The Sport of Yoga
On power yoga teacher Mark Blanchard’s website, Cincinnati Bengals player TJ Houshmandzadeh describes his yoga practice, “It’s like lifting weights and stretching at the same time.” When in LA, Houshmandzadeh trains with Blanchard and the football star appears in Blanchard’s newest DVD series. These types of testimonials may well inspire a new generation of athletes to give lifting and stretching on the mat instead of in a weight room a try.After all, it was a sports hero who inspired Blanchard’s first forays into the practice.
Mark Blanchard
From nearly the moment he could walk, Blanchard was a fanatic athlete: playing football and baseball, swimming competitively, training in martial arts, skiing on the US freestyle team and attending college on sports scholarships. A knee injury brought the then teenage Blanchard into the office of the doctor who also happened to treat Blanchard’s hero Joe Namath. Dr. Nicolas told Blanchard that what the young athlete really needed to do was yoga. But in NYC in the mid-1970s, sixteen year-old Blanchard was an unlikely yogi. “At the time, all I could think of when I thought of yoga were the Beatles and a turban.” But according to the doc, Joe Namath practiced yoga, and that’s all Blanchard needed to hear. He and his father went to class together and the graceful athleticism of Blanchard’s first teacher, Norman Allard, convinced the young athlete that yoga was cool. “I could do this,” Blanchard thought – and he stuck with it.
While in college, he stayed committed to his practice, preferring yoga over weightlifting. Blanchard emphasized to his coaches and trainers that he was stronger than anyone else his size – thanks to yoga. He was excused from the football team’s weight room when he demonstrated that his 180-pound frame could bench press 250 pounds, more than two-thirds of what the bulky linemen could manage. Power comes from full-body strength, according to Blanchard. “The early yogis,” Blanchard mused when speaking about his physical practice, “were the acrobats to the kings. The practice was a physical, meditative dance that they did with peace in their entire being.”
In a life that includes both athletics and the craft of acting, Blanchard continued his practice as a way to find peace and stay calm while in the entertainment industry. While directing television and theater, he incorporated the use of yoga by coaching people into postures, asking them to take a deep breath and then learn their lines. Even with this experience, Blanchard didn’t plan on becoming a yoga teacher. Like many who end up teaching, it was a series of circumstances and experiences along with a lifetime of ongoing yoga study and training that led Blanchard down the path to opening hisown studio. He moved to LA to work on a TV show in the late 1980s and while living in the City of Angels, continued to develop his own practice. Eventually, after numerous requests by area studios and health clubs to teach, he began leading yoga sessions at Sports Club LA, in the early 1990s. Since he regularly shot hoops at the club, he initially taught in exchange for a club membership. He opened his first studio in Encino in 1995 and then he initiated the vibrant Mark Blanchard Power Yoga in Studio City in 1997.
While directing television and theater, he incorporated the use of yoga by coaching people into postures, asking them to take a deep breath and then learn their lines.
Even though he’s an active teacher, he hasn’t left theater and film behind. He’s brought production skills to creating multiple series of best-selling DVDs; and away from the mat, he still works in various aspects of the entertainment industry. The most current production he is involved in, is a play titled It’s Just Sex, had twice extended its run at the Two Roads Theater in Studio City due to popularity. Blanchard describes it as theater with a yogic message, about tolerance and understanding.
He brings tolerance and understanding to the studio, insisting that yoga is not about competition; it’s not about showing off but stoking the internal fire to allow each individual to be the best they can be. Through the breath, he guides students to challenge their limits without beating themselves up. And it’s his students that keep him motivated and stoked to keep teaching. “Every time someone actually gets it, every time somebody touches their toes, thinking they never could, or stands up on their head for the first time, it keeps me going.”
At the studio where, rather than levels and specialty classes, everyone from beginners to pregnant women to teachers practice together, Blanchard is passing on the baton of peace, understanding and athleticism to his three kids. The five and the seven-year-old are regulars in the studio’s classes. His two-and-a-half-year old, though, isn’t quite old enough for a structured class, and is still learning to more securely hold a football before he gets on the mat. Their mother (and Blanchard’s wife) Elizabeth also teaches at the studio, and is featured in the DVD series. On Wednesdays, the Blanchards, and other teachers, give back by donating their time to offer yoga classes at the kids’ school, so the young people don’t need to wait to hear that their favorite sports star is a yoga aficionado before they try it themselves.
Twenty-five years after Joe Namath inspired Blanchard, he had the opportunity to relay the story to the hall of famer, only to find out that the football star never did yoga. When called on it, Dr. Nicolas admitted he was using any means possible to motivate Blanchard to rehab with yoga. Today, though, doctors don’t have to make up stories. Football players really do practice yoga.
For more information on Mark Blanchard’s studio, classes, DVD or theater work, visit: truepoweryoga.com or markblanchardsyoga.com.
By Felicia M. Tomasko, R.N.
Felicia Tomasko has spent more of her life practicing Yoga and Ayurveda than not. She first became introduced to the teachings through the writings of the Transcendentalists, through meditation, and using asana to cross-train for her practice of cross-country running. Between beginning her commitment to Yoga and Ayurveda and today, she earned degrees in environmental biology and anthropology and nursing, and certifications in the practice and teaching of yoga, yoga therapy, and Ayurveda while working in fields including cognitive neuroscience and plant biochemistry. Her commitment to writing is at least as long as her commitment to yoga. Working on everything related to the written word from newspapers to magazines to websites to books, Felicia has been writing and editing professionally since college. In order to feel like a teenager again, Felicia has pulled out her running shoes for regular interval sessions throughout Southern California. Since the very first issue of LA YOGA, Felicia has been part of the team and the growth and development of the Bliss Network.