Body and Soul Yoga Centre's José Madero

By Nick Korjov

You never know what's going to happen sometimes. José Madero, a former business management course student, could hardly picture himself sitting in ‘Agnistambhasana’ (a fire log pose) five years later, teaching a yoga class at Shanghai’s Body & Soul Yoga Centre.

In his third year of university, José was going through a difficult time in life: he was under a lot of pressure studying hard and also working quite a lot. Feeling completely beat, he looked around for some energy and inspiration, and had always been curious about martial arts, but first wanted to focus on improving his flexibility. José enlisted in a yoga class, which subsequently changed his life.

“I am from Mexico and I first started to practice yoga there. I first started with ashtanga vinyasa, which is very dynamic and fast, but when I travelled to India, I got more interested in hatha yoga. It’s slower, but you can still develop key strengths. I spent five months in India, and stayed in three cities: Delhi, Varanasi, and Rishikesh. Most of my time, I was in Rishikesh.” There, in the so-called world capital of yoga, he took a training course at a registered yoga school. He learned a lot of new things and during this time tried to find just regular people around who could offer him wisdom on various yoga techniques.

When he started practising yoga in Mexico, all his friends treated him as a weirdo. But after his hobby turned into a real passion, they asked him to show them some exercises. At the first yoga centre he went, almost everyone was a vegeterian, so José decided to try to exclude meat from the diet only for a week, eventually becoming a vegeterian. “In my country, it’s almost impossible not to eat meat. But I got used to this kind of nutrition quiet fast. It helped me a lot and I felt really better”, he claims.

It’s a huge responsibility to be a yoga instructor. “After India, I came to Shanghai, and took the International Yoga Teacher Training Course. It’s a 200 hours course, which teaches not only yoga exercises, but also anatomy. What is the lymphatic system, the digestive system, our muscles? It’s all very important to build understanding as a yoga instructor and I learned about it here. It is the most complete and systematic way to learn what yoga is”, says José.

“Yoga is not only about bending over and touching your toes so other people call you flexible. It's about finding harmony, inspiration, and emotional balance. I am really happy right now, largely because of yoga. When I was studying business I couldn't say that. Now as a yoga teacher here in Shanghai, yeah…I am extremely happy”. Judging by a confident tone and smile on José's face, nothing remains but to trust him.

Body & Soul Yoga, Tel: 5213 8366,
Web: www.bodynsoulyoga.com