Australian_Yoga_Journal_October_2017

98

october 2017

yogajournal.com.au

AYJ INTERVIEW

inspiration

MICK BARNES, 58, was addicted to

heroin until the age of 27, and then he

was in and out of jail until the age of

40. He became hooked on yoga as a
    spiritual practice 15 years ago and now
    he runs The Yoga Factory in Sydney.
    Mick is concerned about the modern
    growth in yoga fads which he feels
    threaten to destroy the genuine
    teachings of yoga. Mick is a walking
    example of self-transformation,
    although he modestly admits it is still
    a work in progress. He believes that
    self-transformation comes from
    choosing one of the four yoga paths,
    and then practicing according to the
    prescribed methodology.

How did you first come to yoga?

My life’s been crazy. I grew up with an

alcoholic father, a war veteran, who was

violent and so I grew up full of fear and

I didn’t understand anything about

emotions or trust or relationships. He

died when I was 13 and, the year after, I

started using heroin. It was a comfort

drug. I used till I was 27. But, when I

stopped I was socially useless. I had no

living skills. I had nothing going on.

So, it didn’t end there. I’d put down the

Deviations,

transformations,

meditations

He grew up full of fear,

started using drugs and

spent years in and out

of jail until eventually

Mick Barnes turned his

life around through

yoga. Now, he wants to

continue to heal, teach

others, and keep yoga

authentic.

Interview by

Tamsin Angus-Leppan

drugs but I thought if I made money I’d

be able to catch up because I had no

skills. As a drug addict, you’re very

cunning, so I’d given up drugs but I

continued to be involved in crime and

making money. I got out of prison for

the last time when I was 40 years old. I

hadn’t used drugs for a long time and

I’d evolved, I’d done a lot of work on

myself in jail and studied some

Buddhism. When I found yoga in my

early 40s and I looked at some books

and found it was very similar to

Buddhism, that’s where my passion for

it fell. Life’s hard at the best of times,

and the yoga for me was where I could

still wrestle the demons and learn to

live in my own skin and put to bed all

the stuff that causes me pain. It’s always

a work in progress.

What’s your definition of success?

After I fell in love with yoga, I said, “I’m

going to teach this and try to share it.” I

did teacher training and a month after I

finished, I opened my first yoga school at

Camperdown. That was nine years ago.

You have to resolve your past or it has a

strange way of affecting the present

moment, which in turn dictates the

future. Past influences right now, and

the future is a habitual repetition of the

past. That’s why I’m so passionate that

we don’t destroy these teachings. It’s a

concern of mine. The science of the

practice really works. You need firstly to

choose a yoga path, one that is suitable

for you, whether it’s bhakti (devotion),

gyana (self-study), karma (service) or the

one I’ve chosen, raja (self-discipline).

Once you choose your path, you’ll

understand there’s a real science to it,

there’s a methodology. When we just do

random stuff, we are missing the point

and there is no transformation. I don’t

want to sound like a killjoy, and I know

some people find their way to yoga

through all sorts of silly classes, and

uneducated teachers. What concerns

me is the goat yoga, beer yoga, stand-up

paddleboard yoga. Sure, they are doing

asana, but it has diluted yoga. People

said to me that I would never survive

on running classes alone, and I looked

around and saw what everybody else

was doing, and I did the opposite.

I just teach. You want to learn, you

have to come to class. I don’t run

retreats or workshops. The stability

of my income comes from teaching

12-week beginners’ courses. The

school flourishes on classes alone.