The man teaching afrikan yoga

Pablo Imani strikes a yoga pose. Borrowing from the teachings of Egyptian Yoga, he developed Afrikan Yoga.
PHOTO BY DOMINIC BUKENYA

What you need to know:

There is no denying that yoga has become more popular in Uganda, with more people reading up on the discipline. One thing that all this reading has revealed is that there are different forms of it. One of these is Afrikan Yoga. The man who developed this type, Pablo Menfesawe Imani, was in Uganda training people to teach it and we caught up with him to talk yoga and how he came up with this particular form

You have probably heard that yoga has its origins somewhere in the Indus valley in Asia and also that it is from here that it then spread to the rest of the world. Little wonder most of the terminology is in Asian languages and those who popularised it in the Western world were Indian.

What you have not heard is another version of the history of this discipline that traces it back to Africa, back in the days of ancient Egypt. For the past three decades a new school of yogis has been teaching Egyptian Yoga, Kemetic Yoga and African Yoga, different interpretations and names for yoga with roots from the Nile valley in ancient times.
And slowly, but surely, this type of yoga is being embraced in various places around the world thanks to this Avant garde group.

One of these teachers, Pablo Menfesawe Imani, was in the country to train instructors of Afrikan Yoga, which he founded and developed.

It is after these trainings at the National Theatre that we were able to have a chat with him on his crusade to bring yoga back to its source. The continent on which it was born.

Yoga in Africa
Imani starts with the truth he wants everyone to know; Africans were contorting their limbs in yoga poses long before the Indians did it. And it is not about bragging rights on who did it first either, it is for Africans to understand that yoga is not foreign at all. It is to challenge the notion that Africans never owned anything.

He backs this up with showing me a series of pictures on his tablet of ancient inscriptions and paintings on temple walls in Egypt depicting figures in distinctive yoga poses.

There is one figurine of a male into what is commonly known as the plough, and a woman in the wheel posture hair trailing the ground. “They are all over the temple walls, says Imani.

He has visited Egypt severally and spent time touring the ancient temples, looked out for the inscriptions of the yoga poses and has a series of pictures imitating them.

The story of how he learnt to bend his tall lean frame into gravity-defying positions and teaching others to do so started when he was a little boy in Manchester in the UK at his parents’ house.

Before yoga
He had not heard of yoga yet, but was already beginning to stretch his body under the tutelage of unlikely teachers. “We had two family cats and I recall always imitating their stretching movements. I call them my first teachers,” he says.

By 12, he had outgrown his feline tutors but he had picked up an interest that would see him keep building his agility. He took up martial arts, learning several forms until eventually settling for an African martial arts.

But this was still a hobby. Gifted at drawing, a dancer of some repute, who also played instruments and sometimes tried his hand at the turntables, he was spoilt for choice as to what to pursue as a career.

He applied and got accepted into a dance school but opted to study art instead. “I tried to go for the money. I thought I could make more money as an artist than a dancer,” he says smiling.

He threw himself into the course with dreams of becoming a book illustrator and a graphics designer. He ended up with a visual communications degree and masters in visual arts and earned a name as a visual artist of some note. “My art work is cited in the British national curriculum for art students,” he shares.

For a man who was to later mold his lifestyle around it, his first time in a yoga class was unremarkable. “My elder brother’s girlfriend used to practise and invited me along for a couple of sessions. I attended and it was alright, though it did not really float my boat,” he says. But there’s more to this not-love-at-first-sight story.

The teenage Imani, like boys his age are wont to do, was keeping the company of some tough boys. Despite him being told that he did pretty well for a beginner in the yoga class, sitting down in a class full of mainly women assuming graceful positions and breathing deep was not a good look on him.

Warming up to it
Taking up yoga would not have been cool, so he stuck to martial arts. But this time he did more than learn how to turn his body into a lethal weapon in a matter of seconds. He started observing things he had taken for granted before. “I noticed my teachers were very good at teaching how to take a man apart. But they did not seem to know very much about putting someone together, healing a person,” he shares.

It is the urge to have one over his teachers and know how to repair a person that sent him to go study anatomy physiology, kinesiology and massage knowledge which would later come in handy in the future.

A persistent back problem eventually led him to yoga. “I had tried everything and it still would not go away. Someone recommended Tai Chi [Chinese martial art believed to have health benefits] and I threw myself into learning it, but the pain did not go away,” recounts Imani.

Learning the discipline
In 2000, he was first introduced to Egyptian Yoga by celebrated writer, yogi and instructor of all things ancient Egyptian lifestyle Dr Muata Ashby. “He was visiting our yoga class and spoke to us about Egyptian yoga and there I was learning all these new things about yoga and my heritage,” he says.

To date, he believes practising the poses Ashby taught them fixed his back problem. The pain went away in a matter of weeks and he was a convert. “I began studying yoga, reading up everything I could about it, using my body as a guinea pig,” he says.

At first, he was just practising for himself, then he was soon sharing the knowledge with friends and family, then some in this small group told their friends and he found himself teaching his first Afrikan Yoga class sometime in 2003. He later used the notes he made during his studies and experiences to write the book, Afrikan Yoga.

Coming up with the name
Though his version of yoga was heavily influenced by the Egyptian yoga he had learnt from Ashby and is based on the postures depicted in literature of ancient Egypt, Pablo felt the need to rename it to Afrikan yoga.

“I had issues with using the word Egypt. When we say Egyptian yoga, it tends to allude to the Egypt of today yet what we are referring to is the ancient Egypt with no borders and extended past the length and breadth of the Nile valley. I realised the world did not know Africa had its own form of yoga despite Egyptian yoga being in existence for 30 years. Now when you say Afrikan yoga, a person immediately thinks of the continent,” he explains.

Pablo got his insurance certificate as a yoga teacher in 2007, the same year he finally quit his day job to devote his time and energy fully to Afrikan yoga. But the certificate says he is a certified Hatha yoga teacher, not Afrikan yoga. He says this was due to there not being anybody to certify Afrikan yoga, he after all founded it, and so he did Hatha yoga for the certificate then went back to Afrikan.

“Afrikan yoga is different from Indian yoga in that it comes from here, the language, and postures are different , and it also incorporates dance and rhythm. For example hudu which is the warm up is a dance developed from observing nature. The fire, the wind, water,” he explains. He also added that the asana or pose names are in ancient Egyptian language.

Coming to Uganda
There are two stories of how he ended up here. Pablo who is of African descent believes his ancestors who are buried on this continent led him here, for reasons he is still not sure of. He also came from the first time six years ago to see his three children who moved and settled here with their Jamaican mother in 2009.

Being new in the country and not seeing much practice or awareness about yoga did not water down his intent to teach Ugandans Afrikan Yoga. His first classes were, however, filled with expatriates, but over the years he has seen some Ugandans begin to take interest.

I have trained six-to-eight people in Uganda to go on and teach others, two are also teaching,” says UK-based Imani.

He is not counting the thousands he has trained in other parts of Africa and the world, and dozens of street children he worked and taught yoga during a partnership with an NGO.

As for what the average Ugandan stands to benefit from learning and ultimately practising African yoga, besides the bragging rights among other yogis, that yes, we also have our own form of yoga, well you only have to look at 48-year-old Imani.

He has practised it for 14 years and also adapted it as a lifestyle. Like other forms of yoga, Afrikan Yoga embraces a philosophy of non-violence which essentially cuts out killing other animals for food.
He has been a vegetarian for more than two decades. He does not look a day over, well I will let you pick the most vital youthful age for an adult male you can think of. Pablo does not look a day over that. And from his own confession, he has not complained of an illness besides minor fevers for two decades.

quick hits
What faith do you subscribe to?
I would say African spiritualty. I do not believe in one of the mainstream ones. I was raised Christian, studied Islam and Judaism extensively but did not find any to be useful to me.

What is the most common response when you tell Ugandans what you do for a living?
“Oh you are into fitness!” Is the reaction I get nowadays. Before people would ask whether yoga was occultist but not so much nowadays. I sometimes get the occasional person asking how yoga can help their body aches.

Who seem to receive yoga better, men or women?
Both sexes here seem to be equally enthusiastic which a huge contrast to the U.K is where females mainly tend to pick interest. Comparatively, more men tend to be interested here.

The disciplines
Afrikan Yoga has nine disciplines which are as follows:
• Smai science of the breath
• Proper exercise
• Nutrition
• Restraint
• Relaxation
• Steadying of the mind or meditation
• Hika Mantra
• Visualisation
• Transformation