Meet Dan Peppiatt

Take a peek into the kefir slurping, surf riding world of Dan Peppiatt, the latest teacher to join us here at MFML.

Image: Drishti Yoga Photography

Daily Move – what do you do every day to keep moving?

I tend to surf, climb or spend some time on a slackline, They basically involve all of the elements of asana as well as the mental focus that we should hope to get when practising. If its too wet or cold I tend to sit on my yoga mat early in the morning and wait for my body to tell me what to do. I try not to think my physical practice but feel it, its something that Iyengar was very clear on.

Daily ingredient? Five minutes each day – what to do for you?

We must have hundreds of books on yoga, philosophy and meditation in our house. Whenever I get a spare moment I will dive into one. I usually have ten or twenty partly read books on the go scattered in various places.

Favourite way to detox?

I have to limit the amount of sugar I eat, If I eat too many sweet things I notice that my moods swing all over the place. I drink a lot of Kefir water and eat the grains as well as bingeing on coconut oil to keep my yeast levels under control and to counter my sweet tooth!

If you weren’t a yoga teacher what would you like to be?

I would genuinely love to spend a year or two as a saddhu or just a wanderer. I love my own company being with nothing but my mind and there is a running joke in our house that one day I will just go out for a walk and not come back for a year or two. Well its sort of a joke, I think we all know that its going to happen one day.

What do you wear when you practice at home?

I generally wear whatever I happen to have on at the time, which is often jeans and a t shirt and that’s how I teach as well. I make a conscious effort not to separate ‘yoga’ from the rest of my life by putting on an imaginary yoga ‘uniform’. Personally I believe that it sets a poor example to my students if I dress in a certain way to practice yoga. Yoga has never been about separation and I’m not about to start perpetuating that.

Which guru would you like to sit on a mountain with?

Bruce Lee and Jiddu Krisnamurti, Bruce Lee was actually an amazing philosopher, not many people realise that, his understanding was exceptional in many other fields as well as the martial arts. I’ve never had anyone resonate as strongly with me as Krishnamurti. When I first read some of the transcripts from his talks it was a complete game changer for me. I realised that the belief I had always had of not needing to subscribe to anything in particular, standing me outside of ‘traditional yoga’ wasn’t actually all that odd and there was this incredible thinker who was saying exactly what Id always been trying to articulate in my mind.

Last book you read?

Deep:Freediving, Renegade Science and What the Ocean Tells UIs about Ourself by James Nestor. I read this from cover to cover in just a couple of days, which is very unusual for me. With my science background I love to explore all fields of what I call ‘yoga in action’: people living what we understand as yoga in a huge variety of ways and disciplines from climbers and surfers to freedivers, artist and musicians. Freedivers espcially have the most incredible control over mind body and of course breath, achieving things that seem superhuman.