You walk right by regulars everyday. They’re the guys you see when you paddle out at those spots that you can’t check from the road. They’re probably reading a newspaper (remember those?) right behind you when you get your coffee. They might be a guru or they might be an unknown. They’ve been quietly unrolling their mat in the back of the shala, day after day, to get more in tune. They might not be able to do handstands, but that’s not the point after all. They like to get after it, and realize a little rewiring is in order from time to time, so they push themselves sometimes farther than they should. They struggle like everyone, but keep giving it hell, mainly because life is too much fun not to. At a glance they may appear to just be regular guys. They are, and then some.
He might look like anyone else in the tram line, but once the doors open at the top of Rendezvous Mountain, with 4,000 feet of vert below, good luck keeping up. Lance Pitman was one of the world’s top pro snowboarders of the 1990s and early 2000s, then founder of Illuminati Snowboards. He continually pushed himself through huge jumps, sketchy lines and avalanches, trying to prove he was as physically capable as anyone else, and not afraid of death. But his asthma caught up with him. “A childhood friend…suggested we do yoga. That night I slept through the night for the first time in months,” said Pitman. His consciousness began to shift. “I realized I was struggling, stressing and becoming unhealthy, trying to maintain the ‘snowboard guy’...
Just as there are 8 limbs of yoga, you could say Ashtanga, surfing, and photography are the 3 limbs of Matt Corigliano. Whether in Oslo, Phuket, Dubrovnik, Santorini, Kyoto, or Madrid, Matt is a sought after Ashtanga teacher with an itinerant life pushed not by timesheets but tide charts. Youth on the North Shore of Kauai meant ocean immersion like few other places on earth; many of his childhood classmates became world class surfers. Both parents were devotees of Sri K. Pattabhi Jois, and Matt grew up practicing yoga, but it wasn’t until Jois visited Kauai that Matt decided to “study at the source,” as he said. He was 19, and spent six months in Mysore, India, practicing at 4:30...
After a successful amateur surf career in the 90s, Todd Morcom withdrew for the competitive scene to pursue immense walls of water at wild beach breaks deep in Mexico. Over years he developed the skill and knowledge of a true underground maestro, bare-handing one of the most cartoonishly huge and perfect tube rides ever witnessed in Puerto Escondido. It was the paddle-in tube ride heard around the world, proving another level was out there. In massive surf in 2013, a brutal wipeout left him with a compound fracture of his lower leg. Through surgery and a long rehabilitation, he maintained his yoga practice to heal, strengthen and increase flexibility. Todd said, “Yoga is amazing. I love it…it strengthens the body,...
