Erica Kaufman had a bad start but she believes that she will have a great end.
This American, who came to Bangalore to conduct a workshop, in Lila Yoga and Contact improvisation – a form of duet contemporary dance form, talks about her life and how yoga became an integral part her very being.
“My mother was into yoga and introduced me to it. I was born into a creative family that was focussed, hardworking and creative. As for me, I was blessed to have a personality that is curious, excited and loves life. I was also born into a body that was challenged – I suffered from severe asthma and eczema. Yet, when others saw me as a sickly child, I saw the world from my body and knew that even my body had an appetite for living,” explains Erica, who says that she imbibed all her yogic skills from her mother.
And she says that the two biggest gifts she has ever received from yoga are, “the gift of not identifying with my pain or discomfort and it gave me tools that got integrated as a part of who I am.”
As she was a “curious and a creative” child, Erica also started creating her own dance moves, which she says were “raw and I could not call it anything. They were just movements.” Seeing her interest in dance, her family encouraged her to learn contemporary dance.
As she danced through her growing years she also realised that she had an equal passion to choreograph too. “I just cannot separate dance from choreography or yoga from dance just as I cannot separate my body from my mind or my movement.”
This dancer, choreographer and yoga teacher says that she is very excited to see Indian contemporary dancers who take their work seriously and adds that she is humbled when elderly Indian people come to learn yoga from her.
“One cannot say that yoga is an ancient art form and that contemporary dance is new. Yoga is timeless. It wasn’t a new form, but was and will always be new to the conscious mind. It is is very now in its form,” says the yoga expert, who also went on to create Lila yoga.
“Lila yoga,” she says, “is a fusion of the hasta yoga (physical practises) and the raja yoga (philosophical practises psychological). It helps you reach that oneness.”
She also believes that she has a very important job on hand as through her workshops and yoga classes it is her mission to “teach people around the world that the body is a tool of expression and an investigation of life. It doesn’t have to be just an object of sex but it can become a medium of expression once you understand it fully and respectfully.”
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