Sanctuary at Spirit Yoga Studio

Fast-paced lifestyles leave little time to relax. Yoga can help unlock inner peace and balance in this turbo environment.

Haidar Ali, the director of Spirit Yoga Studio, believes yoga is for everyone. “Eveybody is welcome here”, he says with a warm smile, “women and men, Japanese and Western people”. He believes regular yoga practice can help a person to become more balanced in their everyday life, have more physical energy and find peace of mind. After studying tae kwon do as a youngster, he was drawn to yoga through a desire to learn more about himself. “I wanted to know how my mind was working, so I was asking my tae kwon do teacher many questions. He recommended I read some books about yoga and psychology.”

From there, Haidar studied psychology in Baghdad, and did yoga training in India, as well as living in Thailand where he learned traditional Thai massage. He believes the latter skill enables him to better understand the energy in the human body. “I want to help my students when I give hands-on adjust, to know more about where I touch and how I touch to free the energy in the body.”

Haidar started Spirit Yoga Studio two years ago, to give the people of Kansai a studio for everyone, offering different yoga styles, and teachers, from around the world. This accessibility sets Spirit Yoga apart from other studios, which often cater only to Japanese women. “In many studios in Japan, maybe 80%, men are not allowed. The main reason I stopped teaching yoga in other schools was because of this. Yoga is for everyone.”
The name ‘Spirit’ was chosen because of its eternal nature. “We can’t do much with our physical bodies, because the body has limitations, and as you get older, more so. The physical body some day will die, but the spirit is alive and it never dies.”
Haidar recognizes the difficulty some foreign people have in finding time for themselves in Japan. “They come, they work hard and maybe they have little time to meditate or go to yoga class,” he continues, “but it’s important to find time. When we go to yoga class, we can just be with ourselves, come back to our natural breath and the yoga brings us to our nature, who we are.”

Newcomers to yoga are often put off by the difficult-looking postures, but Haidar is keen to put them at ease. “There is no perfect pose, each person has a different body, a different flexibility. Just move and practice with your limitations.
I give attention to each person to help them do the pose more comfortably and safely. I say don’t copy the teacher, don’t look around, just be with you, be with yourself. It’s important to find the right yoga system for your body and life situation. Decide what you need from yoga, ask yourself, find the answer and find which style and teacher are right for you.”

And what about the future? Haidar is optimistic. “Spirit Yoga is growing. I give attention and energy to attract people to the school, so for me, the future is to have the school full of students and the community to become bigger, to extend, not only in Osaka but everywhere.”

Text & photos: Richard Simpson