Courtesy of Uma Inder

“I wanted to tear down all veils, I wanted magic, reality. I was looking for the extraordinary in an enchanted world,” says Uma Inder of her ascetic decision to live in a Balinese jungle for seven years.

For Uma, a competitive athlete who grew up in Kenya running around the savannas with the Masai, the extraordinary meant the extreme.

The Indian yogi first traveled to Bali to study traditional Balinese metalworking, but was soon drawn to the island’s mysticism and a deep desire to taste the fruits of ultimate liberation.

Uma was just 20 when she decided to renounce modern existence to pursue an intense study of yoga and meditation in the depths of the Balinese jungle with her teacher Shunyata, or the laughing yogi.

For seven years, they lived in the jungle in a house made of bamboo and stones, with no electricity or much interaction with the outside world. They practiced naked on the riverbanks — holding yoga poses for as long as three hours — drank herbal aphrodisiacs, buried their provisions underground to keep them cool, drank ritual drops of scorpion blood and ate raw garlic to build resistance.

“We rarely saw another human in the valley for at least the first few years. It was paradisiacal seclusion, perfect for an extreme practice, which would have been considered insane by an outsider, but we seemed to have everything we needed in the valley without venturing out,” said Uma.

Today, any physical trace of her life in the wild has now vanished with the Bali that was. The house they lived in was mysteriously burned to the ground 10 days after a large corporate hotel chain bulldozed the valley during the night. The once secluded valley is now known as the “Beverley Hills” of Bali, but when Uma dived into the esoteric and ethereal, it was considered a deeply spiritual area that many Balinese were too afraid to enter.

“It used to be like a twilight zone for mysticism. It was a stage for continuous interaction with the spirits of the land and the hangout for various other entities from different dimensions. This valley was both respected and feared by all as a place of power. Now it is respected for its property value!”

After their house was burnt down, it was time to leave the valley. Bali had changed and they needed to change too, she said.

However, yoga has always been a central focus in her life. Uma first practiced yoga with her grandfather, a strict yogi and Indian explorer, in their Hindu household in Kenya, and says she never dreamed she would meet or study with a real yogi.

But after more than 20 years of teaching, she is certainly an impressive one herself. From explaining the complexities of tantric philosophy, the meaning of pure consciousness, or the spirit world, Uma articulates her ideas with such grace, wisdom and ease that you almost forget you are discussing intangible abstractions.

It is an informed and down-to-earth attitude that is paradoxically rare in a world that has taken up yoga with a vengeance. When Uma undertook her intense study, BlackBerrys and Facebook did not
exist, and neither did yoga; at least not in the phenomenonal way it has manifested in the West today, where every major sporting brand is racing to market inner peace, Madonna claims it’s the answer and teachers are copyrighting their own specific styles.

“I wasn’t aware of anyone else doing yoga 22 years ago in the West. It was not a word you heard people talk about and you didn’t really talk about your own yoga practice. When I went to America and first saw a yoga mat, I was shocked,” said Uma.

Uma says she originally spoke out against the consumerist explosion of yoga, but has realized that yoga is an unstoppable force that is helping encourage people to realize the power and liberation of health and self discovery.

“I realized that if any of us formed an opinion, of how yoga needed to be, should be, and how it was, those opinions would just be steamrolled by the sheer force of the movement of people toward greater health. Each of these different styles is going to appeal to different people and it may not appeal to me, but I have learned to step back and make way,” said Uma.

The multitude of different interpretations of yoga was recently on offer at the Bali Spirit festival, a four-day festival that included renowned yoga teachers, dancers and musicians from across the globe.

Uma ran workshops at the festival in the lush surroundings of Ubud, also where she calls home, teaches yoga, runs retreats, practices traditional Odissi dance and is enjoying watching the laws of nature unfold in her 3-year-old.

In the pipeline is her KUSH Ayurvedic rejuvenation center at Ubud’s Yoga Barn, which will start offering Ayurvedic services in May, something Uma believes must be intertwined with a yoga practice. She is also designing an advanced Yoga and Ayurveda teacher training course, details of which will be released on her website www.yogawithuma.com and www.schoolofsacredarts.org.

 “Ayurveda was always the support system for the yogi. It is the science of life, and the art of enjoyment as a human being. The most beautiful thing for me about Ayurveda is that it is all based on common sense. While yoga is the joy of absolute freedom and scaling new heights of consciousness, Ayurveda is about plumbing the depths of nature.”

Speaking of which, were the magical heights of consciousness she sought in her twenties ever discovered?

 “I realize as a co-parent of a 3 year old, surrounded by the ordinary of the mundane, that the most extraordinary miracle of all is the profound genius of the human being in its capacity to grow. It is said that even the gods are jealous of humans, for they are already perfected, and we alone have the potential to scale the depths and heights of feeling pain and pleasure as we pave the way for unlimited realizations.”

Meet her in Jakarta this September … and decide for yourself.

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