:: November/December 2003 Volume 2/Number 6

Teacher Profile: John Childers

By Felicia M. Tomasko

John Childers

There is a poem by Kabir, John told me, which says: a spiritual seeker can let their hair grow wild and matted and be mistaken for a goat. Or they can wear a robe, shave their head, and become a terrific talker. "I shaved my head and became a terrific talker."

John is a terrific talker-both verbally and non-verbally-communicating with his expansive gestures, his laughter and his creative spirit: Your mat…is your magic carpet, make it fly reads his studio's introductory literature. When he talks, the crinkles around his eyes, dancing lines across his face and his expressive gestures enhance his elflike resemblance. His infectious enthusiasm when teaching makes you believe that you could fly.

Three words permeate Full Spectrum Yoga studio: Peace, aloha and namaste. They are connected to gestures John demonstrated-a peace sign, Hawaiian gesticulation and prayer mudra. As a high school teacher, John taught language acquisition through gestures and movement, and now he is teaching the language of integration of hands, heart and head through gesture and movement He encourages his students to place their entire body in a mudra, or sacred shape: invoking gratitude, letting go of fear, or conveying to the body a feeling of inner calm.

Sometimes, his words come so quickly…
Drop the right left toe, straighten the right knee, tighten the right buttock, bring the left arm forward, weight even over the left foot, breathe, press the foot into the floor, feel aware…

While other times, he pauses, inviting his students to find stillness. "Exhale to your inner world." John encourages integration of body and breath; instructing students to "inhale opening like a flower and exhale folding like a bud."

Before teaching yoga, John taught high school English as a Second Language and Spanish in Culver City and South Central L.A. The story of his transition from teaching high school students language and the power of expressing themselves to teaching expression through yoga is told in pictures and clippings arranged in a three-ring binder. "How to know me in 35 seconds or less." But it takes more than 35 seconds to describe a journey that began in 1985 with an interest in meditation.

John began yoga to complement his meditation practice, but initially found it difficult. "Do you realize that you don't bend at all in your back?" his teacher asked him; John was that stiff and rigid. It's hard for me to believe that this flexible and youthful 49-year-old who describes himself as his "best advertisement for yoga" could have ever been stiff.

Meeting a group of Japanese Zen monks who could "do full cobra with their feet on their head" inspired John. He moved in with the monks at a community house in L.A., left teaching and followed a rigorous daily schedule of meditation, chanting, silence and yoga. John eventually threw himself on the doorstep of Ganga White at the White Lotus Foundation, where he completed the teacher training in 1991.

"Ganga gave me the foundation for me to be my own person; the trust and confidence to be creative, artistic and take creative license." John took this creativity to heart and began teaching the integration of thought and gesture, first teaching at Visions and Dreams, a metaphysical bookstore in Costa Mesa, then as one of the first five teachers at Yoga Place . On January 1, 2000, he opened Full Spectrum Yoga in Newport Beach.

"I want to teach yoga to the world," John told me. He feels that the practice and teaching of yoga can change the world. Yoga, and our connection with mind, spirit and body, contributes to what John describes as a revolutionary paradigm shift. "How we view ourselves and how we view the world is related to how we face our personal fears about our body. Our practice of yoga brings us face to face with those fears. And as we get better about facing fears and breathing into those, we can face the fears of people who are different than we are."

According to John, yoga not only provides us with the means to change the world, but the means to expand the practice itself. While we honor the integrity and diversity of yoga, we are fortunate to have the unique opportunity to experience and become exposed to an incredible breadth of traditions, practices, teachers and lineages. John says that, rather than experiencing a yoga tradition or lineage as a single tree separate from the plants and animals around it, "we have a rainforest effect." In his practice and teaching, John embraces the full spectrum found in a lush rainforest.

 

John Childers can be reached at www.fullspectrumyoga.com and at Full Spectrum Yoga in Newport Beach.