By Annette Hinkle
If you know anything about yoga, chances are you know about Rodney Yee. Yee is a renowned yogi with an impressive collection of instructional DVDs, books and other yoga products to his name. He’s been on “Oprah” and “Good Morning America” and has been the focus of countless magazine and newspaper articles.
And many people who practice yoga locally are happy to tell you that he also teaches right here in Sag Harbor — at Yoga Shanti, the studio owned by Colleen Saidman, a one time student and now Yee’s wife of four years. Together, the couple leads yoga teacher training workshops and retreats around the world and they are also the founders of The Gaiam Yoga Club, a virtual yoga studio.
Yet for all his fame in the world of celebrity yoga, Yee remains pragmatic and centered when it comes to the practice itself — and he’s eager to share all it has to offer.
Next Wednesday, January 19, Yee will be at The American Hotel to kick off “Hot Topics Lunches,” a new series hosted by the League of Women Voters of the Hamptons featuring experts in a variety of fields speaking on a range of diverse topics.
The topic will be the art, meaning and practice of yoga and while it may seem a little incongruous that the League is hosting an event with someone like Yee (they are, after all, an organization better known for running candidate debates or forums on hot-button political issues), Yee finds their two worlds are not so far apart after all.
“I just think the League of Women Voters itself shows forward thinking and a perspective that we need to fully understand ourselves,” says Yee. “Any thought or topic that strives to recognize that status and goes on to focus on equality is a good thing.”
In yoga, it is by looking inward, notes Yee, that clarity and a sense of openness will come and this is something that perhaps is an ideal New Year’s goal, not just for avid practitioners of yoga, but for pundits and politicians as well.
“This is the time of year when there’s more inward questioning and focusing on what’s important,” notes Yee. “A lot of people make New Year’s resolutions and whether you poo poo it or not, it’s still valid. Meditating is a time for contemplation and reflection. An emptying of our own desires to see with neutral eyes. It’s the foundation of all political actions — becoming a listening ear.”
Though it can easily be noted that not every political action has been born of such good intentions, Yee notes that if people in general can use meditative practice and yoga to get away from focusing on the personal to finding the truly universal, everyone would be better off.
“Our own perspective remains just that — ours. It lacks a universality to it,” he says. “But listening creates proper action —skillful observation leads to skillful action. You need to integrate the self and yoga speaks to that. It’s about emptying the self of your own personal bias because really, what we do is self serving. And there actually can be the spiritual in politics, in places like Bhutan where it’s fundamental.”
“To gain that perspective is not easy,” he adds. “But if we do, the society we live in can benefit.”
Yee knows a lot about different societies and has traveled to many countries where he’s observed the lifestyles of many kinds of people. Often, when new students come to his classes here in the United States, he notices many bring with them what he calls the “national habits.”
“The head is forward of the heart, they have a collapsed chest, a sense of sadness, hyperactivity but also exhaustion at keeping up the spirits,” says Yee. “There’s a personality to the nation. Legs are underutilized and arms over utilized because of all the computer work, or the feet are not in contact with the ground. They’re missing a relationship with nature, there’s a sense of isolation.”
“It’s ironic with all these forms of communication that we would have isolation,” adds Yee. “There is a desperation to find connection, but also a fear. The language of body, of heart, of breath is muted under rationalization of the brain. It’s muted by an overactive brain. When we don’t use the whole being we’re being linear but not rational. To me rational is natural, not convoluted and contracted. To be rational takes in consideration of nature.”
Using and connecting to all parts of the body and soul is ultimately the goal of practice. For Yee, the realization that yoga was a way to gain such understanding came when he took his first class back in 1980 when he was a college student in California.
“In my first class, I gained an equanimity and I was surprised by it,” he says. “I was 23. “I was a dancer/philosophy major. After five years of practice, I was saying I could teach.”
“I was in Oakland, California, and no one was doing that back then,” says Yee. “In some ways, even though I was in California, it was less accepted than it is now. Though in some parts of the country, yoga is considered the work of the devil even today.”
And now, all these years later after following through on his goal of becoming a yogi, Yee finds that even he hasn’t been able to fully suppress that self serving part of his own inner voice, proving that yoga is indeed a life long practice.
“I still have my own thoughts. I haven’t erased them, but they’re smaller in ways,” he says. “Practice mutes the self serving tendencies. These things aren’t gone, but I’ve learned to counter balance those things.”
“I’m still ensconced in human tendencies, but if I familiarize myself with the center, it gives me a place to remember in bad times,” adds Yee who also points out that it’s never too late to start learning yoga. And while first timers may be intimidated by walking into a room full of devotees who have been at it for a while, Yee points out that they needn’t be.
“Newcomers come in and enjoy it,” says Yee. “It’s like brushing your teeth. It just feels good afterwards. The most basic stuff is human. It’s a very deep class that anyone can do. People are intimated by gymnastics yoga, but that’s the fluff. Yoga Shanti teachers go way beyond that.”
The League of Women Voters of the Hamptons “Hot Topics Lunch” with Rodney Yee is at noon on Wednesday, January 19, 2011 at The American Hotel, Main Street, Sag Harbor. Tickets are $25. To reserve, call 324-4637 or email lwvhlunch@gmail.com.
Top: Rodney Yee and his wife, Colleen Saidman, owner of Yoga Shanti in Sag Harbor at the studio.
