Inside the Making of Living Yoga
An Interview with filmmakers Shiva Kumar and Joshua M. Greene from the Spring 2008 issue of Integral Yoga Magazine (www.iymagazine.org)
What happens when two filmmakers from opposite ends of the earth find out their partnership on a documentary about Yoga has more synchronicities than either one could have imagined? Magic! Our readers learn the revealing behind-the-scenes kismet that brought those involved in the making of Living Yoga full circle.
Integral Yoga Magazine: How did you two first meet?
Shiva Kumar: In 1983, Joshua had just returned to New York from India, and he brought to Lincoln Center a puppet-show of Indian folk stories. I was working for the television program Visions of Asia as a newscaster. Joshua came to the station to see if we would do a promotion for this program. Not only did I wind up creating a series of specials about his puppet show, but we really connected and started talking about working together. While we were coming from opposite ends of the earth, we found that our working styles were on a parallel.
IYM: Since you have very different backgrounds, did this influence how you approached the subject of Yoga?
SK: Joshua had a typical upbringing in an American Jewish family in the ‘60s—like many seeking answers that were not available in his society, he took a keen interest in Hinduism and eventually lived in ashrams for many years. I was born in South India and was raised as a Brahmin in a traditional Hindu family. Even though I had distanced myself from that when I left home, a lot of the culture stayed with me. I had an abiding love for the stories from Hindu scriptures, and when Joshua and I met we realized we wanted to do the same thing: We wanted to tell stories. The stories we first told were about Indian mythology—Ramayana, the Mahabharata.
Joshua Greene: What’s funny about the partnership is that people say “the Indian guy is more Western than the American, and the American guy is more Hindu than the Indian!” Shiva is a visual person with a real sense of what works with the general public. I’m more conceptual and tend to think in terms of the spiritual crowds. He’s the real litmus test for the bottom line, which is, “Is it good watch able programming?” My head leans more toward crafting the script and assuring that we provide the greatest editorial value to viewers.
SK: Joshua has a practitioner’s perspective on Indian culture and is very sympathetic to it. On the other hand, I’m quite willing to break traditional boundaries if it means telling a better story. My approach is that of a fast-moving production, and Joshua has a scholarly, content-based perspective. The two of us came from opposite ends of the spectrum and met on a very compatible middle ground.
IYM: What is your connection to filmmaker Conrad Rooks (Siddhartha)?
SK: Around the time I met Joshua, I had a party in my Brooklyn apartment and Alexander Rooks (son of the filmmaker Conrad Rooks, who introduced Gurudev to the West in 1966) crashed the party, along with a few other guys (Karan Kapoor, son of the famed Indian actor Shashi Kapoor, and Rahul Chatterjee). At that point, I and all my Indian friends had heard about the film, Siddhartha, and we knew it had been controversial in India. As teens, we had wanted to see this film, but it didn’t play in India. The fact that Alex’s father had made the film was so interesting to me! Rahul moved to India, Karan went to London, Alex and I maintained our friendship, and I met his father. My son Sarik was to help on our final shoot in Yogaville (Satchidananda Ashram) but, at the last minute, he couldn’t make it. By then, I had worked with Alexander on many projects, and so I asked if he would be available to work with me on this one. It wasn’t Alexander’s first visit to the ashram, but this was his first visit since Gurudev had left the body. It seemed to be a very moving experience for him to be at the ashram and to be working on this film. Joshua has his own story.
JK: That’s another so-called coincidence. In 1971, Conrad called the Brooklyn Krishna temple asking if a few of our senior members would come to a screening of Siddhartha, his film-in-progress, and provide him with feedback. Back then, I had no idea that his first film had been Chappaqua, in which Gurudev appeared, or that Conrad would appear in the film we would be producing nearly forty years later.
IYM: What was it like to meet Conrad?
SK: He was a great raconteur and the stories he had to tell were just amazing: about life in Sri Lanka and how he hosted in his apartment jams with Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Ravi Shankar and every other big name in the late ‘50s. So, when this film became a reality, it was like all these loose strands that had been floating around for some twenty years seemed to weave together.
IYM: Where there other synchronicities?
JG: There have been too many for them to have been chance. For starters, my first contact with Yoga was attending a lecture by Gurudev at the Universalist Church in New York City in 1968. The next time I saw him was at the Woodstock festival a year later. Soon after, I moved to London and lived in Krishna ashrams for the next thirteen years. In a sense, I owe the initial impetus for my spiritual life to Gurudev. Peter Max was the one who told me to go see Gurudev at the Universalist Church and, when I interviewed Peter for the film, it was the first time we’d seen each other in thirty-nine years! I remember thinking, “Boy, have we aged.” [Laughs]
Then there’s the coincidence that Shiva came from same district in India as Gurudev, and so he brought to the film that insight into the culture. So we discovered all these unexpected connections and resources for making the film. Some might say that God works in mysterious ways, but maybe another way of saying that is that resources come to our aid in all aspects of life, if we’re not selfishly motivated and if we’re open to the experience. The Yoga message is to be open to that mystery and to the excitement of this moment right now. If we’re lucky enough to have the guidance of a great soul such as Sri Gurudev, then we’ll see the synchronicity everywhere. As stunning as all those bits and pieces coming together may be, in a sense it’s not a surprise.
IYM: What was it like to take on this project?
JG: Initially it was overwhelming, daunting. Here is Sri Gurudev, who had dedicated his life to helping people around the world awaken to their true Self—one of the truly great teachers in Yoga history—and here we were, outsiders to the community. I’d studied Bhakti Yoga with my teacher Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada and taught Bhagavad Gita, but I’d never had the privilege of studying Integral Yoga®. My hope was that by combining whatever understanding I had of the Yoga traditions with Shiva’s terrific skills as a filmmaker— somehow all that would allow us to adequately portray Sri Gurudev’s extraordinary life and achievements.
IYM: How did you approach the making of this documentary?
SK: We began with interviews that we did during Integral Yoga’s 40th anniversary celebration in Virginia in October 2006. The archival resources available for this film were huge—so many satsangs, so much footage. We were shooting in high definition but also incorporating this old footage. To pull it all together and tell a cohesive story was a challenge. Joshua and I like to think of ourselves as storytellers. The medium may change, but the basic experience of telling and receiving a story remains the same. If we have told a story well, it will resonate with an audience. Over the years I’ve come to recognize my inability to anticipate what a program will look like when it’s finished. When I was younger, I’d make things up, but then I learned that a program has an internal logic of its own. It starts forming itself when you allow that to happen. This project was no different. I had no idea where we were going with it when we started.
IYM: What was it like for you working on this film?
JG: Without wanting to exaggerate too much, Shiva and I have probably watched as many if not more videos and heard more audio recordings and read more books about Sri Gurudev than some of his own students. I admit I can be arrogant about my years in ashrams—“Oh, look how much I know about Yoga”—but after that much exposure to Sri Gurudev’s life and teachings, the realization I had was, “Boy do I have a long way to go.” Doing this film has also renewed my respect for the physical and psychological dimensions of Yoga. My training has been in bhakti, the devotional side of Yoga. After doing this film, I’ve started attending beginners’ Yoga classes.
Another gift for me was that I felt, I guess, Gurudev enter my heart. I hadn’t experienced anything like that since my own spiritual master passed away in 1977.
SK: There was a strange but extremely comfortable feeling of coming home. I spent so much time watching footage of Gurudev and listening to his voice. There was so much in his cadence and mannerisms that reminded me of the world in which I grew up. The way in which Gurudev states things, his silences, his “hmmms,” were very similar to the way in which my grandfather spoke. It would have been wonderful if, when I was younger and searching for an understanding of our Hindu scriptures and rituals, I had heard some of the explanations Gurudev gave. I’ve come to appreciate his charisma and his wonderful approach. People felt disarmed when they came in his presence.
IYM: What did you take away from this experience?
SK: I had often felt at odds with the ritualized aspects of our culture and religion; it’s the deep philosophy that is uniquely meaningful. The way Gurudev explains profound issues really resonated with what I had always felt. As Dean Morton explained in the film, Gurudev wasn’t a Hindu talking about Hindu rituals to other Hindus. He was talking to the world-at-large. He was a global person. I pride myself in having a global sense, which is why I immediately connected with his approach to things. His path was so open and free, there was no coercion. He didn’t make you feel, “I know something that you don’t.” Instead, it was more like, “Let’s discover this path together.” It’s a wonderful feeling. All that had a definite impact on me.
IYM: What do you hope the audience might take away from the film?
JG: My freshman class at Hofstra University got a sneak preview. We’d been discussing other books on Yoga and we’d screened some films, but I only got blank stares. After seeing Living Yoga, all the students had questions and I heard comments like, “Oh, we get it now,” and “This really spoke to me.” There was a personal recognition on their part, that somehow this message included them. The value then, from my perspective, in a film that explores Sri Gurudev’s teachings and the application of the teachings in practical, daily life is that people who may otherwise never have considered Yoga might do so now. That’s a whole lot.
SK: Producing a film, like a book, calls for laboring in private for six months or a year. Then you bring it out and people make it their own, they find things that resonate with them. Our hope is that the film will have a broad appeal to people of all ages and from many walks of life. Regular people who have never even thought about Yoga might discover how to make more helpful and healthful choices. If, after seeing it, they come away with one or two things that they want to do to change in their life, it would be great. It might be something small, like how Denise Winchester talks about falling off the wagon occasionally, but on the whole, she’s “eating more tofu.” It’s cute when she relays that, but it’s also really real. We hope we present enough real people in the film with whom audiences can relate so that they feel that Yoga is not something beyond their reach. I hope they will realize that real contentment, peace and happiness—whatever you want to call it—is attainable by all.
Shiva Kumar, the director and co-producer, has worked in commercial, documentary and corporate filmmaking for over 20 years. His award-winning programs have been seen on PBS, The Disney Channel, the BBC, Israeli Cable, Canal Plus (France), RAI (Italy) and NHK (Japan).
Born in New Delhi and educated in England, Egypt, Bhutan, India and the US, Shiva brings a global perspective to all his productions. Shiva’s productions are informed by his diverse background as an actor, newscaster, reporter and student of world cultures and his keen understanding of cinematography, lighting, emerging HD technologies and good production design.
Joshua M. Greene the writer and co-producer, has been described by the New York Times as “a storyteller who traces journeys to enlightenment.” He teaches mysticism at Hofstra University and Bhagavad Gita at the Jivamukti Yoga School and Integral Yoga Institute in New York. His most recent book is the bestselling biography Here Comes the Sun: The spiritual journey of George Harrison, which traces the late Beatle’s evolution from entertainer to spiritual seeker. Joshua lived for thirteen years in ashrams across India and Europe.
