Dray Gardner
“When you love yourself, you set your boundaries. You tell your friends and you start to align yourself with people who are like minded going in the same direction.”
Dray Gardner
Founder of Silent Savasana
Dray Gardner is someone who is taking yoga and putting his twist on it, making it his own. In his classes he always says, “to get the workout, put the work in.” He’s taking something which has been very traditional for hundreds of years and making it into an experience that can be enjoyed anywhere around the world, through the combination of music and yoga. The key to his approach is that the music is played through Bluetooth headphones - hence, Silent Savasana. Practicing yoga this way does something strange to you. You stop looking around the room and it becomes an internal practice where you listen to Dray and your own body, rather than comparing yourself to the person next to you putting their leg over their head. Dray is one of the kindest and wisest people in any walk of life and has some profound words that can be applied to yoga, mediation, wellness and life itself.
Jonathan : We’ve practiced yoga together and it is an uplifting experience every time. Can you just tell me a little bit of your journey to where you are now?
Dray : Well, truly I was never what I’d consider a yogi at all. You know, I’ve come from a contact sports background, my first love was jiu jitsu wrestling. Over the years of abuse of my body through sports, car accidents and motorcycle accidents, I started having lower back issues and finally my back gave out and the doctor said, you need surgery and I was 37 years old, I went home crying. I was just like, I can’t have surgery because everybody that I know that has had back surgery is on pain meds and their back still wasn’t healed.
So, you know, I came home, I cried. I researched and I kept coming up with yoga and acupuncture as ways to heal your back. At the time one of my really close friends just got diagnosed with hypertension, high blood pressure, and type two diabetes and doctors said if he does hot yoga it would help. So, we signed up together and he picked me up for our first class.
I walked in with my cane to my first class and I signed up for a 30-day challenge. It was Bikram (hot yoga) and for the first few days I just sat there and cried. I was broken, but I also got motivated by the different bodies in there. The heavier set person, the older person, the skinny person and I was just like, they’re connected. This is powerful. I continued on my 30-day challenge and on day 20 my cane was gone, I could walk again properly. After 30 days I decided to do another 30 so I did like a Forest Gump and turned around and kept going.
It changed my life because I realized that more people need to know about this, so I went to training in 2007 became a certi- fied instructor and literally never looked back. I went all in.
So you became a Bikram instructor and then at what point did you develop the methodology of how you teach now?
One thing I was really happy about when I passed was that maybe I could then add some music to this yoga and turn
it into like, my little twist and they’re like, ‘no, you can’t add anything to it.’
Yeah, well, the tradition of yoga I suppose.
I wish somebody would have told me this earlier, I now know that you can’t add music. All the studios in Vegas kicked me out. So that’s when In 2011 I went to Dharma Mittre. He changed my life because he told me that yoga is supposed to be fun. He’s not about creating followers to his yoga, he’s creating leaders, as real leaders create more leaders and that’s the difference between the two, Bikram wants minions and followers, Dharma wants you to own your power. Walk your path.
At what point did you think to bring people together through music and yoga in the form of Silent Savasana?
Well, you know, my dad’s a musician. So music is in my DNA. It’s always been my true passion. In 2011 I put all my
energy into yoga because at the time, nobody was doing yoga. Nobody of color. I kind of started to bring people into yoga that normally wouldn’t do it. Once I got back from getting certified with Dharma. I started really blending and blur- ring the lines. For me, music opens up doors and when the music’s right you can really check-out of your practice. And that means that you’re not really thinking, you’re just listen- ing, that’s when the yoga gets really good because you’re not suffering. You’re not pissed off, you just have me like a monk in the corner chanting and stuff and before you know it, it’s been 90 minutes
And the people are kind of in that flow state.
It’s a state where they’re not thinking about anything and you know, you open these portals with music and with sound because sound penetrates body cells. So when you blur the line between the two, it becomes amazing.
What would tell your teenage self?
Love yourself enough to struggle. You know, growing up. I never heard about self-love and as I got older and went through my health hiccups I realized that self-love is the key to all this. When you really truly love yourself, you don’t do stupid shit. When you love yourself, you set your boundaries. You tell your friends and you start to align yourself with people who are like minded going in the same direction. My dad always told me growing up, if you hang with nine broke friends, you’re bound to be the tenth one. You need a tribe around you, and you know, you have sounding boards, you have checks and balances.
If that would be advice to a teenage Dray, would you have advice for 24 year-old Dray? Would it shift, or do you think is’s still the same?
One thing I’ve learned is, life happens in seven-year increments. So, 0-7, 7-14, 14-21, 21-28, 28-35, 35-42, 42-49 etc. and my most incredible growth happened 42-49. The years where I was most lost were 21-28. If I would have known about self- love. I wouldn’t have been lost. I truly think that self-love is the key to spiritual evolution and really figuring out life and who you are, because we’re fed by the media, we’re fed by people around us.
You don’t need to go out and buy clothes every week, keep up with the Joneses, you’re okay with who you are. You’re okay with your aloneness, and your individuality. That’s what I’m trying to get people to realize, like its impossible if you’re always consumed with what society thinks of you or trying to keep people happy.
Because of all of that my heart is my internal compass, my GPS system and one thing I said to myself, is that I’m not going to paint myself out to anybody. I’m a man before I’m a yogi and that means really owning your shit and healing, because until you heal you can’t help others. And that’s the problem with the game today, that so many people out there who haven’t healed but they are out there trying to heal others. Do lions go around telling people they are lions? No. My point exactly.
This world needs to heal. Radical healing. We need to look out for brothers and sisters. For us to change it will take a collective change.
Thank you so much Dray. This has been one of the interviews that has given me so much.
Thank you Brother