At 83, this yogi is bending the rules
The L.A. landscape is lousy with yoga studios, each filled with relatively young teachers and even younger students who reveal their lower back tattoos during downward-facing dog. In this world, Frank White is an anomaly.
At 83, he’s in his 16th year of teaching yoga -- not an eternity, but remarkable when you consider that he didn’t even step into a yoga studio until he was 68. Because he often teaches students young enough to be his grandchildren, it seems appropriate that his praise usually consists of, “Hey, kids, you’re doing real well.”
But age isn’t the only thing that sets White apart from other yoga instructors. A purist he is not. His tolerance level for Indian music is low. Classes are tune-free except during the last meditation, when White soothes souls with Frank Sinatra or Harry Belafonte or Tony Bennett. “That was a great era of music,” he says. “You can even understand the words they say.”
His iconoclastic style has earned him a large and loyal following. Some students have stuck with him for more than 10 years, and classes are almost always filled, even in un-air-conditioned studios on 90-degree days.
He begins classes with a group hand-hold and an “om” but likes to mix it up when it comes to asanas and routines -- a little flow here, a little Ashtanga there, a touch of tai chi thrown in -- his “whatever works” method. Sometimes there’s partnering; other times he’ll do poses with chairs. When White steps into the studio, he knows only which forms he’s going to teach. “I don’t know from one day to the next what I’m going to do in class,” he says with a shrug. “And that’s fine with me.” It isn’t until he gets a bead on the students, the vibe in the room, that he decides. Sometimes he’ll notice a row of pouchy bellies and decide it’s time for abs.
It took him about seven years to feel comfortable with this technique, to realize that “it’s not about asanas, it’s about who are you? What are you here for? How do you feel?” White is pragmatic in his teaching style, urging students to go beyond their perceived boundaries. “I already know how to do it,” he says. “This is for you. You do it. Don’t be afraid.”
White, a former actor, isn’t sure what compelled him to sign up for a yoga class at Los Angeles City College in 1988, and he’s stopped wondering. He went for guitar lessons, noticed yoga and took it. Newly sober, he had wrecked his body for years on a steady diet of alcohol, cigarettes and unhealthful food and suffered from high blood pressure, arthritis and other assorted ailments. He had a yoga epiphany during the first class, the kind that told him this was what he was meant to do. Continuing to practice helped him stay sober, kick smoking, get off blood pressure medication and deal with his arthritis. Six months after that first class, he was in teacher training at the White Lotus Foundation in Santa Barbara.
His regular gigs for years have been at the Center for Yoga on Larchmont Boulevard and at the Los Angeles Athletic Club, where his classes draw large numbers despite their reputation for being grueling -- in a good, sweat-producing way. White has taught free classes for seniors and now occasionally does private free classes for people with AIDS, Parkinson’s disease and multiple sclerosis. Ask why, and he gets this startled, why-would-you-even-ask look before saying, “They need help!”
He often ends class with a group recitation about assisting others in need. “That’s what my life is about,” he says to a visitor. “I don’t know what yours is about. Teaching helps people. And by helping somebody else, you feel good too. Just like in AA, your 12th step is to help someone else. It’s ingrained.”
It’s not uncommon in class for White to speak out against violence and war, topics that have been on the mind of this World War II veteran lately. “Yes, I talk a lot about it in class,” he says, sitting in his modest apartment in Beachwood Canyon, where he’s made herbal tea for a guest. (“Do you want the ‘Grandpa’ mug or the sobriety date mug?” he asks.) He wears his signature wire-rim glasses and a blue crocheted cap that covers his bald head as he settles his small, wiry frame on the bed. “I’ve never heard of a yogi killing a yogi. I say, ‘Just do your practice and maybe we won’t have to kill each other.’ That’s what I’m about, and I probably wouldn’t be here now if that wasn’t what I was about. OK? ‘Cause I’m not a kid anymore.”
That doesn’t seem to matter to White’s devoted following.
“He’ll tell you, ‘Listen, I started this when I was 68 years old,’ and he does things none of the younger people can do,” says Janet Klein, an Alhambra-based singer and musician who’s on her 11th year with White. “I follow that man like a puppy dog. When I took his class, I was immediately challenged. He says this is not exercise -- it’s about you, your mind, your health, your body, and you’re in a room doing something special and ancient and congratulations for getting here.”
Lisa Haase, who has owned the Center for Yoga for four years, inherited White when she bought the studio and was immediately awed by him. “At his age, to be doing what he’s doing is so inspiring to the students. He pushes them in a loving, nurturing way, and just by example he’s shown how yoga has made him more youthful. But what really blew me away was that his class is the hardest class at the center. It’s almost too hard for me.”
A consistent yoga practice may improve one’s health and fitness level, but it can’t guarantee immortality. These days, White suffers from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, a result of decades of smoking. He’s battling an infection from some dental work that he thinks caused him to recently drop several pounds. “But I gained a couple,” he says, adding that last week he did more than 5 1/2 miles on the rowing machine.
His teaching assistant, Magid Mehrabadi, helps in class, demonstrating poses White can no longer do. What White can do are seated poses, abdominal work, tai chi and Qigong moves and most of the basic poses and routines of flow and Ashtanga practices -- those, and the occasional high kicks during class while walking through the studio. “I just won’t add any of those arm balances and handstands. That’s acrobatic stuff,” he says, dismissing it with a wave of his hand. “I’ll go to Cirque du Soleil and watch it.”
The Los Angeles Athletic Club recently named its yoga studio for White, a decision that “we didn’t have to think twice about,” says Marlene Wiscovitch, the club’s athletic director. “When he steps into a room, he commands a presence,” she adds. “I think he’s paid his dues in the yoga community, and there’s a lot to be said for that.”
White finishes his tea as he talks about the changes he sees in his students. “I see a change in their eyeballs when they leave class,” he says. “I see the quietness, I see their openness. Sometimes in class we’ll do 108 sun salutations without stopping, and when you’re through you’re like a limp dishrag, but you feel so good. And everybody has a little smile on their face. That’s what I see. I see peace.”