The Cure List

Written by Sam Slovick (from LA Yoga Magazine April 2010)

The Kyoto Hotel in downtown Los Angeles is a portal today. Braced against the streets of chaos, the Little Toyko-5 star is pressed tightly against the homeless vortex of Skid Row. In a few hours, Reluctant Healer, David Elliott will incite another kind vortex here. A whirling mass of self inflicted healing in a pranayamic workshop.

Neatly dressed in a sweater and jeans, he’s breathing easy in the pristine sanctuary of the rooftop garden. Elliott listens with the detached indifference of a spiritual clinician. He speaks with the calm reserve of a Southerner.

A practiced wordsmith, he has just released his second book, Healing. His first work, The Reluctant Healer, was decidedly well received and remains a valuable resource for anyone considering the path of healer.

“I teach people how to heal themselves by getting in touch with their energy, and teaching them how energy can melt through any block or illness, and ultimately the energy I’m talking about is love…self-love.”

Pranayama is a healing modality. From the Sanskrit; prana or breath is the life-force; yama, means to suspend or restrain. The breathwork is an aspect of what David Elliott does in totality. It’s one element in a larger toolbox that makes up his practice.

“It’s a tool to help people to get out of their heads… to help people to open up. Open their heart up and stop thinking or being focused outside themselves. So with the breathing meditation we’re teaching people to focus inside. To still themselves and ultimately to open up and let the universe come through as love…as self-love,” he says.

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Written by Sam Slovick (from LA Yoga Magazine March 2010)

It’s early afternoon; the sun sparkles on waves crashing on the beach below the bluffs. Deva Premal and Miten are in repose in Malibu sitting in the expanse of a large tastefully appointed living room bathed in a reflected glow.

They’re light-hearted. They’re laughing a lot. Not a counterfeit smile or moment of manufactured bliss in the space between the words. In soundless relief, no remnant of stress lingers from the relentless grind of their perpetual trans-continental touring schedule… because it’s effortless for them. They move in a sannyasic bliss fueled by devotion. The mystery of how the globe-trotting mantra singers maintain their collective bliss on tour is about to reveal itself without words.

Deva and Miten lean into our conversation over a glass of coconut water. I ask the two of them questions and they answer as one.

How did you get so lucky?

“That’s what I keep asking myself,” Deva says. “We were galley slaves in our last lives,” Miten adds.

How do you do what you do? That is…how does the mechanism of your modality, your practice of healing by mantra work?

“Deva’s a translucent channel for the mantras to move through,” Miten says, “She was born to her father chanting the Gayatri [mantra]. People don’t understand the difference between a language that is energetic and a language that is created by the mind.”

“The meaning is secondary. The word table is not the table,” Deva cuts to the heart of the matter. “With Sanskrit, the word anon is the sound vibration of bliss. In sound the energy of bliss. We have to say bliss; we have to make it smaller by putting it into an English word. Just the sound; anon, If we were sensitive enough we’d just feel the entire scope of that energy that’s contained in this sound.”

Miten sits motionless in a comfortable silence as she continues.

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