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Jonathan Monks

Ymonks
 
Classes that conveya joy of movement
 
The first time Jonathan Monks took a yoga class, he felt he had come home.  “It was something I inherently knew, as if I had already done it.”
 
Many years later, that has became the basis for his hugely successful Ymonks classes – that yoga is less about particular positions or belief systems than individuals connecting with their own essence, what they already know on a deeper level.
             
“When you’re a kid, you do handsprings just for fun.  You do it for the joy of movement…there is a freedom people can find in their own body.  I help people find the courage and conviction to locate it for themselves.”  
 
Jonathan’s first career was as a singer and performer – he has appeared in Les Misérables and other West End shows and has an MA from the London College of Music in singing and music.  He has also composed music and lectured at the Royal College of Music.
Days at Danceworks
Tuesdays and Thursdays
 
But yoga – at first straight Ashtanga and then, increasingly, his own individualised technique – was what sustained him.  He practiced two hours per day while performing.  Then his agent left town and the show he was starring in cancelled.  Unemployed and not wanting a new agent, he considered two choices: get a PhD or teach yoga.  
           
By then, he had created an even more radical yoga technique, thanks to what at first seemed a disaster.  His shoulder, as he puts it, “blew up” – became painfully dislocated. The experience led him deeper into his own practice, caused him to more fully explore how his own body worked and why it worked that way.  Friends were asking him to teach them what he had discovered…and so the choice was made.
 
Jonathan has now been teaching Ymonks for four years.  He brings his background in performance to each class to keep it fun, since the joy of movement is what it’s all about.  He also believes in distracting students with comedy.  “When you’re not looking, you often see things you wouldn’t normally.”
 
And it’s the students themselves who have to see, Jonathan says.  All movement comes from the same source – within them – and is then manifest in their own individual way.  About half of each class consists of classical yoga postures; the other half is improvised, so that the class becomes a workshop for the particular individuals involved.
 
“I am very much alive in each class, very THERE, and I can communicate that. Since I am inside the moment, that gives students a doorway to the moment – the origin of everything, of all knowledge and awareness – then I put a posture in front of them and they have an opportunity for deeper understanding from within.
“I have had some people in class for three years and they’re doing splits and backbends, things they never thought they could do…when you discover for yourself what your hips are and really move them…it feels as though someone has taken the brakes off.  It’s exciting and dangerous.”
 
Jonathan’s new book, Yoga-Pilates: Fusion for Health and Fitness,  is available on Amazon.com and in Books, Etc.
 
“There is a freedom people can find in their own body.  I help people find the courage to locate it.”