Here's part 2 of our Interview with David Robson - in this video he talks about how practicing yoga has changed his life.
I was probably a fairly terrible person, you know. I was very irresponsible just, you know, searching, searching a lot. So hey, I spent a lot of time traveling when I was a kid, and usually, you know, I went to other countries. I would come home to Canada to work and then go away for a long period, like nine months or a year and then come back and do the same thing again.
And then after a while I figured I was just running. I was always running and finding it hard to stay still; just kind of deal with things. So yeah, it took some pretty strong shifts for me to kind of stay still and experience whatever I had to experience, you know. And be who I had to be, and I'm still trying to do that. You know, I still figure out ways to run away all the time. So yeah, I would say it's a pretty big change, if we can change. I still see aspects of old me all the time, you know. So parts are slower to change.
Looking back I've always been interested in like higher states of consciousness. You know, I think the Star Wars generation actually, the whole Yoda thing, and I think that shaped us a lot, Joseph Campbell and yeah. So yeah, I think that was kind of steering me, that message and that idea and whoever I identified with in that story. I guess we all identified with Luke, I don't know. But I was always interested in esoteric ideas and the idea of higher consciousness, and practices that could bring us to enlightenment.
I feel like totally overwhelmed by my practice all the time, yeah, in a big way. But I also feel after time now I realize that that's when I am doing it when I let it overwhelm me, you know. When I try to consign it to a place in my life, you know, and like I've got it figured out. And then it becomes something I just have to check off in my day, you know. It becomes almost like a chore. When it's overwhelming me all the time, it's just around me all the time, and I'm constantly working as hard as I can, you know, to understand it and to integrate it. And that's when I feel like I'm doing it, you know what I mean? So I have no idea.
The reason we run away is so we don't have to change, yeah. That change is, I think, that's the giving back, or that's the work like that's what we want to happen, but it's such a terrible thing, you know, because it puts you onto a shifting ground. You stop knowing who you are, what you are, what you're doing, you know, and you have to live like that all the time. It's terrible in some ways, you know. I mean, the practice tells us in some ways, "Okay, well if this circumstance comes up, you should do this, you know." There's certain ways to act and behave, but you know what I mean. When you really get in touch with your motivation and stuff, you realize you don't why you're doing what you're doing, you know. That's the truth of it.
Hopefully, you know, you mature so much, or you change so much during the practice or through the practice that you don't have the same motivations anymore, you know. So if you keep doing it, why are you doing it? You're a totally different person if that's possible. I keep thinking that like, I don't know how much we change, you know.
David travels around the world teaching Ashtanga Yoga so if you ever get a chance to catch him make sure you do, he's a great teacher and person as you can tell from these interviews. You can also find him at AYCT in Toronto running the Mysore program with his wife Stan.
Click links below for Part 1 & Part 3 of interviews:
Part 1 | Part 3
To receive more videos like this plus a chance to win an Ekaminhale Tank Top sign up for our email list here