:: September/October 2002 Volume 1/Number 1

First in a three-part series
examining LA Yoga in the
past, present and future.

Swamis, Hippies and Hollywood
An LA Yoga Retrospective

By Adam Skolnick

Peter Sellers and Ganga White, 1970's

It hit me one afternoon at my neighborhood yoga studio as I lay in Savasana. I completed a rigorous practice and relaxed deeply into a realization that yoga, my most treasured and beneficial addiction, was truly saving me. We in Los Angeles enjoy one of the richest and deepest yoga environments in the world, and I have often wondered how yoga came to LA. Over time this seed of curiosity has germinated into a fully formed question: How did my fellow students and I become a link in a chain dating back centuries? It turns out, that the history of yoga in Los Angeles is largely a colorful story about visionary teachers.

Endeavoring West

A devout young yogi is immersed in a sea of Western faces. The diversity is dizzying; the scenery, vastly different from his rural village of Ranchi, India. America. Surely, these people are Americans, he observes.

Suddenly a stream of light pierces the darkness and Paramahansa Yogananda, 27, is startled out of deep meditation. He is not in America at all. He is in the familiar Ranchi School storeroom sitting among discarded boxes and several inches of dust, face-to-face with one of his young students. "I have news for you," he says to the boy, betraying his premonition, "The Lord is calling me to America!" The year is 1920.

The next day, out of the blue, he is invited to address a religious conference in the U.S. His head spinning, Yogananda seeks the advice of his teacher, Sri Yukteswar.
"All doors are open for you," advises his Guru. "It is now or never!"
"What do I know about public speaking? Seldom have I given a lecture, and never in English," Yogananda protests.
"English or no English, your words on yoga shall be heard in the West."
That was an understatement.

Paramahansa Yogananda is one of the most well-known historical figures in American Yoga. Los Angeles was his base of operations, and it was here that he built Self Realization Fellowship (SRF) into the largest yoga organization in the world.	Paramahansa Yogananda

Three years after arriving in America, Yogananda came to Los Angeles and enjoyed his most successful lecture to date. The Los Angeles Times reported on "the extraordinary spectacle of thousands...being turned away an hour before the advertised opening of [his] lecture with the 3,000-seat [LA Philharmonic Hall] filled to its utmost capacity." Nine months later, in October, 1925, he established the SRF International Headquarters at a vacant Mt. Washington hotel.

Why were thousands interested in Yogananda during the Roaring '20s? People were drawn to his subtle approach. Lauren Landress of SRF says, "[Yogananda] was interested in unifying all religions." He often used Christianity as a launching pad to begin his lectures. Jesus Christ, according to Yogananda, was a realized master. At SRF centers, depictions of Jesus and other luminaries are as common a sight as images honoring Indian saints. However, Yogananda offered something that the religious establishment did not; a physical experience of God. He writes, "The universal appeal of yoga is its approach to God through a daily usable scientific method, rather than a devotional fervor that, for the average man, is beyond his emotional scope."

"During the decade of 1920 to 1930 my yoga classes were attended by tens of thousands of Americans," writes Yogananda. His influence pervaded all available avenues. He visited with American Indian, Jewish, Islamic and Christian leaders at his Mt. Washington hermitage. He established an LA-based publishing house; opened a restaurant in Hollywood; and even hosted a talk show on KNX.

Strong leadership development through monastic channels built SRF into an organization boasting 500 retreat centers and temples around the world. Southern California is home to centers in San Diego, Encinitas, Long Beach, Hollywood, the Lake Shrine in Pacific Palisades and the Mt. Washington Headquarters. The Encinitas hermitage was built for Yoganandaas a gift from his students. It was here that he wrote Autobiography of a Yogi, a widely read work now translated into 18 languages.

He died after speaking at a banquet in honor of the Indian
Ambassador held at the Biltmore Hotel on March 7, 1952. His final words were, "India, the United States and God." It is generally held among SRF followers that he achieved Mahasamadhi, a conscious exit from the body. The mortuary director responsible for handling him writes in a letter dated March 27, "this state of perfect preservation of a body is...an unparalleled one."

Hatha Madness

Indra Devi

Indra Devi was one of the first Hatha yoga teachers of note in America. The Russian born woman lived and studied in India for 15 years. In 1947 she opened a studio in Hollywood. Both through her popular books on yoga and by training teachers, she helped to facilitate the spread of yoga from LA across the country. She also instructed numerous celebrities, helping to link the Hollywood and yoga communities.

Richard Hittleman also had early success intermingling Hollywood with Hatha yoga. His mission was to dispense "yoga insights in terms and practices acceptable to Eisenhower-era Americans," writes Richard Leviton in his 1993 article, Celebrating 100 Years of Yoga in America. Hittleman did so through the development of the first yoga television program, filmed and aired in Los Angeles in 1961. His program emphasized the physical health benefits of yoga without delving into spirituality. The show's success paved the way to further explorations of televised instruction. It inspired Lilias Folan's long-running PBS yoga series, and should be considered the grandfather to today's yoga video.

The year 1965 brought the end of a 40-year-old restrictive Indian immigration law. Swamis of all devotional paths seized the moment, in the hopes of following Yogananda's lead in spreading the Eastern gospel. The moment was ripe for such teachers as the hippie movement was picking up steam. It was "a wild, turbulent, magical time," says Ganga White, a renowned Hatha teacher with yoga roots in LA. In 1966, at the age of 20, White attended several lectures at the East-West Cultural Center on 9th and Vermont, and became interested in yoga. He didn't learn asana from these lectures; it was the philosophy that attracted him.

"I was much more interested in the mystical, the spiritual and the psychological, and even though I'm deeply into it (asana) now, that's still what I'm most interested in," says White. In fact, upon learning that there was a physical aspect to yoga, he was "actually kind of surprised."

His yoga odyssey eventually led him to Vishnudevananda, a Swami in the Sivananda lineage who managed a retreat center near Montreal. White spent four months learning every major type of yoga - raja, karma, bhakti,
(jnana), kundalini, and hatha. At the end of his residence he was
instructed to open a studio in LA.

The new studio, Center for Yoga, had a major impact in Hatha yoga's development locally and nationally. Aspiring yogis came to live (it was a residential center until 1991), study yoga, and apprentice in running a yoga studio. It hosted Swamis, Yogis and Rinpoches coming to LA for the first time.

In the early '70s White broke with the Sivananda lineage, and Center for Yoga shaped into the prototypical independent studio that American Hatha yogis are familiar with today. "We had to evolve our yoga practice into something more relevant to modern times...standing on the shoulders of the past," says White.

The switch worked tremendously well. Center for Yoga's independence enabled it to be the first center to host BKS Iyengar and K. Pattabi Jois in LA. Ganga White also benefited from celebrity clientele. Ravi Shankar
visited his studio and brought Peter Sellers with him, who became a devoted student.

Peter Sellers and Ganga White

Tracey Rich, White's life and business partner, describes his
impact, "Ganga was one of the first to bring the precision of Iyengar and the fire and flow of Ashtanga together." Flow Yoga is currently one of the most popular forms of Hatha in the country, but unlike other visionary teachers, White never patented his style. "Yoga is what happens personally, a relationship to body and breath," explains Rich.

"Partner Yoga" was also created and disseminated from here. Ana Forrest, a lead teacher at Center for Yoga in the '70s, and Ganga White developed a partner practice and eventually published Double Yoga in 1980. Even then, Forrest knew she was a part of something special, "What we had going was the best available [in LA]. It was wonderful," she says.

Kundalini Rising

Yogi Bhajan

Yogi Bhajan, a devout Sikh, entered the U.S. in December 1968. Moments after meeting him, Shakti Kaur, today a high energy 73, became his first student. "I've come to train teachers, not to get disciples," he told her. Before long, she was his personal assistant. The two of them organized yoga classes at YMCA facilities; first in Alhambra, then in the North Valley. Shakti stretched his turbans and chauffeured him to class, while maintaining her job as a waitress at the Beverly Hilton Hotel.

Yogi Bhajan's living situation was tumultuous. He was asked to leave one residence because he had turned his bed into an altar and slept on the floor; another because the host's girlfriend kept waking up early to chant with the handsome yogi. His classes filled up quickly, especially those at the East West Cultural Center, where every night 80 to 90 hippies emerged from packed vans to take class. This disturbed parents from an affiliated school, and soon Yogi Bhajan was booted yet again.

A permanent location was secured at an antique shop on Melrose and Robertson. Classes were comprised of Yogi Bhajan, Shakti, and dozens of flower children. Shakti reflects, "They (the young people) thought I was extremely uptight, which I was, and I thought they were extremely unruly and undisciplined, which they were." Yogi Bhajan was dedicated to teaching the young people because he could tell they were searching for bliss through drugs.

Shakti remembers Yogi Bhajan telling his students, "Do Kundalini yoga. You can get higher, it's legal and there are no side effects." He never advertised or actively recruited students, but word spread, and soon kids were driving into Los Angeles from all over the country. The aspiring yogis had to clear the antique shop's showroom every night for class, until they converted the garage into a studio and called it Guru Ram Das Ashram. Class was held twice a day, and he demanded that students pay for class. Shakti recalls his words, "If you want to receive, make an offering." Surreptitiously he often left loose change on the pavement in front of the studio's entrance, and accepted stones and flowers to ensure nobody came empty handed and everyone was included.

Shakti's transformation from student to teacher occurred in a blink of an eye. One day at the YMCA, Yogi Bhajan simply left class halfway through and asked Shakti to take over. She has been teaching ever since, and has written two books on Kundalini basics. Guru Singh, who wore nothing but homemade leather pants and moccasins in those days, had a similar experience. Today Singh is a popular local teacher. Yogi Bhajan's students followed him everywhere, including to the Gurdwara (Sikh temple). Shakti is adamant that Yogi Bhajan never persuaded anyone to become Sikh, but many did. Guru Singh was the first student to tie a turban; Shakti and the others followed his lead, and within a few years the American Sikh Movement was born. Kundalini yoga teachers soon fanned out from Los Angeles and settled in cities all over the world to teach.

"Los Angeles was the heart of the consciousness movement," explains Guru Singh. "We were looking for something that captured the spirit and we found yoga. From that, we needed something that enabled us to exist and we built industry." American Sikhs delved into private projects as diverse as alternative medicine, restaurants, food manufacturing, private security and even brass beds. Guru Singh is quick to point out that this trend was generation wide, and not peculiar to his Sikh brethren. "What started out of the LA yoga movement became a worldwide holistic movement that went far beyond yoga," he says proudly.

The yoga boom of the late '60s and '70s mellowed to a murmur during the Reagan years, but as Generation X grew into adulthood, the "holistic movement" went into overdrive. In America today, tens of millions crave organic food, alternative medicine, yoga and meditation. Ours is a lifestyle surging in popularity. Los Angeles is the epicenter. Evidence of yoga's impact is everywhere; in movies, television, advertising, schools, and perhaps most significantly, the marketplace. However, growth, while energizing, is not automatically good, and as yoga hits the mainstream and millions of dollars flood the yoga scene, we must work to balance commodity with community. Thankfully we are armed with a tradition unique in its ability to promote balance and serenity. And we are supported by history.

Adam Skolnick is a screenwriter, freelance journalist and environmental activist living in West Hollywood; and if it weren't for yoga, he'd be extremely difficult to be around.