Thank you to my teacher Kristina Karitinou-Ireland for fishing out these old tapes of Derek Ireland from Helsinki in 1989 and sharing them with me, this one is of Derek teaching Ashtanga Primary series.
John Scott mentioned to us in a workshop recently that it was Kristina's late husband Derek Ireland who 'invented' the talk through Primary. Unfortunately the tape starts half way through Standing.
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Derek Ireland
From The Independent 28 September 1998
Derek Ireland was born and raised in Brighton. A "ferociously competitive" athlete at school, he was apprenticed to Brighton and Hove Albion football team when a severe knee injury playing rugby ended his hopes of a professional sports career.
When punk came along he spent five years promoting the Sex Pistols, the Clash and the Stranglers along the south coast and took fully to the rock and roll lifestyle. He started conventional yoga with his girlfriend Radha Warrell after "living off my memories of my sporting triumphs for ten years". Thereafter he did yoga almost every day.
In 1978 the couple moved to Los Angeles where Ireland was supposed to take a band on the road. "It was to be Foreigner, then the Tubes, then Ozzy Osbourne. In the end I didn't take anyone - I think because they thought I was wilder than the bands."
Two years later the couple went on a one-month teacher training course to a Shivananda yoga retreat in the Bahamas. They stayed six years to run the place. During that time a visiting Shivananda swami from New York introduced them to astanga vinyasa, a vigorous form of yoga that had been rediscovered in the Thirties by Patthabhi Jois in Mysore, who claimed it was the original yoga from which all other hatha yogas had developed.
In 1986 Derek Ireland moved to New York to teach it - in the absence of premises he ran big open-air classes in Central Park until the park authorities moved him on. The following year he and Radha spent six months with Jois in Mysore, then began to teach the form as he had passed it on to them all over the world.
In 1991 they opened the Practice Place, a centre devoted to astanga vinyasa, in a secluded bay in southern Crete. The Practice Place quickly established itself as one of the most important yoga centres in the world. Many of the numerous classes now available in Britain are run by Derek and Radha's former students. More and more people have taken up the yoga, including such celebrities as Ralph Fiennes, Daniel Day-Lewis, Sting, Woody Harrelson, Winona Ryder and Demi Moore.
Ireland's ebullient manner and deliberately non-spiritual approach to yoga caused raised eyebrows in the yoga community over the years. "I usually do my practice to music - in England I do it to MTV," he said a couple of years ago. "I used to do it with weights on my wrists: that upset a few purists. I also had a weighted jacket but I got rid of that after I did a handstand and nearly killed myself - it slipped down and hit me on the back of the head."
Ireland had lots of injuries, which made his control of his body even more remarkable. He fell out of a tricky posture and severed a nerve once, losing control of his left arm for four years. In consequence, teaching ta'i chi he kept hitting himself in the eye.
In winter he ran courses in a "yoga shack" on a beach in Goa. He attracted students simply by doing his practice on the beach for passersby to watch. The practice would take two hours and within five minutes he would be surrounded by Indians who weren't familiar with this style of yoga. "Some would plonk babies on me for photographs. I tried to stay focused - I only got uptight if they actually walked on me!"
from Entelchy, my interview with Kristina last year
Entelechy : An Interview with Certified Ashtanga Teacher Kristina Karitinou
Anthony: Tell me about Derek Ireland?
Kristina: Derek was a truly charismatic teacher setting the foundations of teaching and spreading the knowledge of Ashtanga in Europe, by training teachers and evolving the methodology of the practice. He provided us with the right tools to make the practice understandable to our western mentality. He was an extremely generous, knowledgeable and compassionate teacher, who had great respect towards his students and greatly contributed to the formation of the contemporary yoga teacher image. He was a devoted practitioner himself and would always pay his respects to his guru Sri K. Pattabhi Jois as he would always stress the importance of lineage. At the same time he was an exemplary father and unique husband always caring about his family, not to mention that he was absolutely gorgeous attracting admiration wherever he would appear.
Anthony: What was it like to be taught by Derek, how was he as a teacher?
Kristina: When I first entered his shala I immediately realized the truth and the power of his teaching and it became apparent to me that he had the ability to understand your potential and bring it all up on the surface. He was always keen on making you see the power and strength that lied within you and worked towards making you experience the true possibilities and nature that you might not have been aware of. Myself as a teacher have been shaped by these characteristics of him, and I want to believe that my work also involves some of his teaching style.
Anthony: Why was he important to the growth of Ashtanga in Europe?
Kristina: Derek's students were actually the ones who made Ashtanga so popular in Europe. It was with his help that they spread this method and popularized the practice mainly in the UK. Now, retrospectively, it's hard to imagine how things would have been without his presence.
Anthony: Who were some of his students that we may of heard about.
Kristina: The list is long: John Scott, Gingi Lee, Alexander Medin, Lis Lark, Brian Cooper, Mathew Vollmer, Michaela Clarke, Annie Pace, Jocelyn Stern, Petri Raisanen, Joseph Dunham, Ginny Dean, Hemish Hendry and many many more.
John Scott mentioned to us in a workshop recently that it was Kristina's late husband Derek Ireland who 'invented' the talk through Primary. Unfortunately the tape starts half way through Standing.
Screen shots
More about Derek Ireland
Derek Ireland
From The Independent 28 September 1998
Derek Ireland was born and raised in Brighton. A "ferociously competitive" athlete at school, he was apprenticed to Brighton and Hove Albion football team when a severe knee injury playing rugby ended his hopes of a professional sports career.
When punk came along he spent five years promoting the Sex Pistols, the Clash and the Stranglers along the south coast and took fully to the rock and roll lifestyle. He started conventional yoga with his girlfriend Radha Warrell after "living off my memories of my sporting triumphs for ten years". Thereafter he did yoga almost every day.
In 1978 the couple moved to Los Angeles where Ireland was supposed to take a band on the road. "It was to be Foreigner, then the Tubes, then Ozzy Osbourne. In the end I didn't take anyone - I think because they thought I was wilder than the bands."
Two years later the couple went on a one-month teacher training course to a Shivananda yoga retreat in the Bahamas. They stayed six years to run the place. During that time a visiting Shivananda swami from New York introduced them to astanga vinyasa, a vigorous form of yoga that had been rediscovered in the Thirties by Patthabhi Jois in Mysore, who claimed it was the original yoga from which all other hatha yogas had developed.
In 1986 Derek Ireland moved to New York to teach it - in the absence of premises he ran big open-air classes in Central Park until the park authorities moved him on. The following year he and Radha spent six months with Jois in Mysore, then began to teach the form as he had passed it on to them all over the world.
In 1991 they opened the Practice Place, a centre devoted to astanga vinyasa, in a secluded bay in southern Crete. The Practice Place quickly established itself as one of the most important yoga centres in the world. Many of the numerous classes now available in Britain are run by Derek and Radha's former students. More and more people have taken up the yoga, including such celebrities as Ralph Fiennes, Daniel Day-Lewis, Sting, Woody Harrelson, Winona Ryder and Demi Moore.
Ireland's ebullient manner and deliberately non-spiritual approach to yoga caused raised eyebrows in the yoga community over the years. "I usually do my practice to music - in England I do it to MTV," he said a couple of years ago. "I used to do it with weights on my wrists: that upset a few purists. I also had a weighted jacket but I got rid of that after I did a handstand and nearly killed myself - it slipped down and hit me on the back of the head."
Ireland had lots of injuries, which made his control of his body even more remarkable. He fell out of a tricky posture and severed a nerve once, losing control of his left arm for four years. In consequence, teaching ta'i chi he kept hitting himself in the eye.
In winter he ran courses in a "yoga shack" on a beach in Goa. He attracted students simply by doing his practice on the beach for passersby to watch. The practice would take two hours and within five minutes he would be surrounded by Indians who weren't familiar with this style of yoga. "Some would plonk babies on me for photographs. I tried to stay focused - I only got uptight if they actually walked on me!"
from Entelchy, my interview with Kristina last year
Entelechy : An Interview with Certified Ashtanga Teacher Kristina Karitinou
Anthony: Tell me about Derek Ireland?
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| Derek Ireland, Crete |
Anthony: What was it like to be taught by Derek, how was he as a teacher?
Kristina: When I first entered his shala I immediately realized the truth and the power of his teaching and it became apparent to me that he had the ability to understand your potential and bring it all up on the surface. He was always keen on making you see the power and strength that lied within you and worked towards making you experience the true possibilities and nature that you might not have been aware of. Myself as a teacher have been shaped by these characteristics of him, and I want to believe that my work also involves some of his teaching style.
Anthony: Why was he important to the growth of Ashtanga in Europe?
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| Kristina and Derek wedding day |
Anthony: Who were some of his students that we may of heard about.
Kristina: The list is long: John Scott, Gingi Lee, Alexander Medin, Lis Lark, Brian Cooper, Mathew Vollmer, Michaela Clarke, Annie Pace, Jocelyn Stern, Petri Raisanen, Joseph Dunham, Ginny Dean, Hemish Hendry and many many more.
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| Derek assisting Gingi Lee, The practice Place |
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| Derek assisting in his Yoga Room |