David Meloni, Advanced
Senior level II Iyengar yoga teacher, is travelling around the world to share
the teachings of BKS Iyengar. For him,
the key to connect with a new group of students is to build trust, and then he
can start sharing.
It's October 2018, and David Meloni is
having his fist workshop in Sweden, at the Iyengar yoga studio of Ingrid
Engström in Björkekärr, on the east side of Gothenburg. The participants are
curious to get to know the teacher who has the highest level of teaching
certificate in the Iyengar yoga community.
After the workshop we took him for a walk to
the nearby lake Härlanda Tjärn and got a chance to ask him about his life as a
yoga teacher. It turns out that even though it is his first visit to Sweden he
is quite familiar with the Nordic nature and mode, since his wife is Finnish
and he has a history of several workshops in Helsinki.
Born in Sardinia, Italy, David Meloni became dedicated to yoga as a teenager when he was practicing karate. He turned to yoga as a compliment to the martial arts but soon yoga became a core interest and David dedicated more and more time to yoga, following BKS Iyengar instructions in Light on Yoga. He did his teachers training in Florence and in 2003, he started to regularly go to the Ramamani Iyengar Memorial Yoga Institute in Pune, often for three months at a time.
Born in Sardinia, Italy, David Meloni became dedicated to yoga as a teenager when he was practicing karate. He turned to yoga as a compliment to the martial arts but soon yoga became a core interest and David dedicated more and more time to yoga, following BKS Iyengar instructions in Light on Yoga. He did his teachers training in Florence and in 2003, he started to regularly go to the Ramamani Iyengar Memorial Yoga Institute in Pune, often for three months at a time.
Since BKS Iyengar passed away in 2014,
he finds it even more important to continue in the spirit of BKS Iyengar. He
has great hope in Abhijata Iyengar, the granddaughter of BKS Iyengar, who now is
responsible for the Ramamani Iyengar Memorial Yoga Institute in Pune. “She studied for Guruji during 16 years and you can take
from her what she absorbed from her grandfather, she brings freshness and is
our hope”.
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| David Meloni on a autumn day at Härlanda tjärn. |
David Meloni is concerned about the commercialisation of yoga in general and the tendency to create new styles,
mixing it with other “strange movements” and using props in weird ways. “You
have the creativity within the system of Iyengar yoga”, he declares. Throughout the years he has learned to
appreciate every asana and continue to explore them thoroughly. “Every asana can teach you something. If you keep
your curiosity, there are thousand ways of getting to know for example
Trikonasa, the Triangle Pose.”
As a teacher, David Meloni thinks that trust
is a key component to reach the students so that they can start to listen to
their own bodies. “You build trust through empathy and sensibility. As a teacher, you also need to have strong didactics
where you simplify and are effective in your instructions, not using so many
words. First, you should know
the matter of what you are teaching, then, you should be able to demonstrate.
Once you are saying something and the body is doing it, is a very strong
effect. Then the students are starting to trust you.”
This perspective comes
straight from David Meloni visits to Pune where he noticed how BKS Iyengar
always communicated through the experience of his own practice and he changed
the way he explained, depending on the students in front of him. “Everything came from his own experience, not
so much from his teachers. That kind of teaching takes many years of practice.
To try to understand the asana, feel the right actions and then translate it to
effective words. ” That is also why David Meloni thinks you can’t copy the
words of another teacher and shoot it out to students, you need to absorb the
deeper understanding of the asanas and then find the different ways to explain
it. “You should also be able to show with your body the mistakes that the
students are doing, and show the correct one.
Favorite
sutras
1.14 Sa tu dirghakala nairantarya satkara asivitah drdhabhumih
Long, uninterrupted, alert practice is the firm foundation for
restraining the fluctuations
1.20 Sraddha virya smrti samadhiprajna
purvakha itasaresam
Practice must be pursued with trust, confidence, vigour, keen memory and
power of absorption to break the spiritual complacency.
(Qutes and translations from Light on Yoga Sutras of Patanjali by BKS Iyengar (1993)
Favorite BKS
Iyengar quote: “To a yogi his body is a laboratory, a field for perpetual
experiment and research.”
David Meloni is based in Florence, Italy. Read more about David Meloni on his website.
David Meloni was back in Sweden in november 2019 and he plans to come back in December 2020 to Iyengar yoga center in Björkekärr, Gothenburg
Text: Maria Edström
Photos: Mari Lagerquist
