'A temporary thing': Extended interview with Tom Tobias

Web exclusive extended interview: Making the most of right now, with yoga and meditation instructor Tom Tobias

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TTV: When did you take your first yoga class?

TT: My first wife, she was a macrobiotic chef, really amazing, she taught me sun salutations back in ’89 - so that was my first taste. My first actual class was with Beth Field here in town, she’s great. Also, my daughter, she was autistic and non-verbal, and I wanted a deeper way to connect with her and she would do the most amazing thing, we would be on a walk and she would just sit down and put her hands on the ground. It felt like she was saying, “Keep quiet. Listen.” And I could feel a sense of listening, and so being around that, wanting there to be more of a connection, I realized that I had to find a route that wasn’t verbal. So, that turned me on to meditation to be at the same wavelength as her and it was beautiful. There were so many times where it was so thick, that space between us. In ’95 I started to formerly practice meditation.

TTV: Before getting into yoga, you were in real estate. How did you like that?

TT: I was really good at it. In college, I sold ladies shoes at Aberson’s Alley and I was really good at that, and then I worked at the Ralph Lauren shop at Utica Square and I was good at that, too. And one of my clients owned a real estate company and he said, “You know, you’re really good at this, you’re good with people, would you like to come work for me?” And, you know, I needed a job; I mean one that was better than working at the Ralph Lauren store, so I said, “Sure.” I had a ball and financially it was just crazy - I was making four or five times what my friends who had gotten out of school with these great petroleum engineer degrees were making, and they were doing pretty well.

TTV: So why not just sell real estate, make a ton of money, have some fun and then just take a few yoga classes?

TT: Yeah, well, there’s a lot of um…. I stopped selling real estate after my daughter passed away, I stopped for about 9 months, I couldn’t do anything.

[Author’s note: Tom’s daughter, Jessie, passed away due to injuries suffered after she took a fall during a hiking trip. She was 7 years old.]

TTV: I don’t know how you got out of bed.

TT: I know. Other than meditate, walk and read - that’s all I did for 9 months. I’d go backpack by myself and come back, stay for a couple of weeks and then go back. Luckily, I was able to do that. I didn’t want to distract myself from what was coming up.

TTV: You wanted to be in it.

TT: Yeah. And when I did try after this 9 months to go back, I couldn’t do it.

TTV: You weren’t the same person anymore.

TT: I just remember crying at a listing appointment and I thought, I can’t do this. I realized that it’s great that somebody does that for a living and I can admire that, but it was no longer for me.

TTV: When I practice yoga with you I feel like there are three distinct elements: physical, mental and spiritual. So, in essence, I feel like when I learn from you I get a workout, a therapy session and church all in one sitting. That being said, why can’t I haul my ass out of bed and make it to class when I know I need to?

TT: [laughs] You know, inertia is really strong. Through the years, I’ve known so many who say, “Hey, I’ll see you at 6:30 tomorrow.” Nowadays, I go, “Okay, great.” But I know that the likelihood I will see them is 10 percent. Maybe. Maybe more like 5 percent.

You know, not everyone really has the blessing, if you want to use that word, that I have. Look, I know everyone suffers in this life, but for some reason what happened with me and Jessie, that loss just woke me up to where I realized that I have to, it’s my duty to, to show up - and lovingly. It has to be real otherwise it wouldn’t be showing up if I were operating out of some ego thing. But, I have degenerative disc disease in my low back and I creak when I get up in the morning - but you have to tap into something that’s bigger than you - and that was laid right out in front of me - so, in that way, it’s kind of easy for me.

TTV: There was almost no choice, correct?

TT: Zero. Zero choice.

TTV: You wouldn’t be here.

TT: I was going to kill myself. If it weren’t for meditation, I wouldn’t be here with you right now. I was so, so close. There was no taboo for me, but I realized, thank God, that that path would have just been running. I don’t know, I guess it’s an ongoing process. I feel like I’m so blessed to be having this experience. I’ve been given so much - a healthy body and a healthy mind. My guru, Baba Hari Daas, has a saying and he says, “When you bring flowers to the guru, you bring fresh flowers.” It’s like, I don’t want to try and meet my maker, or meet the source when I die or when I’m on my deathbed. While I’m at my peak, I want to offer myself to my source and let what is, be.

TTV: In class you often say, when we’re in the middle of poses, “Make sure to let go of any stories” that are associated with the pose or whatever struggle we may be having. In your opinion, is this the key to living the enlightened life, to let go of the past and stay out of the future and just to remain present? It sounds easy, but as you well know, it is extremely difficult.

TT: Yes. There are so many temperaments of people and different focuses - one person might put it that way, another might say, “let go of desire” - there’s a lot of ways to say it, and they’re all correct. When we talk about the past and the future, the future is really just an extrapolation of the past, we’re basing some fantasy about the future off of what we have learned from our past, so they’re kind of the same thing. In a big way, it’s really just training yourself to have a different relationship with memory and realizing that memories are nothing more than just thoughts. We have so many emotional ties, we get so caught up - think about break-ups. A lot of times we can read the writing on the wall when we know a relationship has run its course, but that’s not where the pain is. How could the pain be in the future? It hasn’t even happened yet. The pain is in the remembrances of the good times in the past and the projection of some kind of lack of those good times in the future. But those thoughts are not necessarily true.

To be really skillful in awareness is the key. The past and the future are fantasies, there’s no reality there. People say, “Well, that’s not true. I remember my past.” And I would say, “No you don’t.”

TTV: We remember a past that we have molded to fit our narrative.

TT: Right. We’ve filtered and conditioned our past to fit our story of who we think we are.

TTV: So, I always get a kick out of being in your class when you say things like, “Let go of words.” And I’m laughing thinking to myself, “But that’s my job. I bring words. I attach words to things.” But I realize I don’t have to do it right then. There’s a time and a place.

TT: Right. You know this, when you’re empty is when you can be most open to the creativity it requires to do what you do.

TTV: Can yoga cure depression and anxiety?

TT: I think, yes. To the point, the cure may be found in not caring.

TTV: I don’t know if I understand.

TT: Well, to see these struggles for what they are and not to give them any more power. So, to say, “I feel this certain way and it’s uncomfortable, and that’s okay.” Not tying any more of yourself up to those feelings. If you can stop identifying and buying into the idea that these feelings make you less of a person, then attrition will begin and you stop feeding the disease. It’s all about, and I don’t know if people get this because I don’t say it, but you have to stay on top of it, to stay awake and aware.

TTV: It’s really hard to stay awake in Western culture.

TT: Yeah, you’re constantly being told that you’re not adequate, that you need more of this or that to be happy. You‘re told that you’re not even wise enough to know that you’re unhappy; that you are too dumb to realize what you need so you need to be told by other people.

I’ve come to a place, I don’t know if there’s any truth in this, but I think that happiness is found when we let go of wanting. If you think about it, when you gain an object that you desire, it’s obviously not the object, which is temporary, which brings any happiness, but for some small period there is created a brief cessation of desire. You got the thing, so now until the next thing comes into view, desire is temporarily halted - that’s where the peace comes in, where the wanting is gone. But you can leave wanting alone without having to pursue things. You can have something and no longer want it, so you know it to be true.

Wholeness is in each one of us - at all times. It’s not out there. There’s nothing more to be. There’s nothing more to do. You are enough, just as you are. You’ve got to let go of all of those messages and just be.

TTV: You’re born enough and you’ll die being enough. In between the day you’re born and the day you die, all there is is the collection of stories you tell yourself, or the stories you let people tell you about yourself.

TT: And wanting is so tied to this - tied to the past. We don’t want this, we’ve experienced it before and we don’t want it - that’s fear. We do want what’s been pleasurable, we want more of that - there’s desire. And those two things are running the show. These are the things that keep us dreaming, the things that keep us sleepwalking through the world. It’s like people are trying to cultivate a better dream as opposed to simply waking up.

TTV: So couldn’t you just do this on your own? You know what I mean? Do you just feel compelled to share it?

TT: Oh yeah, but not for any moral reason or anything, I guess it’s just a part of who I am at some deep level. I hate to see others suffering.  I see suffering and I know enough to know that that might be the very best thing for them at this point and time, but there is a part of me that wants to be there to help when they’re ready for relief.

TTV: You’re kind of hard to find, you know?

TT: Yeah, I’m not super self-promotional as far as my business practices. I just kind of put it out there and if it resonates, it resonates. I realize it’s not going to for most people, because a lot of what I say is going to be counter to what someone has been taught, or maybe they might be confused and that’s fine. It’s the way it should be.

TTV: Because you’ve let go of the need to be a certain type of yogi, or maybe the need to be all thing to all people.

TT: Yeah. No. I’m just here. I’m just a temporary thing. I have no idea how long I’ll be here, but I want to make it available because this way of life has been so good to me. To feel a since of well being, and the exercise crowd needs to get this: I’m not doing this for some end goal, I’m doing this and I started doing this, so that I could be content right now. Why not be happy as you exercise, or be happy that you can exercise, instead of focusing on some end goal and attaching happiness to it?