Need a lift?

Frequent Dave Willocks' yoga classes, Wednesdays 7-8 am & 5-30-7:00 pm and being uplifted is guaranteed.

Not only is Dave a gifted yoga teacher and musician (his enchanting guitar playing and voice often accompany your Savasana), he is the kind of guy who makes it impossible to stay in glum. Merely being in the room with Dave erases any bad mood (or tight spot).

Whether with his infectious--and spontaneous--chuckle, or his sincere compassion, Dave will make your day. And he is utterly fascinating as well, as you will find in our interview.

BB: Dave, where are you from? What brought you to Sonoma?

DW: I grew up in Annapolis, Maryland, and went to the University of Miami to study jazz guitar. Then I moved to New York City to teach guitar lessons and play jazz guitar.

I lived in NYC for a few years, playing music and teaching yoga, and I really started craving nature more than anything else. I found myself going to Central Park all the time, just wandering around, and I decided that was not really going to work.

I wanted to break away, and start from scratch. Then I met Baba, the guru from the Ashram here in Sonoma, in Upstate New York, and he invited me to come out. I decided to just give it a whack, so I quit all my jobs, said Goodbye to everyone, and just moved here.

BB: Did it take you awhile to make up your mind?

DW: (Definitively) I knew right away. I had been with a girlfriend for six years, and I felt like it was time for the relationship to end, and a major chapter in my life was changing, I knew I had to go somewhere. It was like, Boom, go to California. I knew with absolute certainty. That’s how it gave me the strength to say Goodbye to everyone.

BB: Do you remember your first yoga class, and the impression it left?

DW. Yes! Very clearly. It was the end of my sophomore year in college. I had a friend who was going, and I had been meditating, and reading The Power of Now. I had been reading Buddhist books since I was young. My mom had been constantly feeding me new age literature, and she sent me The Power of Now for Valentine’s Day my sophomore year. It rocked my world.

I realized I wanted to change the way I was living. My body just totally did not work. I couldn’t touch my toes. So my friend invited me to yoga, and it was very clear right away. It was something I had to do. It was like, Yes I will.

It happened to be an Anusara class, and the teacher remains one of the three best teachers I’ve ever studied with, Jordan Bloom. A 6’7” red-headed South African man. I took the class, and a week later, I left to play music on a cruise, and took along the Sivananda book and did yoga every day on the deck for three months. And that was it.

BB: Sounds like you have a lot of clarity about what you want to do in life. Were you always like that, is this a family trait?

DW: It is a very unique quality to me. As for the first class, I remember how uncomfortable it was for me. I felt like I was an alien in my own body. I ended up pulling all the muscles in my ribs, the intercostals. I didn’t even know they existed. That’s one of my first memories.

BB: Tell us about your path of teachers.

DW: I studied with Jordan for the rest of my time in college. I was fortunate in that I got a student card. Fifty bucks a semester for unlimited yoga. I took classes three or four classes a week. I also started studying with John Friend, whenever he would come to Miami. When I moved to New York, and studied with all the great Anusara teachers there. And then with a woman who was a devotee of Gurumayi and Siddha Yoga.

My Anusara practice and my Siddha Yoga practice began to merge, that is when my meditation practice and chanting became as important as Hatha Yoga for me. I studied with them for about a year and a half. And now my teacher is pretty much Gurumayi.

BB: What is important to you in working with new students, and those you have been working with for awhile?

DW: No matter what, rather than look at them as a person with injuries or what is wrong, I try to see straight to their heart, so every person I try to see the unlimited infinite part of them rather than the issues. I try to direct everything I say and do to direct them toward that. I try to see the Self with a capital “S,” and teach to that.

With beginning students, I make an effort to make them feel welcome, and comfortable. Unconditionally accepted and loved. It’s always an interesting balance to let people be comfortable in their bodies and not injure themselves, and there also should be an element of helping people see and move beyond the limitations they thought they had. That they can do more than they thought they could do.

A balance of honoring your limitations, and blowing them away. In a way that is life affirming for all. (One of Dave’s fabulous chuckles here) I usually try to give at least one pose that gives the chance for a great opening of, Wow, I didn’t know I could do that!

BB: You are a professional musician as well as yoga teacher. How does your yoga affect your music, and vice versa?

DW: When I first got out of college, they seemed diametrically opposed. In yoga I was trying to get into my body, and still my mind. My music was very mind-oriented, it was about trying to impress other people and show them I was good.

BB: How old were you when you started?

DW: Six. I played drums, and guitar. So when I got out of college, I stopped playing music entirely. I didn’t really enjoy it because it was coming from such an analytical, dysfunctional mind set. I de-structured my entire music making process. I would meditate, and only play my guitar and only play that which I could play and maintain my inner state. I made that my cornerstone.

Gradually a new way of playing music that was more organic presented itself.

Out of which mindfulness and playing from my heart emerged. So now, both my yoga practice and music feel so natural, that I am not even aware of them. I just center myself in the stillness of my own inner being, and I don’t have to think about it at all.

BB: Is there a relationship between composing and teaching yoga?

DW: It is exactly the same thing. It is the ability to be thematic, and to look forward and see how it might develop. The interesting twists and turns it could take, how could it be balanced and feel really good for everybody involved. With both, I am always keenly aware, it has to feel right.

For example, sometimes you’ll go to a yoga class at 7:00 at night, and try to really pound it (as Dave pounds one fist into his other hand for dramatic effect), and nobody wants to get pumped up. I try to be sensitive to what do people really need right now?

Likewise, with music, I am usually improvising, and I try to be sensitive to where does the energy really want to go right now, in the most natural, harmonious flow.

BB: That reminds me of a quote, I wish I could remember from which jazz musician. “The mark of really good improvised music, is it sounds like it was composed. The mark of really good composed music, is it sounds like it is being improvised.” I feel the same way about a really good yoga practice. I try to share that with my students in a class.

YC: What are you other passions?

DW: Since I moved here with a clean slate, I have asked myself, What do you really love? What has been surfacing has been a really deep, powerful desire to live in harmony with the planet. That is what inspires me the most. Growing my own food, living as sustainable as possible. This includes making my own bread, candles. Cooking is also a passion. I love gardening.

The most important thing in my whole life is being alone in nature.

BB: Is the yoga community around Sonoma very different from New York City?

DW: Yes. In New York, there is such a monstrous variety of people. Different vibes of people with conglomerate in different studios. I was involved in one ultra hip studio in Soho called Vira Yoga. (Dave adds as an aside: “Vira is Sanskrit for Courage,” and adds a huge laugh. Supermodels go there. It was the hippest studio. I played music during the classes. Sometimes there would be 100 people in a class. People in the hallway. Yoga rock star kind of people.

There was another studio where I taught, and there it was more like here. People in their 30s, 40s, 50s. They just have families, go to their jobs, and they like yoga because it means something to them, because it gives palatable meaning to their lives. They are interested not necessarily in the acrobatics, or being challenged with mind-blowingly difficult stuff, or being hit with wickedly complicated philosophy. They just want to go to yoga, and leave feeling really good.

That’s kind of the goal here, too. People come, and they want yoga to be something that makes their lives more full. More alive. More free. More joyful.

BB: You sometimes play music during your classes. How do you incorporate it?

DW: I used to play several instruments, and try to create what I felt to be the soundtrack to the practice. But I can’t really do that while I am teaching, so I play guitar during savasana.

It begins to move on to sound healing. When I am in a centered state of consciousness, then my internal vibrations travel, and shift other people’s vibrations, so I can help other people drop into that place. Nada Yoga.

BB: What is your favorite pose? And least?

DW: Surya Namaskar (Sun Salutation). The way I practice lately is to use the asanas to open my body up, and get energy moving. Surya Namaskar gets all the major muscles groups. It’s a forward bend, it’s a back bend, a lateral. Least favorite is Upavista Konasana (seated wide angle pose.) That one has just never opened up for me. Anything that is a splits type action is not my favorite.

BB: What is on your iPod?

DW: About 15 cds of chanting from Gurumayi. Kirtan. Ambient chanting. I find anything else contributes to mental noise, and I don’t need any more of that. Jai Uttal. Manose. Sonny Rollins. Bill Evans. Jango Reinhart. I play jazz at La Bodega on the Plaza. I have my meditative music, and I have my jazz.

BB: If there is one thing you want people to walk out of your class with, what is it?

DW: Ultimately, my highest goal is they would come to class and get a taste of the experience of the bliss of their own inner nature. A taste of the state that is beyond mind, or thinking, where the individual Self merges with the universal Self.

BB: You need to come to some ParaYoga classes, that is exactly what it is about!

DW: (Another fantastic, open laugh) But, practically speaking, I have no control over that. If it arbitrarily happens, that’s great. If it passes through me, that is great. I just want people to feel loved, accepted, and that they are empowered to step beyond anything that is limiting them.

BB: That is precisely what I sensed from my first teacher. And she never even said anything to that effect!

The yoga practice is so ancient, as a teacher, you almost don’t have to do anything. The poses have built in DNA of coding that instills these feelings in you. So teachers don’t really have to do that much, all they have to do is not screw anything up. The poses will do it for you.