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Q&A with Gabriel Halpern about yoga

What led you to yoga?

Back in 1969, I learned some yoga in an acting class. I was already carrying back injuries from teenage athletics. So I was looking for a therapeutic intervention at that time (1969) although I didn’t realize until I starting taking classes at a yoga ashram a year later. My good fortune led me to Iyengar Yoga which has fashioned my healing and ability to share what I love with people.

What lasting impact has yoga had on your life?
My whole outlook on life has changed. What I chose to live for, not money and power but realization of my own depths and the depths of life. Living with standards of ethics which challenge me to be real. Yoga has taught me to keep up my practice over a lifetime and live a life where the spiritual values of service, compassion, relationship, and community abounds and prospers.

Have students changed over the decades?
Yes, as I have. Students are more interested in integrating yoga into their lives and not just doing poses. There is so much offered to students now in the way of teachings and products to work with on one’s own. Students take on bits from many traditions and find the best of each to make an amalgam of their personal spiritual journey. Ands certainly more people of all types of socio-economic backgrounds do yoga. Not an initiated elite, or just those who can afford to pay for lessons.