Golden Bridge Yoga in Hollywood was once the Cadillac dealer where Elvis shopped. Then it became the sound stage where Old Blue Eyes, Johnny Mathis and Barbra Streisand did their sound checks before it transcended the confines of the entertainment industry and fixed its gaze on a more enlightened path.
Gurmukh Kaur Khalsa at Golden Bridge Yoga
“We didn’t pick the place, the place picked us. God picked us,” Gurmukh Kaur Khalsa describes the process while sitting with me in the building she and her husband claimed, gutted and remodeled in goddess chic minimalism: high arched wood beam ceilings, wood floors and lots of deities; with a restaurant, gift shop and Ayurvedic spa on the premises.
What makes Golden Bridge sacred for Gurmukh besides the ground-up renovation which included employing a Feng Shui master to get the flow just right?
“The ground that it’s built on. I really and truly think we’re on a vortex here. Even though we brought in so much chanting, so much kindness, so much service, it had a sense of eminence before we even walked in. It’s a combination that brings in the sacredness. It helps if the vibrational frequency is sacred before… you don’t have to work so hard. So I have to say that God or the higher sacred beings really brought us to a sacred place because it was our destiny.”
Another permutation of sacred space is planted in the middle of rush hour traffic a few blocks from Golden Bridge. Something decidedly strange happens when artist, writer and yogi Dani Katz spreads her mat near Sunset and Vine, claims a slab of concrete as sacred and begins her Ashtanga routine. As she practices, no one pays attention. No looks. No comments. No leering. Nada.
My mat is my sacred space. I’m conscious of the intention that I put into and onto my mat, six days a week for the past nine years.
“Intention defines sacred space,” she said; “Unsacred space is unconscious space. My mat is my sacred space. I’m conscious of the intention that I put into and onto my mat, six days a week for the past nine years.” Dani’s ritual is simple: “Peace, love, awakening, support.” She claims the space when she spreads her mat; as soon as she invests it with intention it is sacred. It works.
The support she mentions is energetic, environmental and physical. “This place can hold me and I hold it. There are these plants that give me oxygen…I’m holding sacred space by my practice. We have been relatively unbothered here. No one’s watching.”
Joel Shapiro
In contrast, everybody was watching Jake Saxon, a yogi from Carbondale, Colorado, when he participated in the finals of the International Yoga Championships sponsored by Bikram at a hotel near LAX. The 17-year-old telemark free-skiing champion has some specific ideas about what defines space as sacred.
“The most sacred space in the world is nature because nature is the perfect kind of harmony between all things. It’s not disrupted by mankind’s ego and desire to have things to his will. In nature things work together. My body is part of nature. I always have it with me, so wherever I go I’m in sacred space.” I asked Jake if he ever does his practice outside. “Not in the winter,” he replied. Of course not; he lives in Colorado. It’s freezing there.
If it did freeze in L.A., the all solar-powered Electric Lodge of Abbot Kinney in Venice would be warm and cozy in a very green way. I recognized the Electric Lodge as sacred the moment I walked through the door a year ago to attend a breath workshop. It’s pristine. Clear. Open. Supportive. Creative visionary Joel Shapiro, a former practicing physician, as well as an actor, performance artist, professional dancer and ardent environmentalist took the plunge and reinvented the space with a simple vision: “A place of creating work in any artistic media where artists melding/molding discovering each one’s distinctive voice.”
Electric Lodge hosts workshops, events, has a theatre company and a resident dance company (formed and led by Butoh dance master Oguri and counterpart Roxanne Steinberg). The space is supported, ecologically-speaking, with a program called Ecostage; it includes the Green Screen Environmental Film Festival, the Green Piece (a live performance focused on environmental issues) and the eco-certification program Arts:Earth Partnership. Shapiro holds the planet and all life as sacred and the Electric Lodge is a microcosm of his larger vision: “The sacredness comes from how myself and all the others open and work through honesty. I was solely interested in the truth in the moment.”
The truth of anything is, of course subjective. Like space, the substance of what I choose to invest it with defines it… and me. What I put in and what I take out. What I choose to give and receive. Since I don’t currently have a building to invest in, I’m taking cues from Jake Saxon and Dani Katz. From Jake: my most sacred space is my body. I hear they’re a precious commodity. And from Dani, I remember to invest my surrounding space with the sacredness I embody.
The most sacred space in the world is nature…. My body is part of nature. I always have it with me, so wherever I go I’m in sacred space.
Sam Slovick is a regular contributor to LA YOGA. He’s also published in Vibe, Details, Interview, Giant, Good, Nylon, Neon, The Face, Angeleno, The Advocate, Curve, LA Weekly and others. Preview his new documentary series On Skid Row at, http://www.myspace.com/samslovick
By Sam Slovick
Award-winning journalist, documentary director and long-term LA Yoga contributor Sam Slovick is the director, writer and producer of the Radicalized documentary, currently working on the Kirtan Road Dogs documentary.