The Yoga Rap

The Yoga Rap Story

In 1989 my life fell apart. Within five years, my first marriage had ended, I quit my job, started another relationship, became a yoga teacher, sold my assets, got divorced, moved to New York, got pregnant, remarried, moved to London, my second marriage broke down and had a baby in London as a single mother.

Yoga was already deep in my heart. I considered the Sivananda Ashram, in the Bahamas, my spiritual home. I had visited many times, trained as a teacher to learn more about yoga (few professional teachers then) and worked on staff for a season. The chance arose for me to live there as staff with my 10-month old daughter Andrea. I had no family in London, no viable support network and limited resources. All things considered, it was the best option to give us some much needed community and support both physically and spiritually. So I left London with Andrea in tow, who was not yet walking or saying recognisable words. She rode around on my back in a baby carrier, her head bobbing alongside mine.

The yoga demographic in the 80s differed vastly from that of today. Many people were actively trying to get out of the system or were already “out there”. On the ashram, I met hippies, ex-yuppies (me), breatharians, people who had done so much pranayama (yogic breathing) that they couldn’t speak in complete sentences, people who had been abducted by aliens. Many were laugh-out-loud funny. We were seekers, and believed firmly in a better existence than what most people call reality. We knew intuitively that this paradigm was Maya (illusion) and not to be taken that seriously.

Ashram staff work hard in order to temper the ego through service. I taught, cooked, ran the snack bar and washed sheets and towels for up to 250 people. I was still breast-feeding. My stress levels were off the chart. I took a test and the only stressor listed that I hadn’t experienced was bereavement. Despite all my sadhana (spiritual practice), my anger towards my daughter’s father, on whom I dumped all the blame for my situation, was immense, and it spilled over to include all men.

The Ashram had a main path, which functioned as its spine. All activity emanated from it. You’d meet on the path, pass one another on the path, cross and part ways on the path. Naturally people would say hello to me and Andrea, as we went about our daily duties. It was on this path that I had a horrible realisation: my daughter’s first word might well be “asshole”, since every time a man passed us on the path, I said it to myself out loud, and Andrea’s head was right next to mine.

“Hi Leela, hi Andrea ”,
“Hi Mark… (or Jeff or Dan…), …
Asshole.”

This was really not good.

I struggled with deeply negative self-talk, which was in direct opposition to the constant sound of mantra (Sanskrit verses) on the ashram: in Satsang (meditation), in the kitchen, at the snack bar, at the gift shop. I needed a way to reconcile the two contradictory forces acting on me. So I began to compose songs about yoga. I created them out loud with Andrea nearby. Gradually and unintentionally, “Om” started to replace “Asshole”, and the Yoga Rap was born.

I first performed it at the weekly Ashram talent show. It made people smile. So I wrote more songs. I formed a group called the Cosmic Joss Sticks, a revolving assortment of people with a sense of music and humour. The Swami only attended if we were in the line-up.

I have been singing the Rap on request ever since. I sang it as the inadvertent warm-up to the formidable Krishna Das during the Ashram’s all-night millennium celebration. I even sang it at the Jivamukti Yoga Centre in New York City accompanied by Dominic Miller, Sting’s guitarist. Although I’ve wanted to record it for a long time, and have made many attempts, it didn’t gel until I collaborated with Martin McDougall. In perfect cosmic order, my daughter choreographed and performed it with the help of her good friend Tom Peacock.

I learned so much from this time at the Ashram, but Karma wasn’t quite finished with me. I returned to London to find myself and Andrea homeless for a year, and again yoga came to my rescue.

But that’s another song.

P.S. Andrea’s first word – after “mama” and “dada” – was “Jaya”. He was the indispensable member of staff who fixed things. Stuff at the Ashram was always breaking, so Andrea heard that word a lot. It means victory in Sanskrit. Phew.