Riding Waves of Possibility
Mary Taylor
When you live life “marching to the beat of a different drum” you’re likely to stand out from the crowd. And many who do fully enjoy their rebellious status. A renegade. Someone who does not conform to current societal or popular norms and yet seems happier than the rest of us. That’s almost a spot-on description of John Doyle, except for one crucial element. He is far more comfortable supporting others and taking the back seat, than he is singing his own praises so others notice he stands out.
To an outside observer John is modest and seems to glide through life. Maybe it’s because he grew up skateboarding, surfing, and peddling his bike around town in Glendale, California. Riding waves and dodging obstacles is well programmed into his nervous system so he’s adept at generalizing that skill into everyday life.
It’s in Glendale as a high school kid where John’s yoga journey began. Not as a quest for spirituality or meaning, but in his own words, “due to truancy.” He and a friend had decided to skip school one day, not realizing that it was the day you got to pick what you’d take for PE that term. By the time they got back to school, all the good things had been taken, so he ended up in yoga. He admits now that he didn’t hate the class—it seemed like a perfectly good way to do a few stretches and then relax. But he didn’t imagine that it would become a central part of his life over the years.
After high school John went to university, got accepted into medical school and then went on to specialize in pathology. During his last year of residency—having spent nine years immersed in medicine—he found himself faced with passing a massive series of exams to complete his training. They required knowledge just about every disease that had ever occurred to man and it meant he study non-stop for 18 hours a day for weeks on end. It was incredibly stressful. Although John had remained physically active while in med school—working out at the gym, skateboarding and so on—for the first time in his life he’d also begun to suffer from considerable test anxiety.
One day in the midst of studying, thoughts of his high school days and how relaxed he’d felt after yoga drifted through his mind. “Oh yeah. Yoga!! I can get a gentle work out, not even have to break a sweat, and then I can relax.” Seemed like the perfect solution. Why wait?
Still in his street clothes he found his way to a yoga class at the local gym that coincided with his timing. It was an “Ashtanga Prep” class. So much for the “doing a few stretches, not breaking a sweat and then relaxing” theory. At the beginning of class the teacher said, “Welcome to yoga. Let go of the past, let go of the future and just focus on the breath.” There was something both reassuring and profound in the thought, so John did just that. He was used to physical work-outs that were challenging so he enjoyed the intensity of the class and though he was stiff, he was strong so when it came time for Bhakasana he popped right up into it. By the end of class, focusing on the breath and the present moment, he found that when he sank into the finishing postures it seemed like someone had waved magic wand over his body and mind. He felt strong and relaxed and could easily get back to studying.
As is the pattern for so many of us who slide into yoga through a side door, this chance encounter was a turning point for John. Once he made it through the exams, he immediately bought a gym pass to attend yoga classes on a regular basis. Now working in the field as a full-fledged doctor, high stress demands remained, but with a few yoga classes a week the anxiety and stress were mostly abated. And where better to be exploring yoga than in Los Angeles in the early days and the explosion of yoga in America?
Yogaworks in Santa Monica at their
John tested the waters, experimenting with different forms of yoga and checking out various studios and teachers. He remembers that on a public holiday he turned up at Yogaworks and one of Chuck Miller’s classes. Though John had no idea what Mysore meant, he’d been practicing for a while and figured the class listed as such couldn’t be that difficult. As a Mysore class, of course, it was not guided—a completely foreign idea to John—and he did not “get it.” So he didn’t return after that.
But he kept checking out different classes around town and after a while decided to attend a weekend retreat taught by Ganga White and Tracy Riche at the White Lotus Foundation in Santa Barbara. This was a turning point. After four days of two-classes a day, stepping out of his usual routine and into yoga, he felt a palpable deepening not only of the practice, but of a sense of wholeness within his state of being.
Possibly the most pivotal moment in his yoga journey was, again, something that happened quite by accident. On July 4, 1999, John was in Encinitas to attend his sister’s wedding. He noticed that there was an class at a local yoga studio early in the morning that he would have time to attend before the ceremony. He figured he would definitely be fine as it said “Intermediate” on the class schedule that was posted on the front door. So, he zipped over to the studio and walked into a guided Intermediate Series class with Tim Miller. He remembers that things went relatively well until Kapotasana. But then he hit the wall—as so many of us do at just about that point in the series. Tim gave alternatives and helped him find the right approach for his individual needs and from that day forth he was hooked.
It was during this time too that John had to face the fact that in spite of finding some relief from his anxiety through yoga, he was also abusing alcohol both as a habitual way of socializing but mostly as a way of coping with the demands and stressors of his life and the job.
Things got so bad that his medical license was under threat. That wakeup call made him realize that although in some situations, alcohol provided relief, it really wasn’t working for him. As one condition to demonstrate to the medical board that he was recovering from his abusive patterns, John was required to find a spiritual practice. He’d never been too religious and didn’t relate to the full AA program (which at the time had a very strong Judeo-Christian spiritual component to it) but he did feel strongly pulled toward yoga. Fortunately, yoga qualified as a spiritual support (it was California, after all). Like an AA program yoga requires you show up daily and learn to become comfortable in your own skin while letting go. You begin to trust, and you become more comfortable with the unknown. John is not ashamed to admit he abused alcohol in search of relief. Instead, he sees it as a step on the path that led him to something far deeper which allowed him to let that false crutch go. John kept his license, plunged more deeply into yoga and his medical practice, and has been sober ever since.
One key element in that healing process that yoga provided was a social network of people that wasn’t organized around one’s drink preference. Spending time with people who were interested in the asana itself, but also the philosophy and other practices was enriching and stimulating.
Community and connecting with friends keeps John going
There always seemed to be more to explore if you kept looking. John also became immersed in studying the Yoga Sūtra, Haṭha Yoga Pradīpika and so on. He took advantage of the many workshops with outstanding teachers who passed through the doors of Yogaworks—one of whom was Richard, which is how we met him. John also completed a teacher training with Lisa Walford (a highly respected Iyengar yoga teacher) and Maty Ezraty (the co-founder with Chuck Miller of Yogaworks), became a regular in the Mysore class and eventually a teacher at Yogaworks. As fate would have it, years after his first encounter with Mysore class where dṛṣṭi seemed almost as strange as the silence in the room, John was asked to take over Chuck’s Mysore classes at Yogaworks when Chuck moved on.
John also taught yoga at Loyola Marymount University to undergrads and many collegiate athletes. As an MD, he was impressed by how many participants experienced considerable pain relief and stress reduction. Later, John worked with Chris Chapple, PhD as part of the Masters in Yoga Studies program at Loyola Marymount. The program was one of the first in the country to take yoga to this level. John taught in lecture form what could be called the anatomy, physiology and neuroscience of asana and the relaxation response. It was a great way to combine everyday experiences we all have within the context of yoga practice and philosophy. For instance, John incorporated teaching from the Bhagavad Gita by pointing out that our modern understanding of the sympathetic overdrive response is reflected in the text when Arjuna begins shaking and collapses on the battlefield.
Continuing always to practice medicine, John also increased his involvement with yoga. He practiced asana daily (learning to take long pauses—a week, a month, a few months even) working diligently on poses up through the Third Series. He got more flexible but, in case you haven’t put it together by now, John is someone with focus and drive who follows a subject he’s interested into the depths. For his asana practice that sometimes meant that he pushed 110 percent—past physical limits he knew he should not ignore. His back started hurting, especially in forward bends, and still he pushed on, trying everything from A to Z (except pausing) to get around or through the pain.
Thinking back now he imagines his facet joints thinking, as he stepped onto his mat, “Uh oh! Here we go. This idiot is going to do it again!!!” They’d then do their part to help create the experience of pain as they tried to protect themselvs. He realizes that for him, as for many Ashtangis, there is a practice groove we get into. Then life happens, misalignment starts to take a toll and if none of this gets us, we age. But as he points out, there’s part of us that imagines we still have a body of a 20 year old so we may ignore signals to modify or eliminate postures and we push on.
Having the direct personal experience of an over attachment to postures and observing the same propensity in many Mysore students over the years, John has grown to believe that in a certain way pain is largely a complex multifactorial emotion that is in some cases learned, especially chronic pain. Yes, there may be anatomical or other issues, but some amount of pain is one’s perception of what the uncomfortable sensations indicate or mean interfaced with preconceived notions of how to move or who we are. Rather than the honesty it takes to show up fresh dropping ideas and attachments to the practice each time we practice, the result can be a continued destabilizing or re-injuring of a compromised physical situation. In other words, there is a certain element to pain that is a learned approach to contextualizing sensation to fit into a preconceived theory rather than breathing into the pain while observing and responding to it afresh each time. In the case of John’s back, with a little time off from asana practice altogether and then coming back to the mat with new appreciation for what his body was telling him, he learned to modify or eliminate postures that aggravated his back and his daily practice now, which still includes parts or all of the various series, is pain free. As is his body post practice!!
Before the pandemic John had hit a comfortable stride balancing his professional life with his yoga practice. He’d grown to really appreciate teaching too because it allowed him in ways that practicing medicine couldn’t to share with people the human connection and personalized insights into aches and pains they might be experiencing. He was sometimes able to help students reframe modes of thinking that were holding them back from breaking free of undue suffering—which is an oath all doctors take but one that within medical settings is often difficult to fulfill.
Like the rest of us, the pandemic impacted John’s yoga practice and approach to life. He’d been working for some time in Urgent Care but then the lockdown came and hours were cut back. Plus the Urgent Care paradigm came with its own problems—excessive paperwork, a confusing system of care where patients aches and pains were sometimes under scrutiny by the facility and patient’s employers when they were filing for workman’s comp, but where to a doctor you are trained to believe that what the patient tells you holds merit. With more time to reflect on life as a whole John decided to take time off to support his mom who was in deteriorating health (not COVID related) and he managed to be with her full time before she passed.
During this time, and to this day, John says that what has saved him, in general but especially during the pandemic, is his morning routine which sometime stretches out over 4-5 hours. He’s always loved playing music and Kirtan, so he includes that as part of his practice each day. He focuses too on music study, meditation, sunrise walks, listening to talks and then returning to the mat for asana. An interesting twist he added into the asana was experimenting with chanting as he did poses.
Especially in the uncertain times of COVID, this shift was particularly grounding and a relief from practicing with focus on “knowing” alignment and form. The chanting allowed him to really drop in.
John incorporated into his daily routine a practice he learned from his Kirtan teachers called Kharah Rutaaz. (Kharaj means low notes and Riyaaz means practice) in which you emphasizes the lowest singable notes with long 10 to 20 second note holds. So not only are you training the vocal cords, but you’re focusing the mind and extending the exhale—a musical pranayama practice! This practice, along with Kirtan in the park (again, it’s California so of course there’s Kirtan in the park) were huge parts of what sustained John during the toughest times of the pandemic. Giving him connection to others and a sense of calm and clarity in the body to begin his days.
What might have happened if John hadn’t skipped school that day way back when, winding up in the absolute last class he would have signed up for—yoga? It’s so often the incidental or unplanned twist or turn we encounter that changes our life in the most positive way forever. That’s especially so if, like John, you learn to roll with the tides and turn into the challenges instead of resisting or avoiding them altogether.
As you might have surmised, John Doyle lives and practices in Santa Monica, California.
Thank you John for your continued practice and the willingness to dive ever deeper. We are grateful to know you and for your dedication to helping to relieve the suffering of those with whom you interface, as a medical practitioner, a teacher, a caring friend and as a newly initiated grandfather!
