My years with Nancy Gilgoff, half-way up the road to Makawao.

March 9- 

Nancy Gilgoff was my ashtanga-mom.  I was like a pre-teen in the practice when I moved to Maui, age 23, in 2002.  I remember being at Robert Moses’ place for breakfast one time when Govinda Kai was there from NYC.  It was NH winter, we were eating Meenakshi’s pumpkin pie with freshly whipped cream for breakfast.  I was complaining about the weather, and then about the parasites in India. 

“I wish I could have the warmth and fruits of the tropics without the parasites,” I said.

“You should go to Maui,” Govinda said.  “If you don’t like the weather, drive an hour.”

“Who’s teaching there?” I asked.

“Nancy Gilgoff.”

And so it began.  My years of weather-chasing at full tilt, I spent the last $500 on a ticket to Kahalui airport, packed a carry-on sized pack, and the name of an old friend of Robert’s from the ashram who might give me work.

I ran into Nancy in the dressing room after Guruji’s class in NYC.  I recognized her from photos, and I went right up there and told her I was moving there in 2 weeks to study with her, and could she help me find a place to land.

She looked at me, and into me, in a Nancy kind of way.

“Well, I guess you could land on my porch,” she said.

She told me later that she saw the energy swirling around me, the high after my first-ever class with Guruji, and while not everyone is welcome to sleep on the porch, she thought there was something going on here.

6 months on the porch, and 5 years on Maui.  Nancy took me through 3^rd series and the first 6 poses of 4^th, as is her way- she learned those 6 as part of advanced A section.  Ouch.

I have since moved to Boston to teach a community of my own, and now study exclusively with Sharath and am working my way back through third in the way it is being taught now.  I teach the practice as it is being taught in Mysore (veering off into the therapeutic when necessary).  But I feel lucky to know first-hand the way it has changed, the way it has been presented differently to different individuals over the years.  And knowing these individuals, as teachers/people: Nancy, David, Ricky, Nicki Doane, Eddie Modestini, Tim Miller- everybody’s got a different body type, personality, and mindscape.  I’ve watched the style of teaching in Mysore change as things got busier and the reigns moved from Guruji to Sharath and Saraswati.  Things start to make sense, why the practice is taught differently, and why now, we all gravitate towards different teachers that balance or complement us with the way they bring the practice. 

But when I learned third from Nancy, here’s how it went down:

I practiced the arm balances after intermediate.  Broke myself, rested and started again for 1.5 years.  During that time, I wanted it so bad, the ole third series.  The dangling carrot of my life.  At some point, I just gave it up.  I remember a day where I thought, well, it may just not be this lifetime, it’s ok, Kate, back down.  And that very day, after intermediate, Nancy came to my mat and said

“I think it’s time for you to try third series again.” I said to myself,

“Nancy is crazy.”

But that was no surprise.  And if you study with Nancy, you go along with the crazy because this is her greatest gift, the surrender to a current not born of the mind- hers or mine.

To my astonishment, that day I went through the entire series, one by one. She kept saying, “one more.”

I could do them all and it felt awesome.  When I got to the poses from 4^th, although I didn’t know there was a split there now, my body knew it had gone beyond the ok-place.  The awesome thing about it, is that Nancy couldn’t exactly remember the order and we all kept trying to write it down, and practiced in different ways, learned it slightly different ways.  We got worked up, we laughed, we fought.  It was a circus; it was not linear; and it left me at some point to just figure it out and do my best.  As my studies of traditional arts in India expand, I find there is a penchant for confusing students on purpose.  Whether Nancy did this on purpose or through her mystical-guide, she was right in line with tradition. 

In a pile with the document Steve Cahn just posted, there was a drawing on yellow sketch-pad, and a cut-and-paste sequence we made stuffed into this dusty old desk in the corner of the yoga room on Larry’s property, half-way up the road to Makawao.  When a student seemed ready, Nancy would pull the wrinkled papers out and begin the journey.  Not one pose at a time, but until the student seemed pretty much exhausted, I’d say.

For me, what followed was a dance between practice and the rest of life for a good 3 years.  The energies unleashed, yes unleashed, by that series required a whole new level of commitment and focus:  food, drink, right speech, rest- all the time, not just in practice.  I fell down and got back up so many times.  Cried, pained, avoided Nancy, moved to another part of the island even.  This is when the Ayurveda really became an important part of my life.

Then I began teaching Mysore in Boston, and my practice had to shift to accommodate and its taken me 5 years, and the help of Dominic Corrigliano who lived in Boston for a spell, to get me back into Third, in the sequence it is now taught in Mysore.  Why?  I have decided it feels best for my body in the new order.

It is possible that Guruji was just pulling it out in a sequence for that student, at that time.  The codification of anything dynamic always makes for trouble doesn’t it.  I am so thankful for my crazy days with Nancy, because I was plucked off a rigid yoga path and stirred in the pot.  Yoga is crazy.  Yoga is fun.  Yoga thwarts the mind.  Now I can never see it as a static thing.  Thank goodness.