Left to his own devices, the fallen guru spent his time in solitude with his mat, until fate led him to a small studio in Denver where owners (and sisters) Desi and Micah Springer invited him to heal and own up to his mistakes by encouraging him to take accountability for his actions. I take accountability for my own karma—I don’t know how regret really helps. I want to remember what happened and then do things differently. It was my personal business, but some thought that I should be ostracized forever for this transgression. I am responsible for my mistakes, and my clear intention is to be utterly transparent and have integrity in my private relationships. If people could be open to giving me a new chance, I would appreciate that. We have to have hope in each other that we can get better and make a positive shift. If you don’t forgive, there is no change. And when everything collapsed, I realized it wasn’t sustainable. I had to take full ownership of the fact I had created that situation. It was my own doing. When you’re not feeling well it definitely affects your behavior—you’re not going to make good choices. I’m a lot more discerning with my associations, and I focus on my own accountability in my behavior. I just stick more to myself. Before, I let people into my private life, and many of them—maybe because of my public image—never really said that they disagreed with anything they saw in my life or behavior. In Sridaiva, the tailbone doesn’t draw downward. You don’t lengthen you spine by pulling the two ends of the spine apart. You line the spine up so that your connective tissue can pull the spine apart. There’s a rooting through the pelvis down the legs and a rising in the spine to have the maximum opening of the body. That’s not to say poses in modern postural yoga are wrong. We just focus more on the engagement on the back body. After 42 years of teaching yoga, that’s a big change, in my view. It was an unbelievable, fated meeting with Desi. What were the chances at that time in my life after the fall of Anusara, when I’m open to a new path, this opportunity with Desi would just appear?
