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Published on September 25, 2007

Parichart Silpa-archa, the middle child of Chat Thai party leader Banharn Silpa-archa, could easily have followed in her father's footsteps - as her siblings have done. Instead she's chosen yoga.

"My father got into politics when I was 10, so it's in my blood, but I don't want to be an actor in politics - I'd rather be a watcher," she says.

Even with a degree in finance from Thammasat University and an MBA from Bangkok University, as well as an investment in the beauty firm Derma Belle, nothing makes Parichart happier than yoga.

She quickly went from being an enthusiastic student to winning second place in the 2004 Regional Yoga Asana Championships. Within six months of taking up yoga she enrolled in a teaching course and for two years has been showing newcomers the path to physical and spiritual health.

In an interview with The Nation, Parichart sits with her own teacher, Peter Bertero from California, who initiated her in ashtanga yoga, a form also known as Mysore-style yoga because its originator, Sri K Pattabhi Jois, came from Mysore, in south India.

Both Parichart and Bertero teach part-time at the Yoga Elements Studio in the Vanissa Building in downtown Bangkok.

In ashtanga yoga, you repeat exactly the same series of positions every day without guidance. It sounds like it could get boring, Parichart says, but it has its definite benefits.

"With other types of yoga the teacher leads you through the different positions, but in ashtanga you have to do everything by yourself, and this allows you to go more deeply into each position."

Teacher and student meet halfway, when the student is ready.

Bertero adds that ashtanga's classes for beginners seek to cleanse the body, the intermediate lessons address the nervous system, and the advance classes are about healing different organs.

"Ashtanga yoga creates intense internal heat to cleanse the body - it opens it up systematically."

"Opening the body", Parichart explains, means bringing it to a new level of flexibility.

"The process of cleaning the body can be tiresome," Bertero points out, "but afterwards you feel invigorated and your energy level is higher - you're really aware of the energy."

Parichart demonstrates some poses with Bertero assisting her. Each one clearly requires a lot of flexibility and energy - the triangle, the downward-facing dog, the standing-big toes pose ...

In the final pose, you arch your back as far as possible toward the ground.

"Back-bending is the highlight of ashtanga yoga. It requires trust," Parichart says.

Also utilised is traditional vinyasa breathing and movement to fire the internal heat and, with it, thin and cleanse the blood.

Vinyasa involves deep breathing, but ashtanga's variation, called ujjayi, also requires a guttural sound from the throat, which Parichart describes as "an ocean sound".

Along with yoga's widely accepted claims to cure or ease asthma, diabetes and other ailments, Bertero says, ashtanga veterans have fought off cancer. "It brings out the will to live," he observes.

Parichart says yoga has made her life worth living. She's never had a life-threatening disease, she says, but she's weathered other kinds of storms in her life.

Before she started teaching yoga, Parichart worked for the government's Public Relations Department and with Charoen Pokphand, the agro-industrial giant, and she always felt restricted by her schedule. Yoga taught her that a career can be fun.

"I'm doing a job I love. My life has no strict schedules. I teach yoga, and the rest of the time I'm free to do whatever I want!"

Lisnaree Vichitsorasatra

 The Nation