Story (article from Menswork Magazine 07) IN BOULDER, COLORADO — THE FITTEST TOWN IN AMERICA — AT THE FLATIRONS ATHLETIC CLUB — THE PREMIERE ATHLETIC CLUB IN THE FITTEST TOWN IN AMERICA — A 42-YEAR-OLD WOMAN ABOUT TO ENTER HER FIRST BODYBUILDING COMPETITION IS RECEIVING LAST-MINUTE INSTRUCTIONS FROM PETER SEAMANS, AKA THE IRON YOGI. PETER IS FIVEFOOT- SIX, 190 POUNDS, LEAN AS AN ARABIAN THOROUGHBRED, AND SITTING IN A QUIET, DIMLY LIT OFFICE OFF THE MAIN LOBBY, GNASHING A KINGSIZE PROTEIN BAR. “LET’S MAKE SURE AND SPEAK TONIGHT AFTER I GET HOME,” HE SAYS TO LORNAY. LORNAY NODS. “CAN I HAVE ONE OF THEM?” SHE ASKS, POINTING TO HIS NITRO TECH SNACK. “No.” “Tell me that’s not transcendence,” he challenges, tossing the shiny wrapper into the trash. Transcendence is Peter’s stock in trade. And he earns a good living helping people achieve it — be it a feeling of harmony at work or the ability to clean-jerk five bags of cement. Over 24 years of gym time, he’s acquired a large set of tools for facilitating said transcendence. He’s a state certified instructor in nutrition, movement therapies, massage, exercise kinesiology, and of course yoga. Vogue magazine rated him one of the top 50 personal trainers in America and the National Physique Committee voted him trainer of the year. At one time, his 45-bike, 2,000-participants-a-month spinning program was the largest in the world. He is even an undefeated NPC drug-tested body building champion. But while he’s a superior personal trainer, yoga is his future. Forced to phrase his hopes in the crass words of professional ambition, he says that he’d like to join the pantheon of yoga superstars — Rodney Yee, Baron Baptiste, Rod Stryker, Swami Shankarananda, Bikram Choudhury — who teach their own personal branches of yoga to other instructors. Peter calls his brand Turbo Vinyasa. The core of the transcendence-for-health-club-junkies invention is a routine of flowing postures somewhat like a calisthenics class but using yoga poses. Students will, for example, whip through a sun salutation (hamstring stretch to push-up to stomach arch to back arch) and quickly find themselves in Peter’s temple squat, hands clasped overhead and legs bent to sit in an imaginary chair. As soon as anyone masters the contortions, Peter creates more of his own — the one-handed push-up Wishbone, for example. “I trained Deepak Chopra in exercise and nutrition,” Peter says, of the nation’s guru emeritus. “And he tried to teach me how to meditate. And his meditation instructors tried to teach me how to meditate. And I spent six days in a meditation seminar. And I never meditated. But by adding movement and breath — yoga — I was able to experience meditation. And Deepak lost a ton of weight.” Weight loss is of course just one benefit of Turbo Vinyasa. Peter also heals injuries, as Lornay will attest to, and encourages the meditation that leads to that elusive state of transcendence. Unlike, say, Bikram’s hot yoga, each of Peter’s classes ends with a ten-minute savasna during which students lie down with their eyes closed and feel each of their limbs melt into the floor while Peter counts backwards from ten. Then everyone Omms in unison. Incantations aside, one can’t help but wonder if genuine transcendence is really what he’s after. Or is “transcendence,” like his catchy sobriquets Iron Yogi and Turbo Vinyasa, simply a marketing shtick to set his yoga apart from other fitness-focused yogas? His life story hints at the answer. In 1978, age 20, Peter was a slob. He was fifty pounds overweight, smoking two and a half packs of cigarettes a day, and doing almost nothing athletic partly because he had worn a restrictive brace on one arm that — even now, after millions of dumbbell curls — left that hand noticeably smaller than the other. “I was near death,” he vouches. “I was John Belushi.” Peter was lying around his apartment one morning when his roomate, a football player at Colorado University, Boulder, decided that he was going to drag Peter to the rec center. They hit the weights for about an hour, doing everything from squats to crunches. Peter was so weak that he could military press an unweighted bar only seven times, and he woke up the next morning hurting so badly that he could barely move his arm to reach the alarm clock. After calling in sick to his job as a footwear salesman, he took a hot shower and went straight back to hit the iron. That day, he quit the Marlboros cold turkey. Just months later, he was 40 pounds lighter and managing a health club. For the next 18 years, he moved back and forth between Colorado and California, competing in body building competitions and owning, building, managing, advising and teaching in health clubs. Three years ago, at age 42, enlightenment struck again. Purples, greens, and golds appeared in a semi-conscious dream during the end of a random yoga class. Seeing the shakra colors through his socalled third eye, a point in the center of the forehead, convinced Peter that he was destined to become a yoga instructor. He flew to Costa Rica soon after, intending to return in four weeks to re-launch Santa Barbara’s The Club, but was so taken with Don and Amba Stapleton’s teacher training course that he stayed for ten months. Each day was like the next: Rise at 5 a.m., drink coffee, practice yoga alone for two hours in an open air pavilion, eat breakfast, read mystical Osho, teach yoga, eat lunch, read more Osho, eat a snack, practice yoga for two hours at sunset, eat dinner, sleep. “I realized what I was trying to do lifting weights for so long,” he says. What was he trying to do (besides build killer abs)? What is the end product of this transcendence business? “Selfless service to others,” he says. “We’re incinerating our world at an alarming rate — stress, pollution, war. Everyone is trying to change the world mechanically through conservation projects and peace advocacy and stuff but it’s not working. And it’s not gonna work. Because the change has to be from within.” He pauses. “Outside influences are pumped into our face all day long: Earn, consume, earn, consume. There’s so much greed and other stuff going on around ourselves that we don’t take time to communicate with ourselves.” He’s staring me right in the eyes. “But think what the world would be like if everyone quieted their mind, looked within, and acted according to that one maxim — selfless service to others. We would have no war, no deforestation, no...” He trails off, aware that he outran me, then sums it up: “My yoga is all about embracing the inner superhero.” I’m not sure I have an inner superhero, and I’m not totally sold that yoga will bring world peace. But his fast-talking, unblinking spiel has me excited. I want to believe I have an inner superhero and that I can bring about world peace. And that’s when Peter sets his hook. “So, when are you gonna come to yoga class?” The Enigma music starts out soft and so do the exercises. The syncopated ponk ponk sound of a racketball game in the background breaks my concentration. After a few of the basic sun salutations, the music quickens and we roll over. The Iron Yogi calls out authoritatively for more difficult poses. The pores in my forehead open and begin to release tiny rivulets of sweat as I reach for the sky and balance on one arm. Out of the corner of my eye, a tight spandex-clad female butt can be seen bouncing on a stairmaster. I relish the view until I find my head between my legs, one foot off the floor, and a cascade of sweat falling on the mat. The Iron Yogi’s muscles are not getting in the way of his painful demonstrations — whereas mine definitely are. He gently presses my back into the ground when I sit with my legs in a crumple underneath me. With each breath I feel strange muscles elongate and the accompanying hurt increase just beyond tolerable. I inhale as deeply as instructed and he pushes down harder. I’ve forgotten Ms. Stairmaster. The pumping electronica bass crescendos into a heart pounding mezzo forte as we roll onto our stomachs with only a few minutes left to go. Arms outstretched, feet outstretched, the Iron Yogi instructs us to raise our limbs off the ground — and freeze. This is the prone cobra, an exercise that he uses to “build the postural stabilizers that control the shoulder girdle and spine.” Put simply, it counteracts the office slouch. I’m already exhausted, but so, apparently, is everyone else, and there’s a subtle vibe of camaraderie in the shared pain. Nobody wants to disappoint the man whose legs look like pistons. So I keep my fingers and toes up as long as I can. They start to shake. Five seconds later, small muscles in my back revolt and begin to twitch. After ten seconds, my shoulders overheat and my arms begin to bob. They drop a few inches and I strain to — yes! — bring them back up. Like hell I ain’t a goddam superhero. The music fades to relaxing pan flute. The class is over. I lie down with my eyes closed and feel each of my limbs melt into the floor as Peter counts backwards from ten. Then everyone Omms in unison. Whether I’ve transcended or not, my head is wonderfully clear, and stays that way for three days. Walking out the door, I even consider eating a yam for dinner. |
