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He's got the beat

American Fitness, July-August, 2004 by Lisa Chernikoff

Sick of traditional yoga classes with rows of sweaty mats in a silent room? Never fear, London yoga teacher David Sye is not your traditional yogi. His Yogabeats classes are the hottest craze on the other side of the Atlantic, guaranteed to reenergize your yoga routine and revolutionize the yoga community.

Sye's Yogabeats combines classic yoga movements and postures with the latest music from London's club scene. Classes vary in length from one to four hours and organic vegetarian food is served at the end. This may seem long, but not to students whose energy levels soar during classes. In turn, Sye feeds off his students' energy. "I usually get people so high in sessions that they are motoring," he notes. "They would stay for eight hours."

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While other yoga classes attract 30-something soccer moms or recent retirees, Yogabeats is popular among young clubbers who would never try traditional yoga. Once they've experienced yoga's high, they're hooked. "Clubbers" who liked doing Ecstasy come to yoga and get high from it," Sye says. "They clean up their acts. They do it because it's cool, not because it's yoga."

Sye, who has taught yoga for over 20 years, lures them in with trendy music like Cuban rap and hip-hop. He works with the hottest London DJs, who compose original music to seamlessly fit the pace and mode of yoga movements in his classes. A self-proclaimed urban yogi, Sye overpowers the sounds of the noisy urban neighborhoods where he holds classes by blasting music. High-energy grooves drown out honking taxicabs and the roar of passing crowds, ensuring no distractions for students. Eliminating urban sounds allows them to better concentrate on the breath, which Sye considers "a most graceful, beautiful thing because it gives us life." He believes that if people can stand on one leg and concentrate on their breathing with loud music playing, they will be able to maintain that stillness when they return to their daily routines.

Sye began practicing yoga after suffering front ulcerated colitis and a spastic colon. Doctors told him he would be on painkillers for the rest of his life. Frustrated by biomedicine, Sye opted to try Tibetan yoga. "After 10 sessions I went back to the hospital and they couldn't find any tumors. I felt better than I'd ever felt before," he explains. He continued practicing yoga because of the amazing high he felt.

Nevertheless, he was not entirely content. While plagued by financial troubles, emotional distress and searching for a change, Sye was offered a job as a radio station manager in Yugoslavia because of his previous experience at the BBC World Service. He accepted and, along with his radio duties, began teaching yoga. Sye enjoyed his new life, but war devastated the country two years later. He began teaching his yoga classes with loud music to cover up the sound of exploding bombs. "Yoga became my fix," says Sye, who, unlike many others, avoided drugs and alcohol during the war. "In war, you don't know how long you're going to live. You practice yoga to feel amazing now."

One day, a few soldiers found Sye practicing yoga to the soulful music of James Brown. Intrigued, they joined him. Word of Sye's yoga classes spread and he soon began appearing on Serbian television, broadcasting yoga across the war-torn nation. He vowed that if he survived the war, he would only teach yoga. "That's what I love," he affirms. "I dream yoga."

However, when he returned to London, the yoga community did not readily welcome him. He found that the different schools of yoga were pitted against each other, all striving to be labeled the best style of practice. For Sye, "Yoga is yoga. There are different types of yoga, just as there are different types of people, and that's fine. Fighting over it is insane." His yoga practice composed of music, movement and no fixed postures drew criticism from the yoga community because it went against most yoga conventions. "They said I was a lunatic," Sye says. "But my classes were full."

In fact, Sye, who takes Yogabeats on tour to clubs with various musicians, disc and visual jockeys, loves that Yogabeats is not conceptualized as yoga. "I don't like concepts and think yoga is far more than just concepts," he asserts. Therefore, he doesn't emphasize perfect postures because he feels there are no such things and doesn't understand the Western obsession with them. He reasons holding rigid positions for long periods of time places stress on the joints, often causing injury. One yoga teacher he knew displaced her hip so badly, she had to give up teaching.

Rather than fixed postures, Sye teaches "micromovements," continuous movements that do not lock muscles or disrupt blood flow but rather enhance flexibility. Dancers often attend Yogabeats classes because it allows their muscles to recuperate. Sye also works with athletes like the Luton soccer team. In the time he trained them, they rose to the top of their division.

He's got the beat

American Fitness, July-August, 2004 by Lisa Chernikoff

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