2018-10-01_OM_Yoga_Magazine

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Naked yoga

I have to say I was a little bit shocked at first when I saw your report on naked

yoga (issue 87, August 2018), but I found the way you covered this topic to be

very respectful and quite informative. Of course, it might not be for everyone (me included!)

but it soon became clear that there are many genuine and authentic yoga practitioners out

there working in this area with very good intentions. It was fascinating to read about their

stories and work, and how ‘naked yoga’ generally can bring about such powerful, liberating

feelings of joy.

Georgie, by email

Community spirit

I don’t think that anyone should be surprised at how liberating naked yoga can

be. A small but growing group of us take to a local farm and practice. There, we

are free to use a back field with a fire pit and a barn and spend some wonderful

moments exploring how yoga and mindfulness combined, calms the world

around us. We usually start with an affirmation or share our thoughts and by the

end of the weekend all feel refreshed.

Tony, by email

Tim time

It was great to see Tim

Booth, one of my pop heroes,

featured in your magazine

(issue 88, September 2018). I have always

loved the band, James – some of their

songs have been with me since I was a

teenager, so it’s wonderful to know that he

is also a keen advocate of yoga and other

alternative, healing therapies. And thanks

for the tip off about the band’s new album

• I might just check that out myself!
  Andy, by email

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om beginnings

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om body

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06/08/2018 15:09:

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Singer-songwriter Tim Booth of James explains how yoga, medpractices help him survive extraordinary times. By David Holzeritation and dance

Tim Booth

OM meets...

try everything. Luckily, after 10 months, I found, for myself, proof that some kind of intelligence existed. I found it in meditation, which was great for an impoverished student because you didn’t have to

pay anyone. Were you ever into the rock and roll lifestyle?

No. Now, I hardly ever drink. I’ll take drugs a couple of times a year but, if I’m doing that, it’ll be more like going on a shamanic medicine journey.^

Did you continue with yoga after your teenage dalliance?I still do yoga but not as religiously. Every week or couple of weeks I’ll go to a restorative class in Topanga, near where I live, taught by

a beautiful teacher called Sibyl Buck. Her awareness of anatomy is so deep. But, at the moment, I’m less interested in yoga than in meditation. I’m probably meditating for two hours a day. When I’m

touring, I’m dancing so much that my body really needs to rest so I find meditation more useful and I switch. When I’m at home I’m dancing a lot and teaching.

I’ve read that it was your distinctive dancing style that led to you being invited to join James in the first place. Could you tell me about your dance practice and teaching?

I’m trained in 5Rhythms. I met its founder Gabrielle Roth through synchronicity. We were twin souls, beloveds through time. A few years later, she married me and my wife, Kate Shela. Kate is the

greatest 5Rhythms teacher I’ve ever been to. People fly into LA just to work with her. I teach her classes when she’s travelling. But I’m moving away from 5Rhythms now.

E

arly on in our interview, Tim Booth, best known as the singer in English band James, tells me: “I got into yoga in 1977 or 78, when I was 17. This was when yoga was

yoga, but I really got into it. I was going out with the vicar’s daughter new to the UK. I started going to this lovely class in Manchester. Everyone thought I was mad to be doing

at the time and I took her to one of the classes. A month later, her father wrote this piece in the parish magazine about how yoga was the devil’s work, invading the country, and that we Christians had to

make a stand against it.”yoga to try and mend the damage done to his body after years of Tim Booth is not the kind of rock and roll animal who takes up

excess. As the anecdote proves, he’s always gone his own way.sold over 25 million albums worldwide. But his life as a teacher of He’s best known as the singer in the band James, who have

dynamic movement dance practice 5Rhythms and other modalities is an essential part of who he is.Our interview was conducted over Skype. Booth was in London,

where he spends three months of the year – the rest of the time he lives in LA. Frank and open, he is clearly committed to the path he’s chosen and extremely well-informed. In conversation, he’s engaging

and irreverent.I began by asking Tim how he discovered alternative

ways of thinking.I had an inherited liver disease that manifested at the age of 11 and nearly killed me at 21. I was hospitalised and revived. Because

Western medicine had nothing for me, I had no choice but to throw myself into anything I could get my hands on and see what helped. I managed to kind of cure myself using alternative medicines,

although the liver condition can kick in after jet lag or too many days without sleep.

Was there a spiritual dimension to all this?I’d rather not use the word “spiritual”. It always has a kind of superior/inferior dynamic to it. But I would have used the word back

then, when I was very militant. I’d had a miserable 10 years with the liver disease which had been undiagnosed. I thought it was me. I thought my frame of mind was jaundiced. I really was fed up with

life and gave myself a year to find proof of the existence of God or some kind of intelligence or I was checking out. I then, literally, did

om body

“I still do yoga but not as religiously. Every week or couple of weeks I’ll go

to a restorative class in Topanga, near where I live, taught by a beautiful

teacher called Sibyl Buck. Her awareness of anatomy is so deep.”

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06/08/2018 15:09:

@dorkaroundtheworld @piano_ci @healing_heritage