a few years ago, while at a cafe, my first yoga teacher, larry, walked in to pick up his take out order. i slumped low in my seat because i didn't want to see him...actually i didn't want him to see me. i had gained all this weight, was totally out of shape, and worst of all, i had cancer...all the things i was embarrassed for him to know about me.
when i had to be in the neighborhood near his yoga studio, i worried that i might bump into him, so i'd move quickly to get done whatever i was doing.
"j" took me to my first ashtanga class. i abbreviate "j's" name because in knowing him for 30 years, he was the most ridiculously private person i ever met. his other friends and i would joke that he was a special agent, because everything was top secret. all girlfriends were referred to as "persons of interest"...no names were ever mentioned..."j" was a martial artist. you'd be talking to him and he'd start doing a handstand and jump into a flip while responding. "j" was always telling me about his friend's yoga studio and that i should come to class. i finally went. what i remember most about that first class was everyone doing a special kind of breathing which made the room sound like ocean waves.
i was wiped out in the first 20 minutes and just layed there. at the end of the class, the teacher said "take rest" and all the students laid quietly on their mats like they were back in kindergarten...
after class, larry came over and introduced himself, laughed and shook his head when he found out it was my first time doing ashtanga. "j" had taken me to an advanced class. i don't know why, but i came back again, and it didn't take long before ashtanga yoga became a big part of my life.
larry, the teacher, was a character. it seemed like everything he said or did was spontaneous. once i showed up for a class that was cancelled and he congratulated me. he said that just showing up was yoga in itself. larry made things up as he went along.
there was a combo of good and bad press about him. there was talk about the teachers working for him not getting paid. on the other hand, larry was the one who started the 90/90...that meant you got 90 days of yoga for 90 bucks. everyone liked that part. many of the now famous yoga teachers in the united states started out as his students or taught their first classes in his studio.
sometimes a bunch of us would hang out after class and smoke pot before we went down the block to have dinner. lots of jokes were made at larry's expense, and larry laughed along. there were always larry dramas, too, like girlfriends walking in on him with other girlfriends...stuff like that.
at one point, larry became the private teacher of "the grateful dead". i remember meeting bobby weir at one of his parties. larry told me this story about jerry garcia: the band members wanted jerry to start yoga because he was so out of shape. eventually he said yes and joined in for his first class. larry being who he was, instead of teaching an easy beginning pose, chose to show off a bit...he began doing a belly breathing posture called nauli. if you don't know what it is, imagine the way a belly dancer moves her belly from side to side. that's what he wanted jerry to do, pick up his shirt and move his belly. jerry left the class immediately and never joined in again. i told larry that we can hold him personally responsible for jerry's death, because if he had liked yoga, he might have gotten healthy again. larry laughed.
this morning, i had some facebook surfing time and i looked up the name of a woman we used to do yoga with. i saw her "wall" and a post that someone had written "how sad about larry schultz"...from that, i discovered that larry schultz had died at the end of february. there was no reason given beyond natural causes...so strange for someone only 60 years old.
different yoga articles and people's blogs referred to him as the "rocket man". he developed his own ashtanga style and opened schools all over the world. i was afraid of the "rocket" series, because it was way too hard for someone like me and that's around the time i stopped attending his classes. i was a happy traditionalist as far as ashtanga was concerned.
i came upon this tribute to larry today. i've always appreciated that he was my first yoga instructor, and also, that through him, i was given the opportunity to study with the great tim miller...
take rest, rocket man...