Sat Inder Singh Khalsa is a very loving guy, but he doesn’t necessarily want that getting around. At least, that’s what he said to the 200 people he was putting through their paces a few Saturdays ago on a beautiful morning—after he finished giving one student hell, through his microphone, for texting during the yoga class he was teaching.
“She comes here to relax her mind!” he said, incredulous.
Don’t get him started on latecomers, either.
“She’s here, everyone, the blonde with the purple mat...just 20 minutes late!”
It might be the peas-and-carrots feelgood perfection of the combination of a donation-based yoga class and the Tower Grove Farmers’ Market, where it’s been held for the past seven seasons, that brings hundreds of people out week after week. It might be that the price is right. It could even be that the class is dog-friendly.
But for a lot of the regulars who unroll their mats at 9 a.m., even when the notorious St. Louis summer heat is already well into the 90s, the draw is Khalsa. He won’t dumb the class down, even though it’s frequented by newcomers to the ancient discipline. He’s acerbic and demanding. But make no mistake: he’s absolutely charming.
“All my teachers are very traditional Indian men—they call you out!” Khalsa, 42, said over a falafel at MoKaBe’s Coffeehouse next to Tower Grove Park. “I started getting laughs” after letting his curmudgeonly side out during class, he said. He figures that has some bearing on how the class grew from a couple dozen to a couple hundred.
It was a free class that led Khalsa into the life he’s leading now, in fact. That, and a car wreck that kept him from the workout routine he’d been struggling through despite a two-pack-a-day cigarette habit complimented by drink and other intoxicants.
A friend had been on him to try yoga, and after the wreck in 2000, he gave it a go. It was not love at first downward-facing-dog.
“I couldn’t walk for four days. Me and my mom lay on the couch and watch TV—this is how I grew up,” Khalsa says. But after about a month, he found himself with booze-and-cigarette stinking sweat pouring into his face in a class, totally grossed out and hooked.
Three months into his practice, Khalsa traveled to Boulder, Colo. to study with Sri Krishna Pattabhi Jois, an Ashtanga teacher. He stayed with a couple, an architect and builder, who were committed to only working with natural materials and placed a premium on time spent together in a hammock.
“To me, life happened to you,” Khalsa said. “They said ‘We do this on purpose, we set it up this way.’”
Then, 9/11 happened. Khalsa knew layoffs were coming at the stock brokerage firm where he worked, and asked if he could be among those sent off with a severance package. He traveled to Hawaii and Europe and toured around the States with his mother.
“I had a little talk with the universe,” he says. “‘Universe, I want to teach yoga.’ It worked. I’ve been doing it ever since.”
He’s moved through a few different styles, including Ashtanga, Anusara and Kundalini. Part of his changing from a corporate job guy into a full-time yogi involved a serious devotion to the Sikh faith-—a big deviation from his Baptist roots.
He took vows of sobriety and vegetarianism, grew his hair and beard long and wore a turban, as well as legally adopting the name Sat Inder Singh Khalsa.
Lately, though, he’s backing away from the more outward signifiers of being Sikh.
“I don’t feel like the orthodoxy is something I need to follow,” he says.
Gone is the sternum-length beard, though he still sports some mighty thick face fuzz. He cut his hair, but it’s still long enough for a ponytail. The turban, too, is gone, but chunky rings and bracelets remain, as does a redolence of sandalwood.
“I feel more me now. That’s the point, we hope, anyway.”
He teaches full time, at YogaSource and other studios around the city, and for donations every Saturday morning at the farmers market. A planned trip to India early next year, he’s hoping, will steep him yet further in the traditional aspects of yoga, which he can bring back to St. Louis yogis.
“I’m along for the ride, to see what happens,” he says. “It’s unfolding again.”
