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Friday July 20, 2007

Bay Area visit not a stretch for Israeli yoga master

by dan pine
staff writer

As a young Israeli soldier, Anat Zahor kept one thing with her at all times.

It wasn’t her rifle. It wasn’t a picture of her beau. It was her yoga manual.

That was many years ago, but Zahor’s passion for yoga only grew. Today, at 45, she is one of Israel’s leading practitioners of Iyengar yoga, a system developed by 90-year-old Indian yogiamaster B.K.S. Iyengar.

Last week, Zahor represented Israel at the Yogacharya international yoga conference and festival in Santa Clara. The visit –– her first to California –– gave Zahor a chance to share her knowledge with a new American audience.

In addition to practicing classical yoga asanas (postures), her teachings center on dialogue and meditation, borrowing from both Hindu and Buddhist traditions.

Whether visiting here in the Bay Area or 10,000 miles away in her Tel Aviv studio, Zahor’s aim is always the same with her yoga classes. “People have the ability to walk away from the hustle and bustle, from the hectic life, and come to a place that’s very mindful,” she says.

Mindfulness, she is quick to add, is a quality germane to yoga, Judaism, Buddhism and many other “isms.” But for Zahor, “isms” don’t cut it anymore.

“I don’t put any weight on those concepts,” she says. “I’m not really a Buddhist or a Taoist or a Jew. I’m a human being. A whole human being.”

That’s not to say she isn’t a whole Israeli. Born to two Holocaust survivors, Zahor grew up in a secular Zionist household. From an early age, she found herself drawn to yoga and spiritual matters, a path she followed even as she steered her post-army career toward the arts.

“I was an actress,” she says. “I went to art school, I had exhibitions. But I left everything because [yoga] was what nourished me. Once you go with your heart, you don’t leave anything behind.”

She also explored tai chi, Taoism, Buddhism, meditation and alternative healing arts. But she found yoga, especially as developed by Iyengar, to be the most fulfilling expression of her spiritual quest. She became a disciple of Iyengar, visiting him in India. In 2000, she opened her own yoga studio in Tel Aviv.

While she may personally reject what she calls “sectarian religion,” she is proud to be Jewish and Israeli. Zahor also thinks there’s a good reason why so many Jews become Buddhists (or JewBu’s for short).

“Jewish people have a certain kind of mind,” she says. “The faculties are inquiry and investigation. The true Buddhist mind is this kind of mind. The Buddhist main theme is wisdom. It’s like chochma [Hebrew for wisdom]. I think this is the reason of the Jewish mind.”

Fortunately for her, yoga has grown in popularity throughout Israel, in large part because of its American branding.

“Israelis like America,” she says. “What happens in America also happens in Israel. If it’s a fashion in America, then yoga is a fashion in Israel too.”

Zahor and her partner, an acupuncturist, have three children, ranging from 10 to 16. Add family obligations into her already busy schedule and it would seem Zahor wouldn’t have enough hours in the day to get her asanas in gear. But the ever-serene Zahor would beg to differ.

It’s all One to her. “My religion is free from attachment,” she says. “It’s completely free from any idea. It’s about freedom. And freedom is what everyone looks for.”

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