Karthik Thoguluva is a great example of how you can find a career by chance and not choice.
His choice or what he defined as his passion was VFX.
Enamored by Hollywood blockbusters, he thought that his calling in life would be in managing
special effects in movies in India.
But a persistent health problem forced him to turn to yoga and that's where he found
his lifelong passion.
As a yoga teacher in Dubai, he's pursuing a completely different set of objectives from
where he first began.
And that's where this conversation and this career journey takes its course from movies
to the realm of philosophy and spiritualism.
Let's talk to Karthik and figure out how it all happened.
Hi Karthik.
Hello Venu.
Thank you for that wonderful introduction.
Good to have you on the show.
Good to be here.
I think ever since Deepa, my colleague who has had the opportunity to learn from you,
she told me you're a very hard taskmaster.
You don't take shortcuts.
She says you have shortcuts in your classes.
Yeah when it comes to teaching, I think I become that.
So I think it also comes from my teachers.
So I teach the way my teacher teach.
So I think it's partly me and partly my teacher.
So you've been a yoga teacher for more than a decade now, right?
Yeah, this is my 12th year as a yoga teacher.
So first four years, three years I was teaching in Chennai.
So that's where I know Deepa from.
So after that I moved to UAE and it's been nine years here.
That's quite a long stint.
But let's start with how life has defined you.
What is the early part of your life like?
What are things like in school?
The school part is mostly a nightmare.
Not that my friends or my other students were bullying me.
It was mostly the teachers who were kind of mean to me, I would say.
I don't know why they have to do that, but they did anyway.
Probably because I was puny, like very small in size.
I grew up later on in life.
I grew up.
At that I was very puny and I was very shy.
And I think that's what makes them to pick me on.
I think so.
I'm not going to define that that's the reason, but I think they found someone who is puny
and easy to mock.
But that actually led to a lot of fear to go in school.
Mom is my comfort zone at the time, of course, when school is not working out, when there's
no one to support you psychologically in school, right?
So yeah, I was close to my mom.
That lasted for a long time, to be honest.
And during my teen years, I needed my mom.
I was not very studious person academically.
Of course, I'm not great at it.
I did not make that many friends in school.
Also, maybe one or two, right?
But I think that was also a good thing, how it molded my life for later on.
It made me into an introvert, I would say.
I found comfort either being alone or being with my mom.
Simple.
It gives you a lot of awareness in the environment when you're alone most of the time.
When you isolate yourself, then, of course, there's a lot of things to observe at the
time.
I think that helped really well in my visual effects career and also yoga career, because
both needed a sense of observation, first of all.
In visual effects industry, as an artist, you need to observe outside, right?
You need to see things the way they are and beyond.
When it comes to yoga, more about observation of insight.
What's going on inside your head?
What's going on in your mind?
So I think the skill of observation was common to both.
Let's say, for example, in a visual effects industry, if you take a leaf, you don't just
see the leaf.
Of course, you see the leaf with its color, its veins, and its texture and everything,
but you can also see beyond that how the leaf came into existence in the first place.
It just didn't randomly come up.
It had to go through a lot of process.
Like, you need a soil, you need sunlight, you need rain and water, and then everything
has to come together to form that one single leaf.
It's a miracle.
As Dean of Hans says, that everything that you see is interconnected to everything that's
around.
So nothing comes out of nothing, right?
So it's a great observation.
I think I had that in the very beginning, I think.
Not liking school, not being bright in my academic years has got nothing to do with
what I'm doing right now.
I mean, to put it in a traceback, my first experience of the observation, I really remember
I was six years old.
I was playing hide and seek with my friends.
I was the one seeking.
One corner I stood, not going to exaggerate this, but at that moment I stood still and
I was suddenly I was thinking that I'm thinking.
And you were six at the time?
I can clearly tell the year it was 1989.
I was six years old.
I remember the year because when we touch someone, when we seek someone, we say the
year for some reason, 1989.
So that means that he's out.
That moment is a very profound experience for me that I can still remember.
That lasted for like maybe a few seconds.
And the fact is it came in the middle of a physical activity, which is not when you expect
yourself to become aware of this process of thinking.
And you're six.
A lot of people have had this experience of asking people, what was your earliest memory?
And that normally comes a little later in life.
Invariably it's about things that have had a dramatic or profound impact.
Yours came in the middle of a session of hide and seek.
And I like the way that you say I was seeking.
Now that you say about it, yeah, I was actually.
It didn't last forever, but it's a very profound memory.
I think that also played later on.
That was more conscious effort, checking what I'm thinking.
Okay.
Now I can observe outside and observe inside both in equanimity.
So what's outside and what's inside both needs an observation.
Okay.
I think that really helped me in me being an artist as well.
So the transition wasn't that difficult for me because it's just that you have to turn
inwards.
That's it.
How did your interest in VFX come about?
Okay.
That's another one.
I was an eighth standard at the time.
Okay.
They introduced the production three at that time.
The first time they did it three, which was the only time telecasted for a few hours in
the afternoon, few hours at night.
But the first time they telecasted a Hollywood movies, they probably show one movie a day.
I think so.
I was getting into it.
But between these programs, they used to play a small 10 minute or 20 minute series called
Behind the Scenes.
Okay.
They show how certain Hollywood movies were made at the time.
To be specific, they were one time they were showing a Terminator 2 judgment day, a revolutionary
breakthrough in graphics and storyline, right?
James Cameron's movie.
I was watching that for 20 minutes.
I was an eighth standard and I was mind blown by how things are changing in industry.
Clearly remember telling my brother, I want to be doing that because I was super bored
with this academic thing because it's so much stress.
I felt that was amazing.
Until 10th standard, I was not a studious fellow at all.
I failed in most of the subject time, but 11th standard, 12th standard changed because
I changed the group.
I did commerce.
Commerce was new.
Economics was new.
Accounts was new.
Everything is a new subject.
So I have to, I'm starting ground up.
It was very interesting at the time because I'm suddenly starting to understand what I'm
studying.
I'm different and I'm different.
So I started studying well and I was competing with rank holders out of sudden.
And that's like weird for me.
That's not me at all.
12th standard, of course, the board exam.
I scored really good.
It's a blessing and a curse at the same time, like they always say.
Gave me an opportunity to enter any college I want.
Okay.
I thought I'll do Loyola.
I'll do Union College.
In the morning, I can just relax and chill probably just sleep in.
And at the same time, I think it's my relatives and everybody told me, why don't you do chartered
accountancy?
I don't know how I did that.
School first, 199 out of 200.
My uncle and my dad is like, why don't you do chartered accountancy?
Okay, I'll do that.
I'll give it a try.
First two class, great.
Because it is more like a revision of 11th and 12th standard what you study.
Third class, I'm like, I didn't understand certain part.
Maybe you're not focused so much.
Fourth and fifth today, I was sitting there.
I did not understand it.
Oh my goodness.
What happened?
I was in those two days at the school and suddenly again, I felt like I'm heading back
to those childhood education.
Yeah.
Not the place you wanted to be.
I was like, okay, I can't do this and I cannot do account.
Account is not my thing.
Now the problem is I have to convince my dad what I want to do.
I have to change his mindset that I'm not good at it.
When I was in eighth standard, this visual effects industry, I was good with art and
I'm good at observation.
I'm like, okay, maybe it's time that I explored that area.
That stuck with me.
Then I took the next six months without my dad knowing about it.
I just went to certain companies to know what I should do to get into this industry and
I did my homework.
I even found an institute where they can teach what I want to become.
After six months, I told my dad, listen, this is not working out for me.
Accountancy is not my cup of tea.
It's best that I take a decision now that I leave this and try something else, which
I think I would love doing for the rest of my life.
My dad wasn't convinced because it's new, but then I had to promise him saying that,
listen, this is the last thing that you're going to spend for me.
After this, you don't have to spend on my education at all.
He was like, okay, fine, because I've already done my homework.
I know what I wanted to become.
I was so paid.
I'm so grateful that he actually accepted to do that because that's going to change
my life.
I mean, at least a decade.
I started learning multimedia because that was my cup of tea.
Where was this, Kurtek?
This was in, this is all happened in Chennai, 2001.
I started this when I was studying in college second year in Loyola.
In the morning I can do that, evening I go to college.
Third year comes, I felt that I have to focus more on my multimedia stuff, more into animation.
My mind is constantly on that, going to college, sitting in the college and I'm thinking about
what I can do in animation there.
So I have to tell my dad that, dad, it looks like I'm wasting a lot of time in college.
Let me switch to correspondence in third year so I can spend more time on this one, which
I have decided that it's going to be my rest of my life.
Well, again, he agreed.
I don't know how he risked that, but he did.
So I spent the whole day sitting on a computer doing projects after projects and just learning
and experiencing.
And gladly I was even placed in a visual effects industry at very early in third year, which
means that great learning experience from there.
Amazing.
For the next 10 years, other friends also started joining into the industry and we all
became a one good young group with a lot of energy, with a lot of aspiration.
For at least about six years, we had an amazing team, but unfortunately the industry wasn't
doing great.
There was a peak and then it hit a plateau.
This was going on.
The work is always very stressful.
It always comes with impractical deadlines and something happened during the time, the
beginning of the transition from VFX to yoga.
I once got a urine infection, which is mostly a bladder infection with a slight kidney inflammation
and stuff.
We checked for infection.
Yes, we found out.
I took the medicine, felt good for after five days like antibiotics and it felt good, but
the pain did not go away.
I met some of the best urologists in Chennai.
For three months, he's changed in medicine.
We were constantly changing something, but nothing was working.
He couldn't figure it out.
We did a lot of X-ray, MRI and everything, kidney stone possibilities, nothing.
It showed nothing.
Everything is perfect.
At one point, I found the doctor said, listen, there's nothing that I could find wrong with
you physically.
Maybe you should try yoga.
Maybe you just need to calm down.
Maybe you're overly stressed.
I always portrayed myself as a very cool person.
I told the doctor, no, no, no, I don't think there's any stress at all.
People who are stressed usually say that.
I'm like, maybe, maybe I'm just camouflaging that stress acting cool.
Maybe you should do something like yoga and you need to calm down a little bit.
You need to release the stress.
You're not sure about what source of stress was.
See, there is a job.
You enjoy the job, but when it comes to the impractical deadline, you get frustrated at
the same time, who wants to give a hundred percent when the deadline is just tomorrow,
which is totally impractical.
It's not possible at all.
Then the quality goes down.
So it's a very small industry, by the way.
Everybody knows everyone.
So we just need to know who did this job, who did this particular effect.
For me, I think it was getting very stressful because I was not able to deliver a hundred
percent.
And even if I could, the seniors weren't helping me to deliver because it has to filter through
the seniors.
And it was very frustrating time.
I think subconsciously I was holding some amount of stress.
It was just weighing me down.
The doctor mentioned yoga.
If that's going to be my last resort, I'm going to go for it.
Same evening, I went to Google it somewhere near my workplace where I can just go do yoga
and come to work again.
So I looked for it.
And there's this teacher called Sundar Karambi.
He's in Mylapore.
He came up first in the Google site.
I was like, okay, fine, let's go.
Let's talk to him.
I immediately, next day, went there, spoke to him.
He was very convincing.
He had a great knowledge, great experience in it.
I already knew that.
Basically, my visual effects industry and yoga practice kind of overlapped at some point
of time.
I was doing both at one point of time.
It's not like a sudden jump from this to that.
I was curious about yoga before, but never really wanted to get into.
I tried checking some books, but the books always start with the theory of yoga is about
union.
It's about uniting Paramatma with Atma.
No, theories don't work at the time.
So I closed the books many times.
So that's how I was pushed into yoga.
So do you remember what you started out with?
Discipline of having to go through something on a daily basis doesn't come easily at that
age at all.
My circumstances at that time, like I have to do it.
This is my last result.
Okay.
First, he usually starts a session with a couple of deep breaths.
Sit straight, you align yourself and then start taking slow deep breaths.
My first slow deep breath was revolutionary at the time.
I was like, wow.
I haven't been breathing all these years.
First breath felt so good.
It's amazing.
I'm going to see how things go.
Okay.
Let's end of the session.
Let's see how it feels.
But we did very simple exercises.
We did very simple arm raises, very simple twist, neck exercises, eye exercises, some
standing poses.
And within three days, I felt great.
My bladder pain was gone.
Three days, three months I was going to hospital, visiting hospital and clinic and taking medicines
and this and that, doing very simple movements.
It's gone.
I was amazed at this.
I'm like, this yoga has a lot of potency here.
Let's continue.
I didn't go there as a one-time solution.
I was curious also.
I had this inquisitive mind since the very beginning of the childhood because it comes
with the observation.
You cannot be observing without being inquisitive about what you're observing.
Right.
So, okay.
Let's do this.
Let's continue.
This is great.
I'm back to normal.
My energy level was great.
One month, my spine was aligned very good.
I felt taller.
I told my teacher also, I feel taller.
I don't know if it's physical measurement or just saying I feel taller.
He said you didn't grow taller, just that your spine has aligned properly.
And then my energy level was amazing.
My sleep was deep.
My digestion was great.
I've never felt this amount of lightness in my body ever.
In one month, doing very simple movement.
And then one month became two, two became six months, six big six months became four
years with the same teacher.
Most of the time it was one-on-one.
So I had a very good rapport with this teacher also.
So we used to talk after class about a lot of subjects, but he used to avoid the philosophical
aspect of yoga.
I was getting into that, getting interested in those aspects of yoga.
For someone who used to call himself an atheist, now suddenly is curious about those texts
I have taken Bhagavad Gita before and see how, what it is, because of course we call
it a holy book, but I just need to know why it is called a holy book.
So I've taken it before.
Same as before.
I didn't understand anything close to it and kept it.
I asked my teacher, I want to understand these things.
Physically, I'm okay.
I'm doing great.
My postures are getting better.
My health is at the peak at the time, but I was not satisfied with that.
I need to know more.
So he openly said, listen, my teaching is only a transactional level to lead a very
healthy life or to grow old gracefully.
That's his intention.
He was very clear about it.
But if you want philosophical learning, then you'll have to find another teacher.
So for some time I tried to read it myself, but you need definitely need some teacher
to assist in those areas.
They are very subtle and they're very subjective experiences, which I was not ready at the
time.
And it also takes some amount of maturity in your mind to understand those things.
It's not an easy read.
It's not like you read once and then forget it.
No, you need to go back to again and again to.
And it's remarkable Karthik, how clear your first teacher was about what he would do and
what he would not get into.
Amazing teacher.
It's amazing self-reflection of knowing what is it that you can convey and what is it that
you can grow a certain person to and then say, okay, now I hand you over to whoever
will bring about the next change in your life.
They are called Upagurus.
So basically one teacher hands you to the next one.
I never thought I'll become a teacher, a very low self-esteem and always fearful in the
crowd, always spend most of his time alone.
To teach is like something I never thought it's in me.
But again, time changes.
And at one point of time, I really started liking this teacher, the way he was teaching
and how he stands for my life.
I think I can do that.
I can teach because I know my subject very well at that point, after four years or four
to five years of studying.
I'm not just practicing, I'm also studying.
I'm also trying to understand what is everything.
I was trying to understand physiology.
I was trying to understand the body.
I was trying to understand the mind, which I was very confident.
I know what yoga can do at the time.
After the fourth year or fifth year, I told my teacher that I think I want to teach.
Then he said, okay, you can definitely teach.
You know stuff.
You definitely have to do a teacher training program for that because you need a paper
to teach anywhere.
Right.
Okay, fine.
So he took me to Sivananda Ashram in Madurai, which he recommended.
Why don't you go there?
They will also teach you philosophy.
They'll also do, you'll have a good experience there in the ashram.
So that's what I did.
I went to Sivananda Ashram for one month, did my teacher training program.
Amazing experience again.
There was a lot of like-minded people.
Then I knew that this is going to be great.
So what is it that happened during that one month?
When you say like-minded people, you were able to talk to them.
You were able to understand things about yourself.
Well, that teacher training program, yes, it's a new, for me, it was like multicultural
because it's not just the Indians go there.
There are other foreigner people also come here.
So you get to see a different point of view from their education point of view, from their
culture point of view, how they see yoga and how you see it and how different it is.
Every time you talk to someone, it's always a learning process because these subjects
are very subjective.
It's not objective.
It's a subjective.
Maybe asana part is very objective.
You can really say what it is, but when it comes to a subjective part like Bhagavad Gita
or anything, you need to have a certain maturity in your mind to understand or read between
the lines to understand those things.
You cannot just take everything literally or open-ishad for example, anything.
It makes you think, but not give you a direct answer.
I learned Bhagavad Gita for the first time.
I was able to go through the entire stuff and actually understand what it is.
But that is going to change every few years depending upon what you as a person gain experience
in life outside and how you can apply Bhagavad Gita philosophy into your existence.
That's going to always intertwine.
So we need to find a balance where philosophy and undain experience of life, you find a
proper balance.
You cannot completely go into philosophy.
You cannot completely go into this one.
So right now I'm doing a middle path.
It is great.
I came back.
By this time I left my other job.
Also the company closed because it was heading down.
It hit a plateau and then it just sank.
I returned from the ashram with a TTC certificate in my hand.
Okay, now what?
Yeah, for the first few months I didn't do anything.
I was just practicing on my own.
It was more like a sabbatical.
I thought I'll take one year sabbatical and see what happens.
I just needed a break from everything.
I just need to dig deep and see what happens.
I started a studio underground.
It's in the basement.
Well, it didn't go really well, but that also gave me a lot of experience in teaching because
what you learn is different.
But now you have to communicate that your learning experience outside is completely
a different task.
The practice that applies to you does not apply to the other person also because they
come from a very different background.
They come from a very different lifestyle.
Now I have to learn how to apply my knowledge onto them, which works for them, not for me.
One of the teachers says you have to teach yoga as how it applies to them, not how it
applies to you.
Now I have to translate that.
Now I have to use my experience to know that person, what that person needs physically
or mentally.
Then accordingly, I have to teach them.
So everybody is different in a class of five people.
All five people are different in age, in their health, in their mindset.
It's all different.
So you still have to find a middle path that suits everybody.
It was a great learning experience for me, although I did not make any money with that.
For that one year of that existence of that studio, I did not make any money, but I gained
experience.
So that's priceless.
So who were your first students?
They were young people.
They were middle aged people.
My first student was 55 years old.
It was a challenge.
It was a challenge for you because I was only 30, 29 at the time, but suddenly I see someone
who is twice my age and she's so kind.
She surrendered.
That's the best thing about our culture is that I don't want to be, I don't want to be
separating Western and Indian, but our culture is that when you see someone as a teacher,
you surrender no matter what the age difference is.
What we train in ashram is you teach among within yourself.
We are all young people.
You teach among yourself.
Now suddenly I see a 54 year old with a totally different body type, totally different conditioning
and with some ailments of course, but that's when I actually started learning about other
people's needs than my great experience.
Every day there is a different student come in or some of them continued for a year.
And then there was sometimes there was a group class.
Sometimes there was a one-on-one private because of therapy.
I learned a lot during that one year.
The owner had to stop that place.
He has to close that place.
I was not interested in continuing with that because first of all, it wasn't making any
money.
I cannot run like that for the rest of my life.
But this is something that my teacher also warned with my yoga teacher.
When I said I wanted to teach, he said, listen, you're very young.
My teacher was retired at the time.
He said, I'm retired.
I can do whatever I want.
I'm settled.
I have a house, but you are young.
You cannot get into this aiming to make money.
It's not about the money, but I want to dig deep.
If I want to, I don't want to just put one foot here, one foot there, and then try to
juggle between the two.
I was not interested in that.
I want to dive deep and see how things...
The worst thing that can happen is I'll have to go back to the visual effects industry.
That's not worse.
Now I know how to handle the stress.
Now I know how to handle the industry also.
So it's not the worst thing.
And then HR from a studio called me.
We learned that you're a yoga teacher.
Would you like to join?
And if you're interested, we would like to have a conversation.
Wow, this is great.
Okay.
I didn't ask for it, but it came.
The very next day I met them, and then that's when my actual group teaching class started.
I would say that one year was a foundation, and then now I'm actually in the studio teaching.
It's called 136.1 Yoga Studio in Alva Pet.
It is still there.
Very good time teaching.
I was enjoying, I made a lot of friends there.
Life is good for four years.
It was amazing.
One of the things I really liked about what you said is that when you're seeking knowledge
as a student versus being the teacher, it's a complete inversion.
You change completely.
And then you have to deal with a class of seven, eight, 10, depending on the numbers.
And each person should feel that they are picking up something from you because that's
really the essence of a teacher.
They should come out satisfied knowing that, okay, I've done something for today.
In the long run, they'll get the benefit.
Whether they like it or not, they will get the benefit.
That's the best thing about yoga is that you cannot say, I only want this.
You will get the other benefits also, whether you like it or not.
Let's say someone comes to the digestion issue, we do the practice.
Of course, with the digestion issues being solved, you also get good sleep.
You also get a good energy level.
These are things that actually transform people.
If they are observant enough, they will stick to it.
If they choose to decide or judge the class on the first day, they will lose it because
it's not a one-time pill.
It's not a pill that you take and then you're all right.
You have to give some time.
People who stayed for more than a year, they will continue.
You cannot not do yoga after that.
Exactly.
It's as if you've left something unfinished during the day.
Absolutely.
As a one part of your life, a very important part of your life is no longer.
You can't take it away.
And exactly what you said is true of meditation as well.
A lot of people think that they will try for two weeks and then say that, oh, it's done.
Whereas if you manage to break through that barrier, it takes a lot of effort.
Absolutely.
Then you can't ever get away from it.
You don't even look at it as I don't need a weekend off.
I need to ensure that I'm meditating.
I can see it.
We can see it.
Close your eyes.
It's weekend.
Yeah, which is why we always recommend anyone to get into yoga as an asana practice first.
First you do.
First you move your body.
One cannot sit in a meditation if your knee is hurting, if your hip is hurting, if your
lower back is hurting.
One cannot focus on something if something else is bothering behind you.
So we always recommend first condition your physical body first, which is tangible, which
you can see the result immediately.
Once that is addressed, then you can go a little bit deeper into your breath.
I would say the second stage would be a breath.
Do pranayama a little bit.
Try to increase the lung capacity.
Try to increase your prana.
Generate more prana for more focus.
Then meditation comes very easily.
You go into that zone.
Meditation is a word that is kind of overused and also abused.
Now you'll find like every moon day there is a moon meditation.
It's kind of overselling, overdoing it.
Meditation is very simple.
The problem is it's too simple.
For us in order to achieve something great, it has to be difficult.
But that's the mindset that we need to change from.
But meditation is not about working hard.
It is about doing the least.
But that's very difficult for us.
Physically we can sit down, but the mind does not sit down.
Yes.
It's very easy.
Ramana Maharishi says, summa iru is like just be.
The actual meaning is just be.
But that is so difficult.
It takes years and lifetime after lifetime to do this.
Something is so simple that becomes so difficult for us.
If it's something difficult, let's say you want to do a handstand.
You can practice and get it.
But something as simple as just sit is so difficult.
I was actually teaching the middle path.
The asana path itself is the middle path.
If I tell them, OK, first 10 minutes, you're going to sit our eyes and just simply observe
our breath.
No, everybody's going to walk away.
It's not for everyone.
But tell them to move their body.
It's for everyone.
Everybody will move.
That's the middle path.
If I give them very intense class, they can't do it.
So I had to find a balance where there is some rest in between.
OK.
So then it's remarkable that one year of independent practice in your studio that you first did
and then you went straight to 136.1 and then in the next three, four years built this huge
following, because obviously your students remember you after all these years.
I am blessed to have amazing teachers and amazing students also, because it is from
students that a teacher learns.
The learning never stops.
I can teach, but the learning never stops between a student and a teacher.
Learning happens for both of them equally.
So people who are interested decide that I don't know enough.
The moment you think I know everything, nothing is going to enter your mind.
I think the moment you think that I know everything, that's the end of it.
I don't know has a lot of potential.
Now, what I'm fascinated by, Karthik, is how you know your transitions.
You understood at every point.
I'm getting bullied in class.
I need a source of comfort.
I had the support and the anchor.
Then when you had to convince your father about admitting you to VFX, you already had
reasoned it out saying, this is the last time you have to spend money on me.
You knew that that was one argument which would win the day.
Yeah, that's true.
You actually decided that going through medicines, a doctor says, go for yoga.
You can say that, no, I'll go for a doctor who really understands me.
I don't want to try this stuff because there's a certain mindset which says, okay, because
in a lot of cases you say that what is it that Western medicine doesn't know?
And that how can yoga help something like this?
Where is you willing to give it a shot?
Those days I was not influenced.
We were not influenced by Instagram.
We were not influenced by YouTube.
So basically I had no clue about yoga.
I went there with an open heart, open mind.
That was another advantage.
For me, I have never seen it.
I only had my curiosity to take to the class.
And when transformation happens, then it's great.
Again, I'm not referring to...
I did not even refer to a book.
Although I had a book downloaded on my PC, I couldn't go through that because it was
not meant to be at the time.
My maturity was not enough to understand what was going on.
And I started with the theory.
That's the problem.
I should not have started with the theory, but the asana class actually made me, the
physical movements actually made me realize the potency of yoga.
Then the theory comes.
So then the next stage was...
So how did that come about?
When I was teaching in 136.1, the owner wanted to expand his branch internationally.
He asked me, because my classes were doing good, probably it was his marketing strategy
that maybe if he takes me there into Dubai, probably that will do well.
But Dubai market is very different because it's also a multicultural place.
It's not like India, totally different.
But somehow his strategy could have been right.
But at that time, we didn't know the industry at all.
It was nine years ago.
We did not even have a specific name for a visa for a yoga teacher because it's so new.
Even in UAE, it's very new.
Although one or two studio existed, they were just running in a different visa.
And I got a visa, something that's no way related to yoga.
But it doesn't matter anyway, I'm there.
But the thing was it is very different environment for me for the first six months.
Me being in Dubai, first of all, the environment is different.
I knew that I'm not going to last for more than six months here.
And in the studio, I get to see one or two people coming in once in a while.
So I was not really happy in the very beginning.
It was very confusing also at the time.
Although I was looking for an opportunity to teach abroad, Dubai happened.
It came to me.
The first few months was very confusing.
It takes time to believe.
But by the end of the year, it was going good.
But then I think with me and with my boss, I think we run our course.
I want to move out.
I want to do some freelancing work.
I want to do one on one privates and stuff.
So that started happening after that.
And I'm still here.
Every year I used to think, OK, this winter I'll enjoy this winter and then move back.
I even tried five times to move out of Dubai.
But something brought me back here.
I don't know what power that brought me here.
How did you get through the COVID years?
Trust me, believe it or not, COVID time was the best time for me.
Everybody was saying, oh, we are going through tough times.
I'm like, I'm having the best time of my life here.
First of all, everybody became very curious about humanity.
And that's when I started receiving a lot of calls for one on one private lessons.
And I was full of class.
I was minting money, to be honest.
It stabilized me financially after a long time because now I'm learning in Dirhams.
It's different, right?
Was it all online?
I don't do online classes.
Yoga doesn't work online.
Maybe it's in guided meditation works.
But when it comes to physical, no, it doesn't work.
Teaching through screen was not my thing.
I couldn't do it.
I tried, but it didn't work for me.
I want to see a person.
I want to see every aspect of a person because sometimes you just have to look at their face
to know what they're going through, right?
With experience, you also get to understand on a zoom, it's not possible.
You have to be very mechanical about it.
Teaching is different.
You need to know a person at close range.
For the person who is practicing, it's risky.
Okay.
Because they're not being corrected.
When you're seeing them, you know exactly what they're doing wrong.
Absolutely.
If you were to see it over a online connection, it may not be exactly what you valid points.
But how did you get cross?
If it was all face masks and all of those things, was it?
Yeah, we had a distance social distancing, of course.
But when you go home, it's different.
I refuse to touch people.
I'm just too much.
I think it's overrated.
We don't want my teacher never touched me to adjust.
He only instructs through verbally and then he'll come closer to demonstrate if necessary.
If necessary, he'll assist anybody who is in Dubai.
Note that as a teacher, I don't touch people as much as possible.
I verbally instruct.
If they're not processed, okay, fine.
Go closer to them.
Demonstrate if that is also not working.
Maybe bring awareness to certain areas of their body just to just pay tap or just pay
a gentle touch.
That should be enough.
In my opinion, that's how I learned 18 years of learning from my teachers.
That's what I learned.
So what is your journey through yoga been from the time you started to where it is today?
Because you are now at a point where you're more a teacher than a student.
You've transitioned.
So in your mind, what do you think are the changes?
Oh, yeah.
Good question.
That's an amazing question.
Although I started physically, it eventually has to evolve to a subtler level of the practice.
The observing entity or we call it, I would like to call it an entity because it's very
subjective.
So right now my practice is all about self-inquiry.
Ramana Maharishi strongly recommends.
Now I got into Ramana Maharishi's teaching.
Now my practice is not as much as physical, but it's more about the mind itself.
This is something that you can practice all the time 24 by 7.
If you can manage to take this from waking state and then to a sleeping state, if you
can observe the space between these two, that can be a very profound experience.
That layer of observation, simply put, it's called self-inquiry.
In self-inquiry, everything is an opportunity to withdraw.
There are no words to explain the truth.
I mean, if it's there, we wouldn't need 108 Upanishads, we wouldn't need Bhagavad Gita,
all that.
This is so subtle.
We always think objectively.
But the thing is, the constant question, who am I, is what Ramana Maharishi calls it Mahayoga.
Even if you go through scriptural books like Astavakra Gita or Yoga Vasistha, they always
mention about the self-inquiry that you'll have to go there.
No matter what your level of maturity or what it is, ultimately you have to come to that
one question, ultimately, who am I?
Right now my practice has transitioned from physical or more of a self-inquiry, which
happens, but at least I can take this level of awareness up until my dream state, that
there is an observing entity that observes this consciousness, this level of consciousness.
There's also a level of consciousness in your dream.
Constantly asking who am I, if I'm angry, then I can ask the question, same question,
who is angry?
If I'm happy, then who is happy?
If I'm having a doubt on something, who is doubting that doubt?
Okay, if you keep on asking who, who, who, then the mind tends to go back, go back, go
back.
Then what you see as an object is irrelevant because it's constantly pushing you back into
the origin of the doubt itself.
So that's his practice when everything else is not working.
It is a very straightforward method.
You don't need to have a very fit body.
You don't even have to be healthy also because sometimes we suffer our pain.
Then even the suffering can be a very good opportunity to ask who's suffering.
If you keep on doing that, you can go past the suffering also.
Let me be honest, it works sometimes and most of the time it doesn't.
Because sometimes physical pain is a real pain.
All right, it is a suffering in a way, but pain is real.
During tooth extraction, we cannot think about who is experiencing the pain.
Those philosophies will go out the window sometimes.
We can bring it back again.
I believe if you operate on that level of seeing yourself as a third person, suffering
can be minimized or at least we can live a life in equanimity.
I think that is a very peaceful place rather than jumping from happiness to depression
constantly on a daily basis.
It's a very peaceful place to be.
The life of equanimity that I think is a lovely pursuit.
And it's fascinating to have heard you.
I don't think at any point I had to make the effort because what you were saying had so
much of resonance.
It simply worked through everything.
And you were brutally honest.
You mentioned how your being puny was the reason you were picked upon.
Your introvertedness becoming probably your first source of self-inquiry because you had
enough time.
You didn't have to go out and cultivate friends.
So it became something that you and then you know, your journey through VFX and everything
else that you learn and you're willing to accept yoga and how it was taught.
And I think in some way you have also understood one of the things you learn about acting is
that even without saying a word, you should still command the audience attention.
Oh, yeah, that's a good one.
Yeah, you don't need to, you don't need dialogue.
It needs to be a presence.
And I think in a lot of teachers, it's the presence of the teacher alone, which sometimes
gives us the comfort that yes, this person is going to make a difference to my life.
And this is someone I can learn from.
So I think both of us, we are fortunate that we found at various points in our life, people
who made a difference to our lives and were willing to invest in us and say that, okay,
this is how you go ahead.
Thank you.
Thank you so much.
Thank you for coming on the show and pleasure to continue to be in touch with you.
Thank you.
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