Photo of Maty Ezraty Teaching by James Brown

Maty Ezraty, Guardian Angel of Yoga

Maty Ezraty was a treasure and an angel too soon departed. For those of us fortunate enough to have walked the path of yoga alongside her. we perhaps we can say that she communed with us and perceived the deepest aspiration in each of us and connected with that. What is the difference between communion and connection? When we take the religious connotation out of communion, it means union with something. Maty insisted on integrity in practice, honesty and joy in friendship, and truth before power. If Yoga is Union, then Maty was a guardian angel.

In the early years of YogaWorks, Maty would invite all teachers and core students to her home for pot luck dinners. We shared our macro-vegi recipes, broke bread together, and revealed our dreams. At the time, the YogaWorks schedule featured many diverse styles of yoga, each buoyed up by talented and charismatic teachers. After a few years, Maty’s vision of a studio built around core values and with a common focus invited her to make some changes. Serendipitously, Sacred Movement (later Exhale/Center for Sacred Movement) opened and a few teachers shifted their focus to the Venice studio.

By the late nineties, YogaWorks featured a cohesive community of teachers who studied and grew together. Maty invited world-class instructors for workshops, teacher trainings, and intensives. Gary Krafstow, Patricia Walden, Dona Holleman, Aadil Paklivala, Richard Freeman, Tim Miller, and Ramanand Patel, among others, graced the studio to stimulate a rich dialogue for students and teachers alike.

Maty loved to cook. Visiting teachers loved being hosted by her and her potlucks were notorious. Just as food nourishes the body, honest, supportive and heartfelt feedback nourishes the soul. Maty knew how to nurture and nourish, connect and commune with her students.

Maty Ezraty Teaching. Photo by James Brown

Maty Ezraty and Teacher Training

Maty and I first taught what is now considered the YogaWorks teacher training in 1996. It was with the deepest respect and curiosity for one another’s practice and inner quest that we agreed to work together. One of Maty’s favorite parts of the training was when we would introduce the “points.” We did not hand out a book with a list of technical details. We would observe different bodies in space. Maty would ask students what they saw, where was there a distortion in energy, where was the pose dead or hard, slack or shaky. She cultivated the ability to see rather than memorize.

Years later, after Maty had left YogaWorks and agreed to guest teach a training, she looked at the updated student manual. We, the content coordinators, had created textbooks with many technical details, variations, use of props, and more. Maty insisted on using the original blank outlines of poses so that she could train her students to observe what was before them rather than impose a set of ideals. She insisted we connect with what was in front of us, and see the student.

Leadership: A Yogi in the House

In the later part of her life, she frequently spoke about the commercialization of yoga. For her, yoga was a path of self-realization. Maty was featured and on the cover of a 2018 leadership issue of Yoga Journal wherein she said, “Every yoga school or studio needs to have a yogi in the house—someone with the courage to keep to a yoga vision. I think this takes someone who lives their yoga and will say, “Yes, this could make money, but no, it isn’t yoga.” I fear that’s not happening now.”

Maty’s Passion Lives On

I could not speak with anyone except my husband for three days after Maty died. Even now, weeks later, I find that my throat swells and my heart quickens. I had not seen Maty in over a year, yet I knew that her wingspan and her eagle eye were somewhere preserving the integrity of yoga.

Maty Ezraty loved and lived by her own crazy wisdom, Maty laughed with us, Maty served each and every student, Maty was honest and out spoken. Maty was signature Maty. Her passion now lives within each of us as integrity, selfless service and love.

Lisa Walford

Lisa Walford holds an Intermediate Senior II Iyengar teaching certificate and has been teaching in LA since 1982. She serves on the board of the nonprofit Iyengar Yoga Therapeutics. Along with Maty Ezraty, Lisa helped develop the Teacher Training Program at YogaWorks: walford.com

www.walford.com

The post Maty Ezraty: Friend, Colleague, Teacher appeared first on LA Yoga Magazine - Ayurveda & Health.

Mary Dunn

With great appreciation for the star that lived among us, the Iyengar community said goodbye to Mary Dunn on September 4, 2008. She passed peacefully with her family in New York. The daughter of Mary Palmer, who introduced Mr. B.K.S. Iyengar to America in 1974, Mary Dunn moved to San Diego in 1980 and championed the growth of both the Iyengar Yoga Institute in San Diego and the Institute in San Francisco. She was instrumental in opening the fledgling Los Angeles Institute in 1984, traveling monthly to teach and serve as a mentor. Her dedication and people skills nurtured the success of these communities. In 1986, Mary moved to New York and helped to grow the Iyengar Yoga Institute of New York into one of the finest schools in the U.S.

Certified at the Junior Advanced level, Mary said that Iyengar Yoga was the place where her life interests and life work came together because it was in her teaching where she synthesized her love of English, history, music, the arts and philosophy, garnered through her education at the University of Wisconsin.

Her generosity as a teacher is simply unmatched. As a senior teacher in New York and leading workshops worldwide, Mary was an unstoppable combination of knowledge, enthusiasm and perseverance. She made the philosophy of yoga come alive and dance in her classes. Her teaching was lofty and accessible, majestic and fun. She embodied the possibility of transformation, and then guided us to find our own path forward.

She was a rare individual who lived with grace, joy, compassion, tremendous vitality and the contagious enthusiasm to support community wherever she was. She will continue to be a light among us. She taught us how to live, and, in her dying, how to embrace every moment with complete awareness and receptivity.

Guruji B.K.S. Iyengar counseled members of the Iyengar community to read the following slokas from the Bhagavad Gita:

10. As they stood between the two armies, Sri Krishna smiled and replied to Arjuna, who had sunk into despair.

11. Sri Krishna said, You speak sincerely, but your sorrow has no cause. The wise grieve neither for the living nor for the dead.

13. As the same person inhabits the body through childhood, youth, and old age, so too at the time of death he attains another body. The wise are not deluded by these changes.

22. As a man abandons worn-out clothes and acquires new ones, so when the body is worn out a new one is acquired by the Self, who lives within.

23. The Self cannot be pierced by weapons or burned by fire; water cannot wet it, nor can the wind dry it.

24. The Self cannot be pierced or burned, made wet or dry. It is everlasting and infinite, standing on the motionless foundations of eternity.

25. The Self is unmanifested, beyond all thought, beyond all change. Knowing this, you should not grieve.

26. Oh mighty Arjuna, even if you believe the Self to be subject to birth and death, you should not grieve.

27. Death is inevitable for the living; birth is inevitable for the dead. Since these are unavoidable, you should not sorrow.

28. Every creature is unmanifested at first and then attains manifestation. When its end has come, it once again becomes unmanifested. What is there to lament in this?

29. The glory of the Self is beheld by a few, and a few describe it; a few listen, but many without understanding.

30. The Self of all beings, living within the body, is eternal and cannot be harmed. Therefore, do not grieve.

Guruji said that Mary is “a clean and clear person, and she now has freedom. We have lost a dear, good friend. She is noble.” He stated that because of the life that Mary led, her soul has the imprint of yoga, which she will no doubt carry into the next life.

Lisa Walford

Lisa Walford holds an Intermediate Senior II Iyengar teaching certificate and has been teaching in LA since 1982. She serves on the board of the nonprofit Iyengar Yoga Therapeutics. Along with Maty Ezraty, Lisa helped develop the Teacher Training Program at YogaWorks: walford.com

www.walford.com

The post In Memorium: Mary Dunn, In Gratitude appeared first on LA Yoga Magazine - Ayurveda & Health.