Noah Maze began practising yoga at age 14, studying with Richard Freeman, Pattabhi Jois and senior Iyengar yoga teacher Manouso Manos. He is best known for his clear, precise and methodical teaching style, his tangible knowledge and his ability to transmit with openness, curiosity, and wit. Ahead of his upcoming 50 hour teacher intensive at triyoga this November, we put Noah under the spotlight with a few of our favourite questions.
If you could be remembered for one thing what would it be?
For being an endlessly curious yogi, intrepid adventurer and passionate educator who endeavoured to integrate yogic teachings into modern life with ferocity and compassion.
What top three things are on your bucket list?
Not necessarily in this order:
– Visit the poles of this planet and explore them via dog sled.
– Go on Ayyappa Yatra and other pilgrimages in South India, Varanasi and the Himalayas with my teacher.
– Go to culinary school, not to become a chef, but for my own interests and hobby.
What’s your favourite quote?
“Do you want to be right? Or do you want to be happy?”
What do you attribute the biggest successes in your life to?
Failure is success. The biggest successes are the results of lots and lots of failures. Growth happens because of failure, and success is all too often a dead end. Fail a lot, fail better and better and learn and grow from it to your very last breath.
What do you think your future self will remember about you now?
My future self will look back at me now and see all the amazing things I’m doing, places I’m going with my family, and the incredible experiences we are having and wonder why I so frequently felt so stressed out while it was all happening.
What one book would you recommend reading?
The great epic Mahabharata. It’s the story of humanity in 99,000 lines, composed by the collective consciousness over 800 years. It even self proclaims, “If it is not here, it is not anywhere.”
Who would you most want to be on a desert island with?
Honestly, I would want to be with my wife, Tracy, and our two children, Madeleine and Oliver. They are my favourites!
What is the secret to a happy and fulfilled life?
There is no secret, only a never-ending commitment to love the life that you have, and live a life worth loving. We will each do this in our own way in the different stages of life.
Where is your happy place?
My first happy place is in nature, where I can listen deeply and experience my connections with the natural world inside and all around. My second happy place is with my family, but that is a very different kind of happy, as anyone with small children can relate. My third happy place is in the company of my teachers and the teachings, mythic stories and yogic practices.
If you could teach everyone in the world one concept, what concept would have the biggest impact on humanity?
Facts are real and they matter; don’t fall into delusion (delusion is believing too much of your own nonsense) or deception (deception is believing too much of someone else’s nonsense). Question and interrogate even your most hard won convictions. Follow the evidence wherever it leads. Look for the exception. Be willing to change your mind based on new evidence.
Is intelligence or wisdom more useful?
Intelligence is your capacity to know things, to understand how things happen. It is impossible to know everything, but it is not impossible to know what you need to know to live a worthy life. The Bhagavad Gita calls this the yoga of knowledge (jnana yoga), and it is your capacity to understand how things happen (karma) and change karma. Krishna wants us to become wise beings, which pushes knowledge into wisdom; wisdom is knowing what really matters. When is it just more information, and when is it making your life better?
Wisdom is your capacity to edit knowledge. To answer the question of which one is more useful, I guess wisdom is more useful, but wisdom cannot exist without knowledge.
What life-altering things should every human ideally get to experience at least once in their lives?
Every human should feel safe enough to choose vulnerability. We are most vulnerable to those we most deeply love. We isolate ourselves when we choose invulnerability, and this too often causes great suffering.
What two questions would you ask to get the most information about who a person truly is?
What are the underlying values that guide your life? What are your greatest mistakes?
What is the biggest waste of human potential?
It’s easy to be entertained, it’s another thing entirely to pursue an education and cultivate yourself somatically, intellectually and emotionally. As Spinoza said, “Greatness is as difficult as it is rare.” We live in a world of entertainment and mediocrity, but why not choose greatness?
How do you define consciousness?
Consciousness is our capacity for awareness of self and awareness of the world we live in both culturally and naturally.
What causes the most harm in the world but is completely avoidable?
Poverty consciousness causes the most harm. When we act as if it’s a zero sum game that someone can win and someone else can lose, we contract with fear and reduce to poverty consciousness. When we sacrifice long term progress for short term gain, we reduce into poverty consciousness. When we act as if there are not enough resources to go around, and we selfishly pursue our own interests and deny others their interests, we reduce to poverty consciousness. There is enough. The world and the universe is abundant.
Everyone can have access to affordable health care, nutritious food, clean water and high quality education if we endeavour to the task. There are renewable energy resources that can replace our dependence on fossil fuels, reverse global warming, pollute less (no more plastic), consume less and make more sustainable choices, if we endeavour to the task and invest in our capacity to share in the abundance. For better and for worse, we are in this together.
Has social media been a net positive or a net negative for our society? Why?
It has been a net positive, I think, but it is certainly not without its share of negative. Technology seems to be evolving far faster than our capacity to evolve our individual and social consciousness to use it responsibly. On the positive side, ideas are being shared, community is being cultivated, people across great geographical, social and cultural distances are connecting in ways that they could not have without social media. Every day I experience great benefit from interacting with people from all over the world, and am inspired, educated and awakened by it.
To what extent do you shape your own destiny and how much is down to fate?
That really is a good question, and one without a simple answer. How much is it already written? How much is it really up to us? How much agency do we have? I think each of us has a different amount of creativity (personally, socially, culturally, religiously, politically) and that that creativity is at once more than we know and less than we think.
Noah will be leading a 50-hour teacher intensive at triyoga Camden from 15-21 October. For more information and to book, click here.
