Following on from our monthly Light on Yoga Manchester People feature we were fortunate enough to get the amazing Kino MacGregor to answer our questions.
Kino was in Manchester recently to teach a couple of workshops and I can confirm that she’ll be back next year September 19-21 2014 for a weekend workshop.
Please feel free to add in your thoughts to Kino’s answers at the bottom of the page in the comments section.
Tell us a bit about yourself
My home, my family, my yoga center and my heart are all in Miami Beach. I think of myself first as a student of yoga and then as an Ashtanga Yoga teacher, author, writer, vlogger and YouTuber. My husband and I have a cat called Neffie, a stray that we adopted who now loves nothing more than to lie on top of us whenever she gets the chance. We have a big mango tree in our yard that brings a bounty of sweet, juicy mangoes each summer. I love the ocean, the eternal sunshine of Florida, long walks by the sea under the multi-dimensional, rainbow colored sunsets of Miami Beach, the feeling of endless white sand under my toes, swimming in the crystalline, turquoise waters of the beach and seeing how the shore is never the same.
What are you currently listening to? Tell us about it
Lately I’ve had a Classical music revival. Beethoven, Bach, Chopin and Mozart are all in the “now playing” list of my iPhone. Some others at the top of my list are David Gray, Lady Gaga, DJ Sasha, Danny Tenaglia, Jack Johnson, Chet Baker, Miles Davis and Sigur Ros.
What brought you to yoga and how long have you been practising?
I started yoga out of a desire to live a more peaceful life. The full answer to this question is so big that I wrote a book called Sacred Fire about my journey into yoga, from my first class in Miami all the way through to my first trip to India and back to Miami again.
What is your yoga super power?
My yoga super power, if I have one, is discipline. I practice every day, follow the method of Ashtanga Yoga truly and rarely deviate from a daily practice. Some people find it challenging to adhere to the regularity of the practice, but the discipline of Ashtanga Yoga gives me peace of mind and I find it easy.
If you could be a character in a well-known film, who would you be and why?
I would be Gandalf from the Lord of the Rings because I love his good intentions, the power that he wields and the transformation that he goes through over the three films.
Where in the world is heaven?
Heaven for me is sunrise over the ocean’s horizon (which is absolutely gorgeous every day on Miami Beach). There is a sacredness to the beauty of the sun peaking up above the deep blue of the sea that seems to renew hope and rebirth possibility. There is the promise kept each dawn that no matter how dark the night may be the sun will indeed rise again the next day. Divinity manifesting as light, breaking through the shadows to reveal the truth– the simple purity of this experience is heaven for me.
If you could go back in time to see something or change something, what would it be?
It’s easy to re-write the story of your life and re-cast all your mistakes as successes, so easy in fact that I don’t think I could fit them all in here. Perhaps what’s more telling than something external I would change it something internal. I would go back in time and give my younger self the self-confidence, strength and self-assurance to trust my dreams and go for them against all odds, regardless of how impossible they might seem. After many years of yoga I realize that we are born with all our grace, power and beauty and all we really need to do is trust that it’s there, follow it and let it lead us through life.