Ageless Yoga: John Schlorholtz Interview

Schlorholtz is the principal yoga instructor for the Harvard University Center for Wellness. His Ageless Yoga DVD series features innovative asanas that incorporate the Hatha yoga method of practitioners using props to complete the poses. Using a chair to complete standing postures, for example, provides stability and extends the range of motion. Seniors and people in recovery or with disabilities can use Schlorholtz’s program as a gateway to better health through yoga.

LoveToKnow Yoga asked Schlorholtz to share his yoga journey and his intent to expand the Ageless Yoga program.

Ageless Yoga: John Schlorholtz Interview

How did you get involved with yoga?

I had an unusual upbringing in that I was born and brought up in Pakistan. My parents were Presbyterian missionaries. To be brought up by Christians from Iowa in a Moslem country that was traditionally part of India gave me a remarkable experience of Christianity, Islam, and Hinduism. In addition, my mother loved to visit different countries and to learn about cultures. Every time we traveled to and from the U.S., we took breaks in our journey to visit countries along the way. Fortunately, since Iowa is exactly halfway around the world from Pakistan, we were able to visit countries in Asia, including India and Nepal, Europe, and even Northern Africa. By the time I came back to the U.S. for schooling, I had traveled around the world two-and-a-half times.

I think this exposure to many cultures and spiritual traditions, along with a natural bent towards a search for an inner meaning in life, gave me the foundation for the many-sided exploration that has been my yoga journey.

In high school, I took up Transcendental Meditation for a few years. In college, I studied a Japanese form of karate. I was lucky to have some remarkable teachers in high school and college who helped me along in my quest for meaning. During college, I took a year off and traveled through Pakistan, India and Nepal for almost six months.

Perhaps the most important experience for me was an unexpected deep peace that settled through me during a visit to the Sri Aurobindo Ashram in Pondicherry, India. That experience slowly grew into a lifelong connection with the Sri Aurobindo community. And the teachings of Sri Aurobindo, one of the great, modern yogis, provided a large framework that satisfied my need to integrate the wildly different Western and Eastern cultures and traditions that I had been exposed to.

Yoga "Chooses" Him

You’ve mentioned, with irony, something called your “best year ever” and how that was the catalyst to your pursuit of yoga. What happened?

After college, I went to Japan, and studied the soft martial art aikido. But not too long after my return from Japan, I experienced a year in which everything in my life, including my health, fell apart.

These are the events that stand out in my memory:

• Getting chronic fatigue syndrome
• Failing at a business that I had started
• The death of a friend in an accident in Nepal
• An arsonist setting the house I rented on fire
• The loss of my car
• The departure of a girlfriend

The stripping away was pretty complete. No health, no money, no car, barely a place to lay my head. That’s when I had the opportunity to build my life from scratch again. And fortunately, Hatha yoga appeared in my life to help me rebuild myself on some new foundations.

Also, my work with my own body’s limitations gave me an interest in and empathy for working with people with physical challenges.

Why Hatha yoga?

Hatha yoga, which I think of as any form of yoga that utilizes the body as an instrument of personal integration, allowed me to get in touch with my body and learn how to listen to it as I worked with it. I found that a gentle, flowing style of yoga gradually helped my body and also, of course, my psyche to find new ways of being and discover new avenues to create health in body, mind, and spirit.

Hatha yoga was a wonderful complement to the spiritual practices that I had been exploring. If everything in my life hadn’t fallen apart so completely, I doubt that I ever would have been able to make the changes in my attitude and approach toward transforming my body and inner life that I’ve been able to make.

Who has inspired you?

Swami Prakashananda Saraswati of Nashik, who most people called Baba-ji. From my contact with him I received many great gifts, and one of the most important gifts was a wonderful criterion to describe one’s progress in yoga practice. Just as I was getting ready to depart the little ashram, one of the disciples asked me, “What are you taking home from this experience here with Baba-ji? How have you been affected–what has changed?” There was a pause while my brain raced with thoughts of powers that I might have developed and how much more profound and illuminated I might have become. Then, before I could speak, he said, “I know! You have become lighter and happier. That’s what you’re going to take home with you.”

At that moment, his words sounded trite to me. But he was right. And it took me some time to realize how truly profound his insight was. I realized that building up my sense of self-importance was a major part of my motivation for doing all the practices I had been doing.

Since then, an essential touchstone in my yoga practice and teaching has been to ask myself whether I am increasing the lightness and happiness of myself and others, or just increasing the weight of our individual and collective senses of self-importance. I hope mostly that the gifts and talents I’ve been given by the Universal One continue to be used in the service of Truth.

Schlorholtz leads students through Side Stretch.

Using Personal Experience to Help Others

What prompted you to develop the Ageless Yoga DVD series?

When I would go on trips, my students asked me to make audio and/or videotapes for them to help them to keep a sense of continuity with their yoga practice while I was away. I made a few rudimentary tapes and was surprised at how much people used them.

In addition, a group at a local community access television station did a one-hour show of my teaching. They made me to realize that there was not a great deal of published material available of the style of yoga I teach, and they helped me to understand that there was a significant population who could benefit from this approach.

One aspect that really stands out about your program is its accessibility. Why was it important to you to develop such a program?

The words of the famous yoga teacher, T. Krishnamacharya resonate with me in this context: “Don’t adapt yourself to yoga; adapt yoga to yourself.” In other words, yoga is an infinitely adaptable instrument that can and should be tailored to each person’s abilities, needs, and aspirations.

Along with a belief in the adaptability of yoga, as far as I can tell, my personality has an innate, strong desire to be inclusive and a certain empathy for people who experience disabilities and challenges. My own challenges, limitations, and injuries have helped support that empathy and inclusiveness. I also naturally enjoy the company of elders and always have. And I am the self-proclaimed stiffest yoga teacher in Boston!

The result has been the gradual honing and development of a system that can safely include almost anybody. One of my favorite comments that I received about the DVDs was from the activities director at a community for developmentally disabled adults: “Our residents are having fun with this program without realizing they are stretching and strengthening their bodies. Your routines are sophisticated enough for our staff to appreciate, yet simple enough so that almost all of our residents can participate."

For someone new to yoga, especially a senior, what benefits might they experience after developing a regular routine?

The benefits that people can experience if they follow an appropriate, injury-free program can be extensive.

I have seen people experience reduction in symptoms of many conditions, including arthritis and MS. One man with symptoms of Parkinson’s who has been practicing with one of the Ageless Yoga DVDs for about a year finds that he can walk better during the day if he does a short session in the morning. People also experience improvement in posture, breathing, strength, flexibility, resilience to stress, and a host of other beneficial effects. For some people, just maintaining the quality of life they are experiencing can be a great benefit–or slowing down some degenerative processes.

In general, yoga allows people to become more aware of body and breath and to gradually grow into healthier ways of relating to body and breath–which can manifest as a greater sense of physical, mental, and emotional ease and well-being.

In addition to your regular teaching schedule in Boston, you lead yoga retreats around the world. How are those programs structured, and do they follow your core philosophy?

I lead two kinds of trips. For the last 15 years, I have led trips almost every winter to some Caribbean destination where our group can do yoga classes, swim, walk, and experience the local sights and culture.

The age of participants generally ranges from 40-something to over 80. On these trips, I try to provide a healthy milieu that allows each person to follow his or her own needs and aspirations, which can include a time of reflection and/or a lot of playfulness and fun.

In the early autumn, I also offer an annual yoga journey to Block Island, Rhode Island. Usually people return from the yoga trips nourished in body, mind, and spirit, each in his or her unique way.

From time to time, I also lead trips to India and Nepal, in which I do not offer yoga classes. These trips are designed to allow people to enrich and broaden their awareness and to give a wide variety of experiences of the culture and spirituality of the sub-continent.

Ageless Yoga DVD set

What other things are you working on?

I am very pleased that the Ageless Yoga DVDs seem to be performing a useful service and are well-received. Over 4,000 have sold in the year-and-a-half since their initial release–which has kept me busy! It makes my heart warm to know that these DVDs have positively affected the quality of life of many people. I’m also discovering that a lot of exercise and yoga teachers are looking for information and materials to help them work with populations that might not fit into regular yoga classes.

I am contemplating adding one or more volumes to the Ageless Yoga DVD series, as well as writing a companion book that might be useful for people curious to find out more about my thoughts on yoga teaching and practice. I am still deciding what form these publications will take, but I hope to create something useful for teachers and practitioners out of my 20 years of experience in working with seniors and a variety of populations.

If you could be a superhero, what would your powers be?

If I could have my choice of superpower, I would choose to have the threefold power to always be in touch with my deepest inner voice, understand the inner truth of any situation, and know the correct action to take in order to allow the greatest possible truth and growth to unfold.