Yoga first came into Thomas Claire’s life more than 30 years ago, when he was pursuing post-graduate studies in Paris on a Fulbright. A French colleague at the Sorbonne invited the Kenyon College summa cum laude grad to a class in the living room of a suburban housewife, who was the yoga teacher. Although Claire recalls sleeping through much of the 90-minute session, something must have clicked. “I remember how relaxed and rejuvenated I felt.”
Claire’s career after Paris took “many twists and turns,” he says, resulting in an M.A. in comparative literature from Brown University, then an M.B.A. from Columbia University. After that came more than a decade rising up the ladder in the world of corporate finance, working first for the Irving Trust Company, W.R. Grace & Co., and Harper/Collins, where he was Assistant Treasurer. All the while, Claire was becoming a more and more serious student of yoga and related health practices.

After four years in his last position, as treasurer for LVMH Inc. in New York, Claire became “one of those people who switch from a successful career in traditional business to pursue work more personally satisfying.” He stopped focusing on spreadsheets, financial reports, and bottom lines and started thinking—and writing—about such subjects as craniosacral therapy, myofacial release, visceral manipulation, reiki, reflexology, and, of course, yoga.

Claire soon became an expert in the field, and this expertise led to his arrival in 2001 as an adjunct lecturer at QCC to help develop CUNY’s first massage therapy curriculum (see story, page 4). Since 2003 he has been an assistant professor in the College’s Department of Health, Physical Education and Dance.

He teaches Eastern anatomy and bodywork there, while also practicing Swedish massage, shiatsu and yoga.

Claire’s book Bodywork: What Type of Massage to Get—and How to Make the Most of It (Morrow) appeared in 1995, and this year New Page Books has published his Yoga for Men, a comprehensive introduction specially aimed at men of all ages and from the athletic to the sedentary. The epigraph he has chosen for the book is from the Bhagavad Gita: “Yoga is skill in action.”

The word “yoga,” Claire explains, is derived from the Sanskrit root “yuj,”
which means “to yoke.” “Yoga is often described as meaning ‘union’… of the mind, body, and spirit,” as well as “union of the individual with the life force.” He also notes that yoga originated in India as one of the six classical schools of Hindu philosophy.”

“The practice of yoga is frequently described as both a science and an art,” Claire writes in his Author’s Note. “It is, in fact, an entire approach to living that originated thousands of years ago. Yoga has grown, evolved, and branched in many directions in the centuries that have followed.” The various branches are briefly summarized in Part I, “Yoga as a Living Tree,” and Part II lays out “The Main Traditions” of hatha yoga, with chapters devoted to Himalayan Institute, Integral, Iyengar, Sivananda, Ashtanga, and Kundalini yoga.

Part III covers “Contemporary Adaptations of Yoga.” This is followed by a “Complete Yoga Practice Session for Men,” with illustrations and descriptions of numerous classic yoga positions and poses. Among these are Bhujangsana, or the Cobra pose, Trikonosana (Triangle pose), Vrkasana (Tree), Surya Namaskara (Sun Salutation), and, naturally for the end of a session, Savasana or the Corpse pose, which Claire calls a “posture of complete relaxation and abandon.” Part IV consists of chapters on yoga for the phases of a man’s life, for athletics, for men’s health, for enhancing sexual life, and partnered yoga. Other resources for further study of yoga are also presented.

Claire ends by summarizing the yogic diet, quoting Swami Rama’s assertion, “Regulation of food is the foundation of all other regulations,” and by repeating the central premise of yoga: “The ultimate goal of all yoga…is to make the body the most perfect vehicle possible so a man can realize his total being to the fullest—body, mind, and spirit…Yoga is a way of life.”