A Conversation with Lilias Folan

In Yoga Journal’s Archives series, we share a curated collection of articles originally published in past issues beginning in 1975. These stories offer a glimpse into how yoga was interpreted, written about, and practiced throughout the years. This article first appeared in the July/August 1979 issue of Yoga Journal. Find more of our Archives here. 

America’s best-known yogi is a beautiful, vivacious, and talented woman named Lilias Folan. Through her television show, “Lilias Yoga and You,” she has inspired millions of people to improve their health and outlook, and has made the word “yoga” a part of contemporary American vocabulary. Lilias’ radiant smile, statuesque presence and patient enthusiasm have made her a model for yoga teachers as well as for her TV students. Recently, the Yoga Journal had the opportunity to interview Lilias, to ask her some personal questions about how yoga has transformed her life and some cosmic queries about what yoga is doing to transform humanity.

Lilias says, “I like being 43 years old. I love being a mature woman.” This is a heartening statement and one that is probably rare in the annals of television stardom. “And,” she continues, “it’s yoga that has helped me to grow up.” In a society that idealizes youthfulness and generally disparages aging, Lilias has made her own way and exemplifies a new attitude toward American womanhood.

Her career in yoga began at the local YMCA. A housewife and adoring mother of two sons, she knew there was something more to life than the comforts of a middleclass existence. Like many other people, she went into therapy to find out why she wasn’t quite happy. But it was in her Hatha Yoga practice that she was able to finally work on herself and achieve emotional balance and the good feeling about herself that can come with physical conditioning. The cap to this wave of self-exploration was teaching. In sharing the benefits of her yoga experience with others, Lilias knows the fullness that she has searched for.

Lilias Folan Gets Her Start on Television

The idea for “Lilias Yoga and You” was broached by one of her early students whose husband was a producer at the local Cincinnati educational television station, WCET-TV. The hardest part was convincing Public Television that yoga wasn’t peculiar, strange and un-American, that it isn’t a religion—that was the big one.” The question of yoga as religion she explains like this: “I am of a Christian tradition and the Vedanta has just been glasses for me to read with and make the Scriptures live for me.”

Skeptical as the station was, when they received 150 letters during the first days the show aired, the producers became convinced that they had picked up on someone and something very exciting. It has been seven years since her television debut. Now Lilias’ show has been nationally syndicated for the last three years.

She would like it known that she is paid a one-time fee for each taping and collects no residuals. Obviously, money has not been the impetus in Lilias’ television career. It is her ability to share yoga with millions of children, householders, businesspeople, and senior citizens through the medium that has been the inspiration.

And perhaps Lilias has been so successful at imparting her knowledge of yoga, and making it acceptable even to xenophobes who find strange words like “yoga” frightening, because she is an all-American woman in the best sense of the term. She has been a “hockey mother” for 12 years, she enjoys camping and canoeing with her family, and she’s a good cook—even if she does say so herself—but most importantly, she is an independent thinker. As she explains it: “Hatha Yoga and yoga philosophy isn’t something that stays in the gymnasium or classroom. It gets put into your life, in every situation and with all the people you meet. The pain and the pleasure, it’s all to learn from.”

A Conversation With Lilias Folan

The following interview was conducted on February 14, 1979, in San Francisco. Also present were Judith Lasater, who directs the Yoga Studio in San Francisco, and Rick Miller of the Marin School of Yoga in Corte Madera.

What Makes a Good Yoga Teacher

Deena: What qualities would you say are necessary in a good yoga teacher, whether it would be on television or in the classroom—before 150 people or five people?

Lilias: Or in front of five million people?

Deena: Right! Five million.

Lilias: The qualities…? There are so many. I think it is both beautiful and necessary for one to have the desire to continue to learn, and to not judge the other teachers just because they teach differently than you. As teachers, we must acknowledge other teachers who are doing one method of Hatha Yoga while we are doing another, that these are different paths. Sometimes yoga teachers have a way of saying, “Well, my teacher is the best teacher.” Then another person says, “My teacher is the best,” and then we are off and running in this big competition, when we are supposed to be not competitive at all.

I think another essential quality for a yoga teacher is the desire to share, to share ideas, and methods, and ways that you have learned to communicate something in a posture that is a little bit different—to share your knowledge. So often beginning Hatha teachers feel that they have to hold it to themselves and not give it away to other teachers, because they might be sort of stealing their thunder and as soon as they share it, you’ll know that. Actually, as soon as you share it, you really have it! But it’s that sort of holding your ground that can be very choking.

Judith: That’s what’s so nice about the Bay Area. Here, people are so willing to advertise other people’s classes as well as their own, and to share and to tell other students to take workshops with other people, and to recommend good teachers. You know, that sort of attitude is really nice.

Lilias: I’d like to tell you just a little story that illustrates how a Hatha teacher keeps learning and growing. The hardest part perhaps of my television teaching is accepting the fact that I make mistakes and that it’s fine to make mistakes. Mistakes in some ways are advantageous to your teaching—your teaching/learning process.

About three years ago, I was in a shopping center in Pennsylvania and a woman came up to me and she said, “I’ve been watching your series for three years, Lilias, and you’ve changed. I see you’ve changed.” I was mortified at her statement, I was so embarrassed. It was like being caught with my pants down. What my filters had heard was, “You’ve changed therefore you’re not perfect.” Somewhere in the back of my mind I had the feeling that to be a Hatha Yoga teacher I had to be perfect.

Of course, that’s ridiculous. I don’t know whether I’ve made my point clear, but it was an exciting moment in my life when I realized that I could change. Once I gave myself permission to make mistakes, I could also allow myself to succeed. The series is different than it was five years ago. I’m a different person than I was five years ago. It’s not only okay, but exciting to change your approach and your method and your technique of Hatha Yoga teaching.

Deena: What I’m getting from what you’re saying is a kind of lack of ego attachment to the idea of being a teacher rather than a student.

Lilias: Well, I thought that because I was on TV I must be the perfect teacher and, therefore, I had to be perfect. If you are perfect, you can’t make mistakes. And if you are perfect, you can’t change. And it is a problem especially with TV where everything you say and do is on tape forever.

Deena: Even without television, you get people who feel that way just because they think: “I’m a professional. I’m a teacher…”

Lilias: That’s right.

Deena: And, therefore, I’m perfect.

Lilias: What an unnecessary burden to carry!

Rick: You also said something the other day about being on television and people seeing that you are changing. Their awareness of you changing helps them perhaps to clarify that change is also possible within them—that there is no such thing as a perfect yoga student, as well as a perfect yoga teacher.

Teaching Yoga on TV

Deena: In putting on your television series, what is the most important point that you want to stress and teach your students?

Lilias: The television student and the “real life” student are two different matters. For television students I may be the only teacher they’ll ever have, so I really look at them very, very differently. I’ve had to adjust my teaching and make it simple and clear for that person sitting in front of the television whom I can’t reach out and correct.

If there is something that I can impart to them above and beyond physical health, it is how to put the yoga principles into their everyday lives—into the life of the Nebraska farmwoman, the businessman from Tampa, Florida, the man or the woman who really doesn’t want to, isn’t too interested at this time in going into a regular Hatha Yoga class. I hope I can give them…help them to see they have the tools within them for a better night’s sleep, tools for mental balance during a very hectic day, that there are tools to release tension and combat fatigue that are very simple and practical—not a Himalayan bed of nails type of thing—but things that are just very practical and that don’t even have to have a yoga name.

The names are not important. Although I use the Sanskrit names, they are not absolutely crucial. To introduce people to their self-worth, to who they are, and to the beauty that is within them, that is important. And that it doesn’t have to be expensive, and that we all have the resources if we can just tap into them. That’s it.

What Attracts Women to Yoga

Deena: It seems to me that Hatha Yoga is a practice that women are especially drawn to. I think that is because it is noncompetitive and develops strength without really relying on it, at least to begin with. And it develops poise and balance rather than big muscles. Do you feel that the reason for the current popularity of yoga reflects women taking a new interest in their being and their well-being?

Lilias: Women have a mystical side to them. I think that the mystical part of yoga attracts a woman whether she realizes it or not. It attracts a man, also. I think men are really coming into their own as far as seeing not only how Hatha Yoga can benefit them physically and mentally, but how it can put them in touch with their feminine energy. I know from my classes, for instance, that over the years the number of men has jumped from two to 15 out of 40.

But women are drawn to Hatha Yoga because it is so interesting and because most women take time for themselves. Yoga really appeals to that quality in us that makes us take time for reading or for tennis or for extrapersonal growth. Men have a very hard time taking time for themselves, knowing its value. They have a hard time being in touch with their feelings. Women don’t necessarily have more leisure time, but they just seem to see its value. Maybe that’s why women live longer than men.

But the postures are appealing more to men, now that they are aware of how they can be used in athletics, can be used in conjunction with stress in business, too, so more men are listening. I don’t know if I’ve answered your question in a way that is round about. I just hope I’ve answered it.

Deena: Well, it was kind of a leading question, and I think perhaps you didn’t want to be led. What I want to know is if you think women like doing Hatha Yoga because it is noncompetitive or because it develops balance and poise or why?

Lilias: Very practically, one of the reasons I started was to gain firm thighs and lose a paunchy tummy. Then it also began to appeal to my mental health, which, at the time when I started yoga, was just beginning to pull itself together or just beginning to heal. So I found Hatha Yoga appealed to me not only physically but mentally.

Yoga as a Journey Within

Deena: Americans are often stereotyped as hardnosed, practical, materialistic. Yet, historically there is a strong mystical tradition in American culture, including such writers as Nathaniel Hawthorne and Ralph Waldo Emerson, and such spiritual communities as Erehwon. How do you think this contradictory American heritage ties into the popularity of your television show?

Lilias: The way I like to speak the best is from my own experience and not just break theory out of books. When I started Hatha Yoga I had been in therapy for years. Emotionally, I was functioning pretty well—happier with the world. One day I woke up and saw that I had two cars in the garage, a golden retriever, two beautiful sons, a good husband making a fine salary, a boat in Long Island Sound and a lovely house. But that morning I woke up and I said, “Is this all there is?” I had everything and I still wasn’t happy. I thought, “If I’m not happy with all this, how am I going to find out what happiness is? What’s it all about?” It was really rather uncomfortable. And maybe this is what so many people in this country are feeling. We have so much material wealth. What more do we have to purchase to make ourselves happy?

My search really began with someone saying to me that it’s not going to end by looking out there. It’s going to end by looking inside you. The jewels are inside of you. Reluctantly—because as with everything, change is never easy, to change our path is never easy—I started to look within and it started with Hatha Yoga. I was so entranced with Hatha Yoga in the beginning because it made me feel so well. My body changed. It was such an exciting beginning.

However, after trying to do the perfect Scorpion year after year, someone came up to me and said, “Lilias, don’t you know there is more?” It was as if he closed a door. One door closed and another opened and then the vast branches of yoga lay out in front of me. Hatha Yoga was important, but the others became also fascinating and as important. And that was how it began.

Deena: Can you tell me from your experience, what do you feel are characteristics yoga students have in common? Why do people take yoga classes? I ask because I realize in my work at the Yoga Journal that yogis can represent a tremendous variety of lifestyles, careers…

Lilias: Want to hear what I see as the common characteristic? I see pain—that is what I see. I see pain everywhere—physically, mentally, spiritually starving people. That’s the big connection that I see in everybody and it’s through that discomfort about, “Who am I? I don’t know who I am,” that pain forces someone to open. If we were all so comfortable, we wouldn’t go anywhere. We’d all get fat and lazy. I know myself—I would be lazy. But it is through discomfort and tension—that friction has pushed me forward and forced me into that Hatha Yoga class or literally pushed me into meditation, because someone said to me that meditation would have such and such benefits.

If we just take a look at the pain in our lives and see it as a compassionate teacher, that will open us and open new doorways to us, if we don’t resist it so much. But I have never wanted to change and I have never wanted to face pain at all. I’ve run from it for years thinking that if I faced it, it would topple me over. Once I learned to bend with it, and not be so resistant, and could see the wisdom that lay within, the seeds that lay within each instance of discomfort in my own life—there was such wisdom there—then there was such learning.

I learned who Lilias Folan was and what she was all made up about. And I learned to be compassionate and loving to myself, to really care about me and forgive myself, and then keep on going. You know, people spend so much time not loving themselves!

Deena: Do you think yoga is a method that teaches you how to love yourself better?

Lilias: Yes, I do. But it’s not just physical—lift your right leg up. It starts from a little seed which is, “Take time for yourself. You are worth something. You’re beautiful. You’re perfect.” Where we get hung up is in guilt and sadness, all those scars that we—this beautiful human being—carry around with us, when really the observer within is perfect. That changeless, ageless, light-filled essence is the perfection of which we speak.

“Lilias Yoga and You”

Deena: Who do you think your television audience is? Is it housewives or business people? I’ve noticed that “Lilias, Yoga and You” is on at various times during the morning and night.

Lilias: We reach an incredible age range and I’ve gotten letters from little kids of five years old with their school pictures and their favorite postures and, also, from Phoenix, Arizona, Sun City retirement, eighty-year-olds. Probably the biggest audience is in their thirties and forties, men as well as women, doctors as well as the householder. One of the greatest compliments I ever got was from a doctor. He wrote: “Thank you, Lilias, for being on the air. I recommend your series to all my patients. You keep my waiting room free and my office less crowded,” something like that.

Deena: That’s a wonderful compliment.

Lilias: Well, that’s what it’s about, making people healthy, mentally and physically.

Deena: Has fame changed you, Lilias?

Lilias: I think it makes you examine a few things about yourself. You have to examine your ego and why you are doing some of the things that you do. You can think you are famous and that’s rather ridiculous. In traveling, it always shocks me to walk into an airport and have someone come up to me, oh, from Provo, Utah, and say, “I’ve been waiting all my life to meet you.” Then on the other hand you can look at that situation and realize, “That’s my brother and I’ve been waiting all my life to meet him,” and it becomes something very, very beautiful.

And, I don’t think it is by accident. I don’t think the series or the process, the service, is by accident. It’s what I am supposed to be doing. So it is not a big deal and if I am doing anything less than that, why am I here? I’m here to communicate something to others. It’s not because anybody’s special. It’s because that’s what you’re supposed to be doing. That’s what your potential is. And we’re supposed to live up to our potentials.

Deena: Your talent is your fulfillment?

Lilias: It’s a gift, a talent, and it’s been given on loan and I really had nothing to do with that. It’s been higher powers helping me right along. You are an instrument, so how can you take credit for it? Taking the credit is a very big burden and I learned that very early. When I begin to think I do anything, I’m in deep trouble.

It’s very painful to think that you are doing everything. I found it painful and then I looked at it and wondered, “Why am I in pain?” Well, it was because I was taking all the credit and all the responsibility. What a selfish, pride-filled attitude! As soon as I saw that I was really the instrument, it was much better.

Hatha Yoga and Spirituality

Judith: What I’m interested in is how you personally see Hatha Yoga in your life, as far as its part in your spiritual side.

Lilias: My spiritual side?

Judith: Is it your spiritual side? Do you see it like the Buddhists do walking meditation or do you see it as something you do so you can meditate?

Lilias: People rarely ask me that. But in my teaching and in developing my own awareness, there is a definite spiritual side. Yoga has helped me to develop within myself the observer—the divine perceiver. Therefore, in my experience, meditation and Hatha Yoga flow one into another.

Judith: You don’t see them as separate to a certain extent? Complimentary, but separate? In other words, do you feel that you can meditate while standing on your head or can you only meditate sitting in the Lotus?

Lilias: It depends on your definition of meditation. For me that has changed as I have changed. It used to be sitting in one position with my altar, my puja table covered with holy pictures, a connection, in a Bhakti sense, to the divine. I’d go to that altar each day, to that flame, and take a coal from that flame and place it in my heart and walk through the day, and so that was sort of a love connection. Then as the years have gone by, it expanded. It’s expanded and I think the Hatha Yoga has expanded, too. To take each posture…

Judith: As a prayer?

Lilias: Yes, as a prayer, but more. It’s to take the postures as the silent witness. Just as you are the observer of each posture during practice, in meditation your awareness begins to broaden and you begin to get in touch with the divine perceiver, too. Then every single moment—whether you are driving in a car or working with your children—you become the observer, not only of your physical self but of the mental body. You begin to pull back and see yourself as the actor, the play, and the audience—all three at once.

Judith: So, Hatha Yoga helps you to create the witness self?

Lilias: Yes, because it is easier, less threatening to witness the physical body than the mental body. What I mean is, it’s easy to get detachment on your big toe. But to get detachment between you and guilt—that takes practice. With time and re-thinking you are able to look at sensitive problem areas.

For me, say, the problem areas might be anger, jealousy and pride. Through training myself to observe in asana, I can back off and observe that not very pretty picture of Lilias without judging or criticizing what I see—but simply watch it. The result is that the toxic energy of those negative feelings soon loses its hold over me. The energy is transformed, so to speak, into something higher.

Judith: The key thing then is the process. You are using whatever tool it is that’s available to help you become the witness, to develop that process of observation. I think for many of us, that’s one way to do it.

Lilias: If I had my way…I’m a very lazy person…if I had my way, I’d forget Hatha Yoga. If I could…but I can’t. My students make me continue. I have to continue. Frankly, at times I’m very sick of it. Really, I get up to here with it. Yet, I have learned more from it…when I want to run, I can’t run. I have to stay with it and it continues to grow and it continues to excite me. But I do have times when I would just love to pack it all up…I am going to just meditate…period. It’s not where I am yet. One day, maybe, but I can’t do it right now. That sounds funny, I guess, coming from a Hatha teacher.

Judith: No, I think it sounds great.

Rick: It seems like so many spiritual people end up stopping Hatha at some time in their life. It is interesting that you say what you just said.

Lilias: I can’t do it yet.

Judith: Do you mean that you think that there is sort of a goal in stopping?

Lilias: Maybe, but I don’t want my spoiled little self to tell me when to stop. I have a little spoiled child in there that wants to suck its thumb and go do things that are self-indulgent. Sometimes I’d much rather stick my face in a book and read than practice.

Judith: That’s interesting because to me it is so pleasurable to do yoga. I just feel so addicted to it because it’s so pleasurable to me.

Lilias: I think, there again, you’re a different personality. I think where you live plays a part. You are very lucky to live in an area where if you want a class, you can go to Swami Bua, you can go to Rick [Miller], you can go just around the corner. Although we all in Cincinnati have a wonderful yoga teacher’s association, that helps me a great deal, it’s just not like going to Karen Stephen in Boston or Sita Frenkel in Washington D.C.

In Cincinnati, we’re now forty teachers strong and we have a directory and we look to the Yoga Journal for help. I want to tell you how much the Yoga Journal means to us in the center of the country. We have no way of really keeping track of what’s going on elsewhere except through your magazine. It’s been very helpful.

Lilias Folan’s Biggest Influences

Deena: You’ve talked about how you’ve changed through yoga. Can you talk about what has influenced your teaching over the years?

Lilias: Yes, my deepening awareness. I’ve been teaching and studying for what?—15 or 16 years. I started teaching much too early by today’s standards, 14 years ago. Ah, certainly my awareness has changed. My knowledge of anatomy and kinesiology was nil ten years ago. Now I’m fascinated by how and why the postures work internally.

My Hatha Yoga postures definitely went from one level to another when Bernard Rishi came into my life in 1972. B.K.S. Iyengar has been a tremendous influence on Bernard Rishi, so that the Iyengar method of Hatha Yoga has influenced my awareness of the postures and it constantly grows now…it just constantly grows.

Deena: Did you start with the standing postures that Iyengar is known for at the time you met Rishi?

Lilias: I don’t think it’s the standing postures so much, really, as it’s been understanding the anatomy of each posture, that there are building blocks. Each posture needs to be built upon and you don’t go into them willy-nilly; you go into them prepared. Now, this is my own interpretation—it is not necessarily how Mr. Iyengar teaches. It’s just how…it’s what I have taken in through my filters. I feel that conditioning exercises—work on the back, work on the abdomen—must go right along with doing the standing postures or inverted postures, because they are the basis upon which to build the postures, the mortar between the bricks.

I have hurt myself in postures. I have injured myself through improper preparation…mass classes…and I have learned a lot from my own injuries that have occurred pre-Iyengar because of improper and over-zealous teaching of the asanas.

Judith: I think people should know that.

Lilias: I don’t mind talking about it at all.

Deena: It’s said that injury can be a great teacher…Lilias, what spiritual teachers, rather than Hatha Yoga teachers, have you met and visited with or felt that you have had an experience with?

Lilias: Ones who have been a profound influence on me? I think meeting Swami Chidananda, you might say, put a torch in my heart. He was the first person who kind of gave me the clarion call that I am a pilgrim upon this planet, that we progress on this path and there is not much time. You are here to evolve; you are here to grow and there is no other purpose to your life. You might think that there are a lot of other purposes, but there is one purpose and that is to evolve as a human being. It’s a gift and a privilege to be in this body. There are thousands of souls waiting for this physical body, so you are very lucky to have one…When I heard that, it lifted my heart with a desire to start on the path. And along this path there have been some wonderful and profound teachers from India and some have been American teachers.

From the Hindu tradition, certainly Baba Muktananda was one of the first teachers to encourage me to teach meditation. He gave me, among other things, some much needed confidence. I will be forever devoted to him. And Michael Schoemaker, now Swami Chetananda of the Rudrananda Ashram in Bloomington, Indiana, deepened my wish to grow, and my understanding and experience of the chakra system and kundalini.

More recently, there are one or two American teachers from whom I’ve felt a sort of new age energy. More contemporary points of view have opened my thinking and have opened the way considerably. And I feel like I am in a very big transition place.

Deena: What was your trip to India like?

Lilias: I went to India, I think it’s almost five years ago, with a Rama Krishna group led by my friend Swami Pranananda. We were there for three weeks and we visited traditional Rama Krishna maths in Calcutta, Delhi and Madras. In Rishikesh we visited Swami Chidananda at the Sivananda Ashram, and it was just a wonderful experience to be with him in his home. The trip wasn’t at all stressful. There wasn’t too much focus on Hatha Yoga. It was more for meditation and just to be in these places and absorb the atmosphere. It was delightful.

I don’t think it’s necessary for students to go to India. India is coming to the United States. But I hope I can go one day to visit Mr. Iyengar in Poona. Yet, it is not necessary since so many of his teachers are here.

Deena: Do you feel it is helpful though for students to go to the country or visit the culture where yoga originated or that it would help their understanding in any way?

Lilias: Honestly?

Deena: Honestly, of course.

Lilias: I don’t think it helped me to understand particularly. I don’t think it deepened…No, I don’t think so. I’ll tell you why I loved India—it was a jewel. It is a country that is a jewel. And I never had those pictures in my mind. I thought it was just poverty, then I went there and saw its beauty…such beauty. The Ganges at sunset, Sivananda’s burial place, Swami Chidananda in his own ashram, things like that were beyond words.

Deena: To experience it?

Lilias: To experience it…Wading in the Ganges…I mean, I will never forget that. I don’t think it is an absolute necessity to do all that. Some need to and they’ll know who they are and they’ll go.

What Lilas’ Practice Looks Like

Deena: In your personal practice, what would you say that you concentrate on when you do Hatha Yoga? Which postures or what kind of spirit are you trying to develop in yourself?

Lilias: My own personal maintenance. Really, my own personal practice is to bring my body up into a certain place and to forget about it. I don’t really want to spend hours and hours on my physical body. I really don’t. I want to study. I want to take time for meditation. As far as Hatha Yoga is concerned, I want to be sharing it with others in a teaching sense. And I’d like to keep my body and continue trying to deepen postures.

Deena: What are your favorite postures?

Lilias: Probably Surya Namaskar (Sun Salutation) and all its variations, because you can get into so many different places.

Deena: The fluidity?

Lilias: It’s great—it’s creative. And the Shoulderstand…trying things that I am not very good at, because I would rather stay in the areas that I am very good at like forward bending or certain things requiring strength. But it is much better, I find, to test myself in areas that are tough like the Wheel or backward bending or pushing on my edges of fear. Definitely, our buttons are pushed in backward bends. I don’t like it at all. But I find that if I do it, when I’m through just a lot of energy comes. Then I’m really happy with what I’ve done and it’s good.

Everyday though, it is a new experience for me—my own practice—sitting there by myself to try to keep it fresh and new and interesting. It’s a sadhana that at times I rebel against. I don’t like it—it’s lonely. I am glad when I get those reservoirs. I go and drink from somebody and I find out that it cools my thirst because I desperately need to work with people. In the midwest it’s just hard to find reservoirs to go to. You have to travel. All of us who teach are traveling more.

And we have to keep up with our own personal practice, because if you don’t it kills you—it kills you. And I think the thing I’ve seen is that everything we teach in physical ways—the strength, the balance, the flexibility—we’re tested on as teachers. I am tested on all of this. I can’t tell a student to practice unless I am practicing myself. And I have the other side of me that doesn’t want to practice. As I said before, I would much rather pull the blanket over my head and read Alice Bailey’s Esoteric Psychology and not do my practice. But that discipline of teaching, which I adore so much, it’s the best thing that ever happened to me…the best thing. They [the students] are my teachers.

Deena: When you first began, what were your family and friend’s reactions to your taking up yoga?

Lilias: At first they thought I was terribly peculiar, and I probably was. I used to do things like get very enthusiastic and do a Headstand in the middle of a cocktail party. One day I fell into the coffee table and that was the end of that—I felt so embarrassed. But I learned that that’s not exactly where you do your Hatha Yoga.

I was terribly enthusiastic, so I tried to change everybody. I tried to change my husband and all my friends and to get them on the bandwagon of this wonderful thing that I had discovered. And the way I did it, I turned off a lot of my friends and my husband was really not very enchanted with…Well, it was fine for me, but not for him. And that was fine, because eventually I learned that it was really through my own example that things would begin to change. I really couldn’t change anyone else. I had to change me first. All that resistance that I was getting was for a very good purpose—I had to change me.

Deena: Did your husband eventually come around?

Lilias: My husband has always been very interesting to talk with philosophically. We have good times exchanging ideas, feelings and that sort of thing. And just this year he’s joined my Hatha Yoga class. I am very pleased about that. After how many years? But we’ve both grown. It’s fun to have him in my class.

Deena: I’ll bet. What about your children? Were they receptive to it?

Lilias: I’ve often thought I’d like to go back and do that all again with the tools I have now. But I was lucky in a way because my kids got involved, or at least came in contact with it when they were quite young. Swami Chidananda stayed with us and they were exposed to this saintly man. They heard chanting. They saw meditating on a daily basis and we prayed together. It’s just been a part of our lives. I’ve never forced them, but I helped them to bring out their feelings on who they are and to talk about what is going on inside them. They’ve examined who they are a lot earlier than I was able to.

I don’t want to make it sound too perfect. We’ve had some big ups and downs, and have run into trouble during the high school years. We were extremely lucky to find an incredible new age type of school called the Hyde School, in Bath, Maine. They care about the total student and the family unit.

Looking Ahead

Deena: As we approach 1980, what do you think the future of yoga will be? For example, do you think it will ever become part of the physical education programs in public schools like calisthenics and swimming are now?

Lilias: Right now Hatha Yoga is starting to be used in the school system. Children are being taught Hatha Yoga in the Montessori schools. I know of a class for 2 1/2 to 5-year-olds at our Cincinnati Jewish Community Center. It’s also being taught for college credit in different parts of the country. And I hope that someday it will be introduced into medical schools. Do you just mean Hatha Yoga in the school system?

Deena: Well, that was part of the question. But also, what future do you see for Hatha Yoga in America? Do you think it will really become mainstream?

Lilias: Well, it’s certainly been a 3000-year fad. I think it’s going to last for a little bit longer. What is fascinating to me is that Hatha Yoga seems to be synthesizing. It’s growing. It’s not always taught now in the traditional or purist or classical way that was taught thousands of years ago. It’s synthesizing. We have this method and that method, and can take the best from each and put that into our own practice. What’s right for you may not be for me. I love taking what I can use, putting it through my inner filters and getting it back out in a way that is comfortable for me. It is like we are all weaving a giant colorful mandala of dance, music, song, word, and touch…a mandala that will portray the balanced body, mind and spirit.

Deena: I know you are writing a book about yoga in America? Can you give me any details about what we can look forward to?

Lilias: Well, it’s “Lilias, Yoga and Your Life,” at this point. It’s being published by Macmillan and I hope that it will be out by next Easter. It expands on what we’ve been talking about: How to take Hatha Yoga and put it into our everyday lives in a very practical way. First, for the householders—men and women like you and myself who have a sadhana and Hatha Yoga is part of it. Taking the breathing and then the thinking and then putting it into our relationships, putting it into your business life, into self-knowledge especially.

And then the book will talk about yoga and the athlete, the specialist. The athlete might perhaps use the yoga stretches, the static stretches. How maybe those baseball players shouldn’t go out onto the field unless they do twenty minutes of yoga beforehand as a preparation—as a wonderful warmup and as a cool down, too.

In conjunction with the book, I’ve been working with Craig Virgin, who is a premier long-distance runner, Olympic hopeful for 1980. He’s been using the yoga stretches along with his long-distance runs. He hopes to lengthen his stride and help his physical body and mental well-being as well.

And the book will discuss different problem areas, aging, back problems and back exercises, tension and relaxation. You don’t have to be an expert yogi if you can just do some very simple tension relieving exercises and learn the principles of relaxation. Other areas that interest me are Ram Dass’ and Bo Lozoff’s Prison Ashram Project (which has brought yoga into the prisons), working with the handicapped, the blind, and rehabilitation through Hatha Yoga.

Deena: What are some of the unexpected things that you have found out while researching the book or some of the experiences that you have had?

Lilias: Oh, gosh, I don’t know. I think one of the things I’ve liked about it is that it’s forcing me to learn. I’ve learned a lot researching this book. And it’s been fun to meet some of the people that actually do yoga—especially the athletes and artists. For instance, Noel Tyl is a six-foot-eleven-inch basso profundo from Washington, D.C., an opera star and master astrologer. He just uses a few postures to warmup and release tension before he goes out and plays Wotan and Walkyrie with twenty pounds of costume on and a 15-foot spear that he carries. He does one chest expansion, standing there in the darkened stage with full make-up on, and then he grabs his spear and he goes out and sings and performs for two hours. I found that very, very interesting. He’s a remarkable fellow.

Deena: It seems that you can apply yoga in so many places where you never expected to use it and…

Lilias: True. I was really charmed to find as much yoga going on with young children—two and three-year-olds having classes, or mothers and daughters, and mothers and sons going to Hatha Yoga classes together. Of course, there’s wonderful work that’s being done with Yoga and pregnancy, and with men and women who are in their seventies and eighties, too. And then there’s the excitement and the new lift it gives to most men and women who get very sedentary. There’s such hope. There’s such hope for everybody.