When Bram Levinson found yoga in the late 1990s, he knew he had found his path. His first teacher was
Joan Ruvinsky (who had worked with Richard Miller to create iREST). “I was inspired, explored Hindu mythology, different disciplines of yoga, breathing/pranayama, and cultivated spirituality, trying to realize who I was.”
“After 9 years of practice I realized I could actually work in yoga.”
Working his way up the career ladder in the retail business, he had felt unsatisfied and adrift. “I didn’t want to continue encouraging people to consume more crap. If I actually left this job, my goal was to make my professional life as meaningful as possible.”
He began a yoga teacher training program with Mark Darby. “I felt Ashtanga would be the best base. Darby offered puritanical straight up Ashtanga; it was learning from the source.”
While he was doing this hard training, Jennifer Maagendans asked him to manage Luna Yoga. It was an opportunity to be involved in yoga more deeply, and also a rare chance to perfect his training. “She would take me into the studio and give me a very customized training on how to apply what you know
to the real world of a yoga class.” By the time he completed his Ashtanga training program he was already teaching at Luna.
But the development of a yoga teacher is an ongoing process. “I spent a couple of years figuring out my style, my languaging. I was also hungry for more training.” He studied the iRest sytem more deeply with Richard Miller at Kripalu.
He was learning to adapt the yoga to the student, “to go in, feel the group, feel their energy and give a class to challenge them, appropriately.”
In 2014 he took a vinyasa training with Seane Corn that gave him a strong affirmation of his direction.
“Within 2 minutes I thought, she is giving me my class: the languaging, spirit… adamant about physical practice, but understanding that the emotional, energetic and spiritual part was why I was practicing… She is my teacher, to bring me to my next chapter.”
With his book, The Examined Life, and a busy schedule of teaching at Luna Yoga and workshops all over, Bram is fully engaged in his life as a yoga teacher. “I really believe this is what I was put on the Earth to do. People trust me with not only the physical practice, but with their souls, with their journeys. We can focus on how we’re living, how we’re using the time we have on earth, how we’re impacting the world around us.”
“If I could sing I would put my message into that. Or if I could act… but yoga is my art, this is what I can offer.”