David Sye, Yoga Elder, YRT, MAYA, BSYA, NAPT , BWY has been practicing Yoga for over 24 years.

David is of Russian descent, the son of a scientist mother and artist father. He began his practice of Yoga as a direct result and in response to suffering from ulcerated colitis and a spastic colon. He tried Tibetan Yoga and after ten sessions the doctors could find no tumours. He felt better than he could ever remember and this completely changed the course of his life. From then on yoga became his life's focus.

In 1990 he moved to Yugoslavia to work as a Radio journalist on a non-political radio station, whilst also teaching Yoga to classes in Belgrade. Circumstances conspired to the point where he found himself caught up in the middle of the Bosnian war. This resulted in the emergence of his practice, ‘Yogabeats’™, a unique style of Yoga, born out of an environment where the possibilities of death and (the stress of this) were always close at hand. He began teaching Yoga and in his classes he used music to drown out the conflict. He taught soldiers Yoga often just for food and appeared on Serbian TV broadcasting Yoga across a war torn country.

From Yugoslavia he travelled to India and studied/ practiced Yoga in a variety of locations and ashrams; Varanasi, Pune (B.K.S. Iyengar), Madras (The Theosophical Society), Kovulum, Mamalapuram.

When he returned to the UK in 1995 he continued teaching Yogabeats™ as a distinct Yoga style in its own right, as he saw there was an undeclared war in the west, but this was a silent war, a war of stress, which decimates just as many lives as in a real war.

His studies of Yoga drew him to the work of Erich Schiffmann and David Swenson, where he expanded his abilities in their fields, particularly Astanga Vinyasa. He became a great devotee of Angela Farmer's work and student (USA), as prior to this he had adopted shifting movements (micro moves), into his own practice after observing how children naturally utilise spontaneous movements when he taught them Yoga. Back in the UK he began studies of Vini Yoga (T.K.V. Desikachar). In 1997 he was personally invited by P. Jois to come to his ashram in Mysore, but at the that time he met his late teacher Clara Buck and instead stayed and studied with her to the end of her life in 2004. She was a student of Krishnamacharya BKS Iyengar and a close friend of Vanda Scaraveli, Angela Farmer and Shandor Remete.

In the past 3 years he has taught Yogabeats™ to the Israeli Yoga Teachers Association, the Zurich Bikhram Association, and teacher associations in Italy (Rome, Naples, Milan), the Zurich Yoga Teachers Association, Yoga Mosaic (Jewish Yoga Teachers Association). Through Yogabeats™ pioneering work it is now taught to Palestinians in Jericho and the Territories and after visiting Rammalah the first class is due there later this year.

His work in the Community is developing a life of its own and is now being recognised and acknowledged by peace makers at governmental level.Check out reports on his work this year here.

More to come