The Journey: A Mind, Body & Soul Connection

Spirital Genealogy
The Journey of One

By Clyde Chafer
January/February 2004

Baron Baptiste is the son of two of America's yoga pioneers and is the third generation in his family to transform Yoga in America. For the past seventeen years, he has brought his charismatic and masterful teaching skills to students and teachers all over the world. He has trained extensively in classical yoga traditions, as well as the more physical Ashtanga, Iyengar and Bikram styles of yoga and integrated this wealth of experience into an amazing process, which is accessible to all that desire true and lasting transformation. We are honored to have been able to invite Baron to share his spiritual journey with us.

Journey: Hi, Baron. Thank you taking time to share with us.

Baron: Thank you! I am honored that you asked.

Journey: Well, let's begin with where you are from.

Baron: I was born and raised in San Francisco, California.

Journey: Do you have any brothers or sisters?

Baron: I have two older sisters that are both yoga teachers in the San Francisco Bay area.

Journey: From reading your book Journey Into Power, your parents were very much into yoga not only in practice but also as instructors.

Baron: They both were both yoga teachers. My father was a guru and teacher of Raja Yoga. They opened the first yoga studio in Northern California in the early 1950s.

Journey: Are your parents still alive or have they passed?

Baron: My father passed two years ago and my mother is still alive. He passed on just before his 85th birthday. You can go to my web site www.baronbaptiste.com and there is a section about my family history; specifically about my parents and how they were doing things in the forties and fifties having to do with holistic health that was considered very radical at that time, if not totally weird - before the hippies even came!

Journey: Was your father still doing yoga at the time of his passing?

Baron: Yes he was.....his thing was more meditation and the philosophical path.....you know more of like a Buddhist or Christian mystic....much more into true yogic principles. Very authentic spirituality......

Journey: Did you have any formal religious upbringing?

Baron: No, not really.... it was more of yogic, eastern mysticism, eastern philosophy with a strong belief in God and faith and with some Christian mysticism, Buddhism and the eight limbs of yogic philosophy. Definitely a belief in God but in more of a non- traditional perspective.

Journey: What was it like going to school when your fellow classmates were probably being raised in more traditional paths?

Baron: I was the center of a lot of teasing, heckling, was called Hare Krishna. I was teased a lot. I was considered kind of weird. My parents would send me to school with wheat bread, a banana with brown spots and yogurt. In those days it was totally radical, even in California.

Journey: So it sounds like you were born and raised in household where yoga and yoga principals were with you from the beginning. Having had these principals ingrained at an early age, you then went on to develop your own style. It is well known that you have been very instrumental in the socalled "power yoga" movement in the late eighties and early nineties. What was the turning point in your life where you started to develop your own practice?

Baron: Because I did have more of a traditional background....the thing with my parents was that they were a little more true with the tradition of yoga ...the lineage of gurus...I just came to a point in my life where I needed to begin my own journey of the soul....and discover what was it that was really authentically going to set me free. With tradition, I went that route...I spent years going from guru to guru and teacher-to-teacher.....searching and looking and found a lot of wonderful things, but I still left feeling empty in the end. I really began to question more deeply what was the meaning of my existence in that was it really through technique and traditions that I'm going to find the answers that I am looking for. What is life and real health? .....I discovered a teacher, a Jewish teacher of meditation, who was also a Christian mystic. He taught Christian mysticism and meditation on kind of a Judaic foundation. All of the principals I had heard were very iconoclastic, in that they rang very true to me but they didn't have any tradition attached to them. My point being that I was led to a place that there are underlying principals, timeless principals that ultimately are found in all traditions and all great teachings, that essentially don't even need teaching...teachings are built around these principals.....around these laws of life. I found that if I Baron Baptiste were to submit, surrender, find an inner serenity, that these principals would come forth and give me standards to live by, but without the dogma and the man-made traditions. I think for a lot of people that traditions offer standards by which we can measure ourselves, measure our behaviors, we can measure our actions, and our lifestyles. Traditions are man-made, though, are interpreted by human beings and much more subject to error. I think that going straight to the source of those teachings is what we must do. I think it was Moses that said, " The laws are inscribed within our minds and within our hearts". We are born with this knowledge and wisdom. These inner standards have always been with us, but through karma we have gone off to other places. Our intuition has been put to sleep. Through practice we awaken it, whether it is asana practice, meditation, or certainly a process such as the twelve steps. There are ways that we can come back to it. It could even be traditional religion. Yet, ideally, all these things are not the way; they are the way to the way. I think it's not so much a process of addition, meaning adding more knowledge, but more a process of subtraction. My yoga practice is not so much of a learning process. It is more of an unlearning process. Kind of unlearning the lies, unlearning the belief systems that are built on sand. Belief systems that we have learned from society...from peers or even the false mechanisms of the mind that deceive me. I practice to unlearn my fears, my anger, my self-hatred or even my physiological and postural patterns, so that I am moving towards my authentic self. My teaching has evolved as I have evolved. In my soul searching, looking to break out of man-made tradition on the philosophical level, I have also done this on the physical level. My roots were on traditional asana training. I have broke out of the traditional training and let my intuition be my guide. In my yoga practice I have gained wisdom and understanding and let go of ambition and competitiveness. My asana practice has evolved into letting go of stuff....that if you can let go of the excess you are naturally healthy. If you get rid of the toxins, whether they are physical or emotional that the body is naturally strong. Let go of the stress, anger and the fear and you find that the body is more flexible, suppler.

Journey: So could we say power yoga is really about finding the power within through subtraction of unnecessary and unhealthy mindsets we have learned?

Baron: Exactly. Yet, I don't call my practice power yoga any longer. I refer to it as Baptiste Power Vinyasa Yoga. It's based on adaptation, not so much based on rigid rules. are guidelines but they're flexible at the periphery. There are rules of using sound sequencing, very sound biomechanics, and really healthy principal alignments so you are doing things that are healthy to the body's design, but you are also adapting it to your own needs in that you are adapting it to your own levels of strength, flexibility, agility and coordination. You are actually reeducating as you're strengthening based upon who you are and your history.

Journey: What teachers or mentors, besides your parents, have had a profound influence in your life?

Baron: It's interesting. My teachers, in many respects, have been the ones that were always a bit more radical. Such as Kristamurti, Osho.......teachers that were nonconformists. Jesus, for me, was and has been a great mentor - his way of being in the world...John the Baptist.....kind of iconoclast...those who came along and really questioned the status quo. They were in fact revolutionaries as spiritual teachers. They challenged the status quo and I believe first they challenged the status quo within themselves. My new book, 40 Days to Personal Revolution, is all about that principal....about being a revolutionary... a spiritual revolutionary. To become willing to come apart at the seams, let your whole identity as you know it fall apart.... let your belief systems fall apart.

Journey: That's very interesting. Please tell me more about your new book.

Baron: 40 Days to Personal Revolution is a three-part book. The first part of the book is the twelve laws of transformation. The first law based on repentance. Repentance is a strong word for a lot of people...it brings up a lot of connotations, and I talk about that in the book. Yet I look at that word and what it means to me. I believe at the root level to repent just means a willingness to completely surrender. A willingness to come apart and not control or protect who you are. Essentially to allow and open yourself up to a true and new beginning. I think that is the first law to real change and I think that is very revolutionary; it is radical. That law or principal holds the key to deep, deep change. It's also probably the most difficult rule and that's probably why it so controversial.... it's also been a word that's been spouted from hundreds of thousands of pulpits every Sunday for hundreds of years. I think it's been misused and beaten up. We need to take that word, brush it off, clean it up, and put it into a context that is authentic to us in our everyday lives. I go into all these different laws that I think are very powerful...to give up everything that you know; therefore, be open to really question on a deeper level all that you don't know. That is very revolutionary. When you ask about teachers, I connect with those that questioned themselves and the status quo. In my own personal journey.... in my soul journey...that is what has helped me the greatest, not just submission to a tradition or submission to a process.

Journey: I read a book a few years ago called Beyond the Twelve Steps and the author talked about after being twenty years sober she found the twelve steps in recovery to be a great foothold for greater spiritual growth; it was just a beginning and not the end all. What I am hearing you say is that we can be very revolutionary in changing our thinking...clean out all of our old habits and egocentric behaviors...but then what?

Baron: It leaves you open for inner direction. Without the mental bog down of self-defeating ego-directed mindsets, we have the opportunity and ability to find our purpose. Then you become the torchbearer for others to find their way, to share the light and spark the light for others; I think that is when we really begin to go through a process of transformation. Through giving, we receive. There is something so powerful from stepping outside ourselves...outside our inner focus; self absorption.....which is hell in my mind. When we step outside of our smaller selves, that's freedom and that's where we find true happiness. We really are living life, a life with adventure.

Journey: The word discipline comes to mind as you speak about clearing and opening up to change.

Baron: Exactly, discipline comes from the root word disciple. Ultimately, we need to become the disciple to an inner wisdom, an intuition, a Christ consciousness, something within that is greater us. That's why we can say yes to the good things in life. Because we have this discipline.... we are this disciple to this inner source that we love so much- we can only say yes to the right things, the right foods, the right relationships, the right actions and the right intentions. Bad habits just don't fit anymore. There is this inner discipline that leads us and is so true to us. As Gandhi said "My God is found in truth". And as Jesus said "Know the truth and the truth will set you free". This has been my experience.

Journey: Baron, let's shift gears a bit. I'm sure you have seen a lot of change in yoga in your lifetime, some people put a knock on what is being called power yoga; that it has become westernized and lost its purity. Do you feel that to be true?

Baron: Ummmm.... it can be true.... well, that's a tough one..... yes, it's true and no it's not true. A lot of times you wonder how true the people saying it are. I mean how much does it matter? If your just sitting around wondering or pointing fingers, you probably aren't that pure yet.

Journey: It's almost as if it's bad because some styles of yoga are westernized. That has always troubled me.

Baron: Right. Even if it is an aerobic teacher who went through a weekend yoga training and now is sharing some yoga with people at her gym.....is that such an awful thing? Is it not opening doors to greater truths and greater worlds? Isn't that how little seeds are planted? Who knows how many lives can be saved. I have seen it. Just a few months ago I was teaching a workshop in New York City A man came up to me when the workshop was done and handed me a card. Later on, when I opened this card, he had written about how many years ago he was in Los Angeles visiting a friend and was strung out on heroin. His friend woke him up early one morning .... like six a.m.....to take him to a yoga class. He had never done yoga before. He said he went and took that yoga class; he said he struggled in that class.... but something in him broke and shifted.... not even knowing what. He went back to New York and engaged in a yoga practice and he found God...he found a 12-step program ..... found a whole new life. He thanked me and told me that the first yoga class was with me. His note said that with his whole being he thanked me that I may not have known it but I saved his life. Back then I was just a kid ....I was maybe twenty years old...and pretty naive ..... teaching a much more physical class, but I still had a philosophy. You just don't know, who is going to be touched and how you're going to affect them; it's really not our job to know. Our job is to come out of ourselves, and it's not even about being perfect. It's about doing our part as authentically as we can. I would much rather be real than pure. When the purists come at me with all this stuff sometimes.... its' kinda like...ummmm, it must be tough walking on water.... I'm just not there...but at least I'm real and doing the best I can...

Journey: How do you find contentment and peace?

Baron: Probably beginning with stopping looking for it. I think peace is something we find when we stop looking for things to be happy. We make peace with being in the present moment. We make peace with ourselves, through acceptance. We make peace by accepting our shortcomings, our flaws, and our weaknesses. A lot of times we want to ignore our shortcomings and weaknesses, because we almost feel like we would than be less. We have become so into the more...more successful.... more perfect...more beautiful...more money. It's kind of the nightmare; we are such consumers and collectors and live a life of consuming and collecting - not giving and not accepting things as they are, beginning with ourselves. I think the greatest seeking is accepting everything, the light and the dark. I think when we learn to be okay with our flaws, that we own up to our mistakes, it actually lightens our load so much. We really make peace with our imperfections and then we begin a journey to work with them compassionately, with understanding and kindness. With this peace comes contentment.

Journey: What is your mission in life?

Baron: My mission in life is simply to do the best I can and find a simplicity that helps me to move away from the delusions and all the excesses that block me from my natural perceptions. Not to build empires; certainly I have a mission to share and express myself but also a mission to find a greater submission to the truth... a surrender to the truth that cuts through all the illusion.

Journey: Thank you for sharing with us Baron.

Baron: Thank you for asking.

Baron Baptiste's new book 40 Days to Personal Revolution published by Fireside is now available at A Touch of Serenity and other bookstores.

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