:: November/December 2003 Volume 2/Number 6

Sitting Down With: Erich Schiffmann

By Julie Deife

Bio: Born and raised in L.A., meditating at 16 following an interest in baseball. Mailed off a handwritten letter one day to J. Krishnamurti and was accepted at the age of 18 to study in England with him; deepened the practice with Desikachar and Iyengar in India, Europe with Dona Holleman, Vanda Scaravelli and the ripe yoga climate of the '70s & '80s.

Author of Yoga:The Spirit and Practice of Moving Into Stillness (1996) and most recently Live I and Live II videos he shot and edited himself. Erich Schiffmann has made his way home to Santa Monica, CA where at his home studio he graciously shared the following.

 

Julie: Do you reflect back on the years when you were discovering yoga?

Erich: Not very often, but every once in a while, and I like the way it played out. I look back and I'm surprised that I was fortunate enough to meet the people that I did at such a young age and that the doors kept on opening and I just kept going through them.

Julie: What motivated you then?

Erich: One of my main motivations was that I didn't want to end up like my father who seemed, from my perspective, to be stuck in a job that frustrated him. He wanted to be a singer/actor; he was really creative in that way but instead he was doing this job that he didn't like.

Julie: Any idea what you would like to be doing 15 years from now?

Erich: No, I've never thought about things like that. When I start getting concerned about what I will be doing at that age my energy goes down. So I'd rather not go down that trail and instead do the things now that I have energy for. I'm writing another book, I'm making videos, teaching a lot. I think doing the things that you do have energy for, will secure your future.

Julie: What is the book about?

Erich: The book is sort of like the first one, without the poses. It's more just yoga philosophy made easy, the way that I understand it. I haven't read as much yoga literature as I could've, but I've read a lot of it, and I think what I am teaching is actual yoga. Yet, I'm not making reference to what other people have defined it as. I'm trying to learn about it, and discover, and say it in a way that rings true to me.

Julie: Which is?

Erich: The word yoga, the way I think of it, means conscious union with the Infinite. It is not so much that you are re-yoking with the Infinite - you're already yoked with the Infinite - but pausing and feeling the energy that constitutes you and getting out of your head what you think you are supposed to do and giving yourself permission to do as the energy is wanting to do through you. That is how you evidence the inherent harmony of the oneness of the Infinite.

Julie: Who or what inspires your practice?

Eric: First, I like to do it. The practice definitely inspires the practice. I am interested in inner listening, going with the flow of what the inner feeling has inspired me to do. Some of the time it looks like cooking lunch and some of the time it's just doing your thing, doing your life. On sort of a subset level would be personal time that I spend in here, which is partly for me and partly for teaching. A lot of what I do when I'm bending over is, I'm thinking of how this will work in class. I like aiming my personal practice with other people in mind partly because I give myself permission to spend more time in here doing my practice. It's not just me fiddling around by myself; it has repercussions.

Julie: Why do your classes incorporate so much meditation?

Eric: I think yoga originated from meditation. At the beginning the poses hadn't been invented. People were sitting around meditating. When you are meditating you feel the energy. The energy moves you to move and more or less it's like the poses were channeled.

For someone who is not in the meditative state the practice helps you get there. It just keeps reinforcing itself and the more you do a formal practice like that, then it plays out in your day. You start doing your whole life by feeling the energy and kind of surfing the flow. You know, just going where it feels right. If something doesn't feel right it will feel more wrong than it used to and it will be easier to just stay on the place where you are balanced and in flow.

Julie: Your teaching techniques seem to be mainly original. How do you come up with your techniques or do you teach, as you were taught?

Erich: At first I taught the way I was taught. I was really inspired by Iyengar and I tried to go in there and teach like Iyengar. I'd have to listen to the Rolling Stones before class and get all amped up. I was trying to do it because he was the role model. I was slapping and slugging people the way he did. One day I was teaching at the Krishnamurti School, which is basically for teenagers. There was a boy in the class who wasn't pulling his kneecap up in triangle pose, class after class. I was slapping him the way I was supposed to. And one day he just hauled off and slugged me back and I totally got it. It changed my ways.

Julie: How so?

Erich: I went through this whole period where I didn't go to anyone else's class for 10 years and just stayed home and practiced and tried to figure out a way of expressing the way it actually felt to me and that is what I am still trying to do. If I hear somebody say something in a way that sounds accurate, I will incorporate that. But mostly it just comes out of personal practice and then trying it out in class to see if it works.

Julie: In class you ask students to 'pause' and practice a certain decision making process when doing things like shopping. Where did this come from?

Eric: I was doing the Course of Miracles, is how I started doing it. The idea was to pause every hour and do your lesson, and I kept forgetting. So I bought one of these beeping watches to help me remember. I was in a store and I realized that here is a good chance. It just came down to whenever you think that you have a decision, 'should I get the red or green apples?' pause, ask, listen, hear, and then dare to do as the feeling encourages you to do.

Sometimes the red apple or green apple will light up and one will be more attractive than the other and so you go for the one that is most attractive, which is cool because it teaches you that you can trust what you are attracted to.
The fear is that you if you do what you are attracted to do you'll end up in the gutter again, so we've basically learned not to trust ourselves. But in trusting the Infinite it's like a different sense of Self that is trustworthy.

Julie: Where are your thoughts taking you now?

Eric: Now, what I feel like learning a lot about is death. Death isn't real - death is a fake.
After my father died, about 12 years ago, I had a vision of him as I was driving to yoga class. He said, "well, I now believe in life after death." But what I' m finding really interesting, is that if life is really ongoing, and I think it is, then after a while you live and die enough times that eventually you will get it.
Wow! I didn't really die last time I died. That gunshot didn't actually kill me. The cancer didn't actually kill me. Until now the best description that we have had is reincarnation, which explains ongoing life. But if ongoing life is really what is going on and if you don't really die when you die, then it seems conceivable that we could stop believing in the inevitability of death.

Julie: If this is true, what keeps us from believing in that?

Erich: Our mindset is convinced that you grow old, age, and die, but that you will have a new body, etc. But if eternal life is the way it is, then as you become aware of that fact it will weaken your conviction in the inevitability of death, which should make it possible to then evidence only the ongoingness of life that is really happening. And so eternal life or ongoing life looks like reincarnation now because we still believe in death.
There will still be change, things will be constantly morphing into newness - but is getting distorted into what it looks like at the moment. The trick is to stay with your actual now experience so that you feel the energy which is eternally being manifest.

Julie: What about the yin and the yang and the dark and the light. Do we have dark forces?

Eric: I don't think there are dark forces, there's only the one force. But, there are those who are ignorant of it and are therefore defining themselves as something less than the Infinite, Hitler for example, and therefore do stupidly aggressive things to protect their group. But if you define your group as anything less than the Infinite then it in effect is going to be at odds with everyone else. Really your group is the Infinite so the way to protect your group is to truly see who your group is and that there aren't really any enemies out there that you've got to protect yourself against.

Julie: So you don't believe that we all have a dark side?

Eric: We have a side we are not aware of. My sense is that we don't have a dark side and there is only the God energy manifest infinitely. You can think that there is something else. You can think there is the boogie man behind the door and be totally creeped. But I think the trick is to look through the appearance to the reality that has got to be there. The only thing it really could be is the infinite in specific expression. If it seems to be anything other than that either you are not clear about it, or it's not clear about it, but in either case if either one of you can look through the appearance it will help to dispel the illusion of there being something other than God happening.

Julie: There is a debate to some degree going on about large class size vs. small class size vs. personal instruction. What is your opinion?

Eric: I think they are all good at the right moment. Like when I do a workshop for example there are a lot of people in the workshop. Basically what I try to say is feel the energy that constitutes you, give yourself permission to go with the flow of it even if you can't explain it, 'cause you won't be able to explain why you are being guided to do certain things. I don't feel like that message is being diluted or would be heard better if it was one on one or one on 10 or one on 100. That sort of thing is a universal so I feel ok about that.

Most of the classes that I teach are not huge but are not small either, 40- 50 people. Part of the idea is that I try and do things in class that I think everyone can approximate. It's always the case that some people are going to think it is too easy and some people are going to think it is too hard. So I just try to swim through the middle and communicate that if it is too hard, find a way to make it easier; if it is too easy, try to find a way to make it harder and sort of play the game of what we are doing but basically learn how to fine tune the thing for you in that sort of situation. I don't feel the message is being compromised and practicing with a group actually seems to deepen people's participation. People tend to meditate better in a group.

Almost the only time that I would prefer to do a private with anybody is if they have a specific physical problem or specific emotional thing that they want to talk about privately.

Julie: Yet you did study with Desikachar and say in your book that personal practice, one on one, was part of what you learned in the beginning.

Erich: Yes, in those days when he was teaching it was all privates, there wasn't such a thing as a group class in that lineage as far as I know. I think it is different now. I don't feel compelled to go that route. And I'm not so sure that that was the only tradition anyway.

Julie: What do you think of the term 'commercialization of yoga'?

Eric: I think you can interperet it with a nice healthy spin. For example, the fashion show at the Yoga Expo. I didn't see the fashion show and on the one hand it sounds silly, but on the other hand it is yoga appropriate clothes; we all wear clothes. I don't mind having a preview of what is available. It seems ok to me.

Julie: Do you think that people are over reacting?

Erich: Totally, yes, I guess I do think that.

Julie: Do you think people over reacted to Bikram's competition, now that you've seen it?

Erich: Yes.

Julie: What did you think of the competition?

Erich: I enjoyed the competition. I liked it. It was fun. I didn't see the whole lead up to it only the finals. (whispering - 'I liked it'.) I like watching the Olympics. I like watching sports.

Julie: Do you have a favorite asana?

Erich: Yeah, and it's always changing. I let myself do a lot of my favorites while they are my favorites. Just like in my car at the moment I have Neil Young's cd, song 17 playing over and over. I don't even know what it is called and I'll probably get super sick of it at some point.

Julie: What would you like to say in closing?

Erich: Keep being a student of the one and only teacher, the Infinity of God, and dare to do as your deepest feelings prompt you to do. That's how you can help embody the realization of yoga in the world.

 

Erich Schiffmann teaches workshops nationwide and has a regular schedule of classes at Sacred Movement in Venice. www.movingintostillness.com