uch to my amazement I recently realized, I have been doing Yoga for forty years. The journey on this path began upon seeing a picture of Paramahansa Yogananda, the great yogi and author of “Autobiography of a Yogi”. I was fourteen at the time and so drawn to his face that I went in search of the book. I couldn’t find it, but found another book on hatha yoga. Right from that time it was like an old memory resurfacing. Many years later I found a poem by Yogananda called “Whispers from Eternity”. In this poem Yogananda says he will call us from eternity to remind us of our past life’s path to the Divine. I later found out that there was a Shivananda Yoga center in Montreal, where I was living at the time. Whenever I could, I would attend classes there.

Yoga has stayed with me through all these years. It has been the unifying thread through my careers as an actor, musician, clown, stay-at-home dad, and for the last twenty years, guitar and yoga teacher.

My hatha yoga influences are many, but I always come back to the Shivananda style as taught by Swami Vishnudevananda, the founder of the worldwide Shivananda ashram yoga camps. It’s the integrated style that really appeals to me - the meditation, chanting, asanas (yoga postures), vegetarian diet and Vedanta philosophy (based on the Vedas which stresses the unity of all mankind and all world religions). I always love going to the ashram in Val Morin just North of Montreal; it is a piece of heaven on Earth.

To come back to Yogananda again. Yes! I eventually found, a few years later, the "Autobiography of a Yogi”. I have read and reread it and given many copies to friends and acquaintances. I believe it is Yogananda who brought me to my Guru, Sri Satya Sai Baba. This Guru / disciple relationship has taken me to India three times. It is in this beloved land of Bharat (India) that I have learned just how deep and profound the practice of yoga can truly be.

And so the path continues: over the last two years I have been studying Qigong with Li Jun Feng, of China. Master Li is of the same spirit as Yogananda, Swami Vivekananda and Swami Vishnudevananda: a great master sent into our midst. As in hatha yoga there are many different styles. Master Li teaches a style known as “Sheng Zhen Wuji Yuan Gong”. Sheng Zhen means unconditional love; Wuji means before the beginning of time; and Yuan Gong means a return to the natural state. The purpose of this practice, in Master Li’s own words, is "to enable the practitioner to return to the natural state, to be in the flow, to be happy and contented, to always feel at one with the world, and to have the experience of being in the state of grace all the time”. I had the great honour of doing my first level of teacher training with Master Li in the summer of 2004.