Lucid Forge | Stretch Breathe Tiff

Saturday, 22 November 2008

Written by Catherine Kustanczy

Friday, 05 September 2008 20:06

It’s Day Two of the Toronto International Film Festival, and already there’s a palpable stress in the air. From those in the film industry, to publicists, media, and even the public, a certain electric excitement, mixed with a giddy weariness, has pervaded Toronto. Piers Handling, TIFF’s General Director, recently confessed to the Globe and Mail that he stopped drinking alcohol at parties years ago in order to make it through the festival intact. He’s also trying to incorporate more of a regular exercise regimen into his routine, though the pace of the film festival makes it all but impossible in September. With festival madness having already began long before the lights went down for Passchendaele Thursday night, workouts tends to get thrown to the wind along with most people’s caution.

Still, in order to maintain the sort of schedule the festival demands from those working it, a healthful regime is more important than ever. And developing a routine you can stick with is one way to keep optimal health not only for the madness of ten days, but through the oncoming fall and winter. YuMee Chung knows a thing or two about stress-busting. The former securities lawyer walked away from a high-pressure job to become a yoga teacher. She’s the force behind Passport to Prana, a $30 pass that enables its users to a class at more the more than 30 GTA and centrally-located yoga studios. Good now through the end of February, Chung describes Passport to Prana as a way of providing “access to everything from hot yoga to pre-natal, from restorative to special needs. It shows you the totality of what’s available in the city.”

Speaking from Octopus Garden studios in Toronto where she regularly teaches, Chung says when she first got into law, she wanted to change the world. “I was really optimistic about the kind of social change and how I could impact people’s lives.” She worked on the famous Jane Doe case her first year as a lawyer, and worked in the courts after that. Around that time, Chung began to question “how much social change is possible through the institution of law” and concurrently had begun a series of massage therapy and chiropractic sessions to relieve chronic arm and shoulder strain. “The funny thing is, when I started yoga, I didn’t need to go for massage anymore. It was a really multi-level shift in my life. I didn’t know yoga was spiritual –I just thought, ‘I’m going to get fit, I’m going to get stress relief.’” That’s the thing about yoga, she says; students come in for basic fitness and stress relief techniques, but they leave transformed. “You don’t need to know it’s a spiritual thing, you leave and you feel profoundly different. There’s some sort of a buzz going on, and you don’t need to label it.”

“Yoga stands for so many things that don’t have to do with the transactional world that we inhabit in Toronto,” she explains, “The thing about it is, yoga practise -in my ideal reality -is a personal reality. It’s a personal practise. You start in a studio and then bring it home, and it becomes a personal thing.” Referring to the way the Passport allows users a huge variety of styles for a low cost, she notes that “you don’t need to pay $20 everyday, every class - you can go see your favourites here and there, then move into a daily practise, and see the way it’s evolving. That’s fantastic to experience.”

Working with friends in the worlds of yoga, print, and design, Passport to Prana was conceived as a way to promote and showcase local yogis outside of the yearly conferences that had, up until recently, featured mainly American teachers and studios. Launched three years ago, it’s expanded in leaps and bounds. “The people who came on in year one had absolute confidence, that once you stepped in their doors, you’d be back. I certainly felt that way, that if you could just get into a room with me, I could get you to come back,” Chung explains. “The same is true now. The studios represented are top studios, and they have absolute confidence you will fall in love with their practise. Other studios who see us doing this see that it doesn’t mean you lose students, that selling passports doesn’t mean (students) vanish, and that a well-informed student is a better student to have.”

Chung also sees the Passport as being a means of making the ultra-competitive world of yoga studios more ethical, and closer to the practise’s true nature. “(Students) need to be where they belong,” she says gently but firmly, “so if they should be doing another kind of practise, it’s better to send them somewhere else. Being able to say, ‘I bet you’d really thrive with so-and-so, check him out’ –that really works out for the best. Those people in turn say, ‘Oh wow, I’ll recommend people back to you.’ It’s a more enlightened way to do business.”

Now 37 years old, Chung recognizes the limits getting older can put on a body. She says her clients in their 40s and 50s admit they can’t keep the pace they once had. “(They’re) saying, ‘my body can’t do it anymore, I’ve got repetitive strain injury, I can’t keep up with the pace.’” She says it is such concerns that open the way for a shift in attitude and focus. Often age is the biggest factor that forces change, but it’s accepting that change that presents the greatest challenge. “ Look at nature of the practise,” she says, “Is it changing as our circumstances change? Or are we putting it onto the North American paradigm of … the ‘body beautiful?’ Are we doing it with a certain kind of intentionality? So, as we get older, are we clinging onto our old ways?”

“At this point,” says Chung, “we’re learning to transition. There are hundreds of styles of yoga -as many as there are people. We need to find out own… get away from the brand names, and get back into personal practise.”

Never mind the film festival –perhaps the hot ticket is really a Passport this fall.

For more information about Passport to Prana, and participating yoga studios, please visit www.passporttoprana.com.

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