issues of Yoga Rahasya and Astadala Yogamala. Yoga Samachar Fall 2016 / Winter 2017
