Pure Yoga teacher Patrick Creelman opens up about his spiritual journey from Canada to Hong Kong

Uptown girl, downtown man My father was a work­ing-class boy and my mother an upper-class girl. It was a real class collision when they met in Ontario, Canada. They were 24 or 25. My father was one of the real advertising Mad Men of the 1960s, drinking and smoking. My mum preferred the slopes and was a ski instructor in Aspen, Colorado, and Yosemite Valley, California. Actors like Rock Hudson and Shirley Temple hired her to teach them how to ski.

My parents both loved the mountains and decided to relocate to British Columbia in 1970, once they were married. I was born three years later, on February 19, 1973. I’m so grateful they moved there because I grew up in the mountains and by the ocean. My sister, who is two years older than me, and I went to school in Vancouver, and when we weren’t in school, we were in Whistler, skiing and hiking.

I did go through some dark times growing up, like we all do. When I was 15 or 16 and in high school, my mum’s brother gave me some cassettes and told me to play them. They contained lectures by the American spiritual teacher Ram Dass. So there I was driving around in my first car, a 1973 Datsun 510, listening to them. My friends were like, “What the hell is this?” But as soon as I put the tapes on, all my anxiety disappeared. My sister has a spiritual bent and I read my first book on yoga thanks to her. I didn’t realise that the lectures and those books were shaping my mind.

Bonjour world The dark times passed and I made it through high school. I was 19 and wasn’t sure what to do next. My mum offered to send me to France for a year to study the humanities (Renaissance art, music, history, European politics) at a college in Villefranche-sur-Mer, in the south of France. It was my own personal renaissance. I heard music I’d never heard before. Saw art for the first time with my own eyes. And then there were the houses with small doors and little cars. It opened my eyes and my spirit for life. It awakened in me the need for adventure.

The university of life I only made it through two years of my undergraduate biology degree at Simon Fraser Uni­ver­sity, in British Columbia. I’d wanted to become either a wildlife biologist or a conservationist but my hunger for adventure kept taking me off to different places. I soon realised I wanted something other than formal education, something more spiritual. I found it in the Arctic Circle, where I was working putting out forest fires. This was the first time I’d spent a large proportion of my time alone, and all the spiritual teachings of Ram Dass came back to me. I also started to explore yoga.

My next epic adventure saw me hitchhike from Canada, across Europe and down to Africa, before I ended up in Portugal. I was dead broke after being on the road for months and got a job working in a bar in Lisbon. It was 1998 and the beginning of emails. I got one from my uncle. All it said was “call home”. So I did, using a payphone. My mum told me my father had a brain tumour and was dying. He was 62. In that moment, I realised that life is what you make it and it doesn’t last forever.That call was when I officially grew up.

I decided to move back home to nurse my father and help my mother. I wanted to be of service to them. But it was tough. My friend persuaded me to go to a hot Bikram yoga class with him. I was amazed. It cleared all the emotional chaos in my mind and heart in 90 minutes. Before that, I would never have imagined I could clear it without drinking, or skiing, or something like that. From that moment, yoga became my life’s work.

It was 1999 and I was going to yoga class every day. I couldn’t learn enough. My teacher pulled me aside and suggested I consider teaching. It was the first time I’d had such clarity and direction. I went to California and dove head first into learning to teach hot yoga with Bikram Choudhury, the Indian-born American teacher, who was living in Beverly Hills. This completely trans­formed my life. The school got me teaching for them imme­diately and I loved it. This triggered in me a strong impulse to build my own studio and that is what I set out to do.

Pure potential My little mountain home of Whistler had become particularly popular with Hongkongers, and I met some extraordinary people, two of whom changed the path of my life. And yet meeting the two founding partners of Pure Yoga (Colin Grant and Bruce Rockowitz) was a non­descript moment. They were two fit, but stiff, passionate guys who saw the potential in yoga, and Colin asked if I wanted to go to Hong Kong to help him build a world-class studio in the city.

His invitation arrived as I embarked on a two-year study programme with the late, renowned German yoga scholar and author Georg Feuerstein. I was deeply involved in my studies with Georg and learning as much as I could while still running and building my own studio. And then I was given the choice to take the leap to Hong Kong.

When we opened Pure Yoga in The Centrium, in Central, in early 2002, I still considered myself a Canadian resident. By November that year, the forces of my destiny had made it clear I was here to stay. Colin made me lead teacher, told me to hire some teachers, build a pro­gramme and grow the business. If I’d just moved here as a yoga teacher, aged 28, getting swallowed up by big city life in Hong Kong, I might have burned out. But my training and having my world-class mentors to talk to kept me balanced.

Lessons from a friend At the same time, I met John Friend, an American yoga teacher and the creator of Anusara Yoga (a modern mix of tantric philosophy and Iyengar yoga). He was one of the teachers on the course I was studying under Georg. Meeting John was one of those defining moments in my life. I wanted to know everything he knew. So I concentrated on learning everything I could from him, and became his disciple for 10 years.

I spent the next five years, until 2007, teaching and setting up Pure Yoga across Hong Kong, and in Taiwan and Singapore. It was a busy time, but once the business had grown enough I was able to stand back and concentrate on what I wanted to do with my own yoga teaching.

Flexible community When I moved to Hong Kong, there was little in terms of a yoga community. Of course, there were a few “stars” but they all eventually left. I’ve been here the entire time and watched the growth spurts and the trends come and go. After endless adventures around the world, I have found the practice of yoga to be my greatest and most humbling journey. The path of yoga is never-ending and I’m grateful my daily work is interesting. It encourages me; I know there is a hidden potential that lies deep inside all of us.