Austin Living Guide

Contributors

Wayne Baker

My name is Wayne and I am a yoga teacher and massage therapist. I'm honored to have been selected to contribute to this web portal and hope I can benefit you with my writing in the same way my experiences have enhanced me. I will be writing about how yoga as a part of my daily life has made me healthier, calmer and happier although I am still a very new practitioner. I hope to shed some light on yoga and offer it as a possible suggestion as a way to change your life to give you the health you may have lost or always wanted to have. Please contact me if I may be of any assistance.

Yoga is a healing and therapeutic art. Although the practice of yoga was recorded in writing in India around 3000 B.C., yoga itself is still dramatically misunderstood by our western culture. Yoga was, and still is, a very private activity in India. Adapting it to our capitalistic society has meant offering yoga classes to groups of students. People in the  U.S. were briefly introduced to modern yoga with a "Parliament of Religions" held in Chicago in 1893. Paramahansa Yogananda arrived in Boston in 1920. He wrote the famous book, "Autobiography of a Yogi," and established the self-realization fellowship in Los Angeles. This was the brother of Bishnu Ghosh who was Bikram's teacher.

I remember my grandmother watching yoga on television in the early 1970's and imitating the poses. I ran and played and thought what she was doing was boring.

Towards the end of 2000, I realized that I was completely unhappy with my body, my health and other aspects of my life and I was absolutely ready for a change. I attended The Mankind Project's New Warrior Training Weekend Adventure in December, 2000. This was a weekend retreat and consisted of mental exercises incorporating some physical therapy. It woke me up in ways that only a group of trained isolated men completely focused on this purpose can do. I left the weekend hoarse and exhausted. When I got home, others saw something different in me and that something had changed for the positive. All I knew was that I suddenly aware that I was responsible for my health, my mind, my body and for my part of my relationships with others. My story meant nothing and my history was irrelevant to become the person that I wanted to become. The shackles were cracked and flawed. I suddenly had a sense of focus in my life.

Discovering yoga in a local Austin studio reintroduced me to the physical body I thought I had lost after I turned 30. The teachers said I was strong and capable and it felt good doing the postures. Unfortunately, I traveled a lot for work and I lost a lot of money on unused classes, making the process very discouraging. Discovering Bikram Yoga at Yogagroove in 2002 did for my mind and body what New Warriors did for my mind alone. Whereas my New Warrior brothers seemed to keep asking the same questions over in our local weekly meetings and over without going anywhere, but enjoying repeating the same therapy and comfort, Bikram Yoga initiated an incredible change teaching me that to achieve the next level, I had to move on.

My first class at Yogagroove was on March 14th, 2002 at 4:30pm. The class lasted for 90 minutes and was in 105 degree heat with 50% humidity, or so I was told. It was hard, I felt ill, I was dizzy and it was the most incredible experience I'd ever had. I purchased the introductory week for $15 and attended 9 classes during my first 7 days. After that, I told an instructor, Mara, that I could tell this would help and I wanted this to make a difference. I thought that I should come for 30 days to challenge myself. She told me to come 40 days in a row non-stop. She said that 40 days would instill such a change in my mind and body, that it would last forever. I was determined and knew this was so great that I made it to class every day for 40 straight. Teresa, the owner, made a congratulatory sign and I knew that from then on, life would be different and better. Over the next 6 months, I lost over 45lbs. and I started to eat more wisely. Bikram Yoga class after eating ice cream is not the way I wanted to feel and I knew that to have a good class, I had to eat foods which would agree with me during class. This meant reducing my food intake and not eating mind-altering high fat and sugar foods. For the first time I realized how addicting some foods are and that th feeling of exercise could be so much more empowering. 

In the Fall of 2002, I attended Bikram Yoga Teacher Training in Los Angeles, California with Bikram Choudhury, his wife Rajashree, and a mostly volunteer staff along with 241 aspiring Bikram Yoga teachers. It was a grueling, sleep deprived, punishing, yet awakening, training with 2 classes a day Monday through Friday, lectures until 2am some days and a class on Saturdays. We studied yoga, anatomy, our dialogue and Bikram Yoga. Graduation was on Saturday, November 16th, 2002 and I taught my first class the next Tuesday (11/19) at 9:30am. My true training to become a yoga teacher began in that class. Since then, I've had students at first want to punch me (really! and truly!), turn around and leave when they saw I was teaching and even send me very critical e-mails. Now, I get hugs, thanks and warm words of encouragement. 

After Bikram training, I taught classes when I could, but I continued to be a slave to the corporate world, picking up work teaching computer, technical and sales classes for companies around the country. I traveled for weeks on end and I reported to a manager I'd never ever met in person. Through it all, I was laid off 5 times and even sometimes rehired after just a month by a different division of IBM that had absorbed my old division. In 2005, I decided enough was enough. I was breaking out in rashes, suffering from respiratory ailments and was completely stressed out every time I traveled to Altanta, Georgia on my final mission for IBM; to Cingular Wireless, formerly and currently called AT&T. Just the name and branding were confusing enough to wonder what I was really doing. I learned a new phrase: "To be thrown under a bus." I was so dedicated, I even switched phone carriers. On a break in this program when I was back in Austin, I switched my phone back to something that worked and didn't cause my heart to leap whenever I listened to music on my headphones when the phone rang. I signed up for classes at Lauterstein-Conway Massage School. It was an intensive program and I thought I could always go back after the summer. I never heard from IBM, so I made a deal and purchased Yogagroove on August 18, 2005. I continued with massage school for a 2nd semester and began a whole new life teaching as many classes as I could, going to massage school and allowing the transformation to really begin. 

I now am running Yogagroove in its 8th year of operation and its 3rd year with me as the owner. I have an amazing staff of dedicated instructors and my classes set records every week. We went from an average of under 50 students a day to over 140. My largest class to date was 57 and Yogagroove offers 37 classes a week with the earliest at 6am and the latest beginning at 8:15pm Monday through Friday. I am thankful every day for this path which has chosen me and I appreciate all of my students. It's an amazing adventure.

• Wayne Baker
• Director: Bikram Yoga Austin ~ Yogagroove
• Licensed Massage Therapist MT047897
• http://yogagroove.com
• 512-407-9909
• cell 512-740-0236