mail: 74 Belt St, Warwick, RI 02889
Meet Tom
Tom invites you to laugh, and love your practice. Practice everyday steeped in gratitude.
He has devoted his life to helping others by teaching yoga. Tom has taught thousands of yoga classes since 1988, owned four yoga studios, led 34 yoga teacher trainings, over 90 workshops at Kripalu Center and on and on and on. One day he hopes to grow up and get a life.
In the sunset of his life, Tom's yoga practice is starting to bloom. Everyday, he keeps reliving Ground Hog Day: awake at 3, a long practice, then broadcast at 6am. Teaching online everyday by donation has been a great joy.
Left Right Breath, Alternate Brain Hemisphere Breath is like meditation for dummies. Everyone needs help focusing on the tip of the nose and the fingers point the way. Different finger combinations are much like different postures. Tom developed a new vocabulary for traditional anuloma viloma / nadi shodhana, what it does and the many ways it works and is experienced.
The body of his teaching are a series of online workshops called “This Next Breath.” The daily recorded lessons are a slow, step by step, daily practice that anyone can follow. Because it is not about controlling the breath, it is often referred to as the “surrendered path.” One of the many benefits of not controliing the breath is that it is safe and beneficial for all. The yogis call left right breathing “tridoshic.”
Tom was first introduced to yoga postures at Colgate University in 1976. His yoga heart was awakened in 1986 by Yogi Amrit Desai known as Gurudev. Gurudev is a “Kundalinee Shaktipaat Master” who taught Tom many things, especially the importance of the breath. For the next three years Tom hung out with Gurudev in St Croix. Tom moved into Kripalu Ashram in 1989 and lived there for 6 years. It was a time of devoted spiritual foment. He became one of the directors Kripalu Yoga Teacher Training at the ashram.
His work today stands on the shoulders of many extraordinary yoga masters from the Vipassanna, Iyengar, Bikram, Lakulish, and Ashtanga Yoga traditions. He has made four trips to India and spent time in ashrams over there. Most of all, being a perpetual student, he lets his teaching evolve everyday.
For a dozen plus years, Tom and his some of teachers have been breaking new ground for many yoga research grants funded by the NIH, designed and headed by Dr Lisa Uebelacker at Butler Hospital, and Dr Geoff Tremont at RI Hospital. With the scientific method, they have been quantifying and validating some of the simple truths that the yogis have been teaching for thousands of years and how it can better our lives in the modern era. (study click)(another click)(another click)(another study)(another study)
In 2015, Tom stopped running yoga centers. He has returned to his roots, the early morning breath practice of his ashram years. He is following the natural evolution towards pranayama that the yogis prescribed long ago. He teaches online everyday, the traditional way, by donation.