Wendy has been practicing yoga since 1979. Until then she had had a relatively conventional English middle-class up-bringing – an all-girls’ grammar school in the Home Counties followed by a degree in English at Leeds University. Then in 1978 she went slightly off-piste by going overland to India on a tragic bus, which took her through a broken Iran and the last days of an independent Afghanistan. In Pakistan she created her own drama by drinking a glass of dirty water, which led to hepatitis … and everything changed.
India was amazing and blew her mind: once the worst of the hepatitis was over she slowly travelled by train around the Indian sub-continent. Whether sitting atop a magnificently-sculpted south Indian temples or at the feet of the white marble statue of Bahubali as a Brahmin priest split coconuts; looking up at the alluring peaks of the Himalayas in Nepal or eating jack-fruit in Sri Lanka – she was totally enchanted by the power of this vast and diverse land whose voice manifested in the Vedic mantras.
6 months later, back in the UK, things were a little flat by contrast. The lack of energy which characterizes hepatitis was still lingering, and, without the diversion of India, the black cloud of depression descended. It emerged that there is no official cure for hepatitis but rest and proper diet. As an English doctor told her – she deserved to have hepatitis for going travelling. Whilst deeply depressed, the mother of a friend introduced Wendy to the practice of Pranayama and then Yoga. The Pranayama worked like magic and things changed again. She started – as did so many – with adult education evening classes in Iyengar Yoga. She has been doing Yoga – in all its forms – ever since.
So while Ayatollah Khomeini ruled the remains of the Sassanian Empire in Iran and while the Russians marched into Kabul, Wendy learnt to teach English as a Foreign Language, which became her passport for travel throughout the ‘80s and early ‘90s. She taught English as a foreign language from Oxford to Mexico and spent a year in south America – but it was India, Nepal, China and Tibet which kept on magnetizing her back. And wherever she travelled, it was with copies of those classic yogic texts: a selection of Upanishads and the Bhagavad Gita in her rucksack.
She ended up based on Lamma island in Hong Kong, living in a fisherman’s cottage on the edge of a Feng Shui wood where snakes would festoon the window-sills. Like so many inhabitants of this island she would take a daily ferry into Hong Kong (racing for the ferry, jumping over the snakes) to teach at the British Council; on Sundays she taught Yoga on the beach for hours and hours, well into the night; and every time she had a bit of money saved up she would travel all over Asia – with particular attention to Tibet.
Wendy first went to the Iyengar Institute in Poona, India, in 1989; the harsh discipline and attention to detail suited her at that time, and she continued her daily Yoga practice, wherever she was. Her passion was and remains for places of geomantic power. In 1988 she walked across Tibet to Mount Kailash – a geomantic hot-spot. Wendy did her Yoga in caves and hot-springs, beaches and hotel rooms, ruined buildings and on the wind-swept Tibetan plateau. And in 1992 she was planning a trip across Mongolia by horseback when she met The Great Bradley Rowe – who had spent the last ten years or so walking around Tibet, visiting power-places … Things changed again: suddenly she and Bradley were married and living back in the UK with 3 young daughters in Glastonbury.
With pregnancy came a necessary divergence from the Iyengar way. Rather than doing Yoga in straight lines, she started to spiral … Back in the UK, she chose to train to be a teacher with the British Wheel of Yoga rather than the Iyengar school – because it offered more options. She still had the greatest regard for Mr Iyengar, continuing to revisit Poona on a regular basis until his 90th birthday in 2008. In terms of Yoga politics she was treading a dodgy path, but that was always other peoples’ problem: Iyengar Yoga has given her a bed-rock of discipline which sustained her throughout all those travelling years and which continues to underpin her practice to this day.
Wendy teaches Yoga at festivals and camps on a regular basis, and runs the Yoga tent at Glastonbury festival. Though happy to be anchored in a house these days, there is something in the outdoor festival life which corresponds with that old desire to travel and walk in mountains. And there is no need to travel to sacred places now: Glastonbury is holy ground.
The two ley-lines of St Michael and St Mary cross on the top of Glastonbury Tor. The former is straight, the latter curves and undulates. So are the male and female energies: different and yet interdependent. It is now becoming more generally known and accepted that the Yoga we have inherited in the west is very much a male discipline; where is the female lineage? Possibly like the female Buddhist tradition of Tibet: practically invisible to the naked eye. And yet there is an inherent tenacity which carries on the tradition like an underground stream. It is there: we have to feel it. And we are all a combination of strength and flexibility, animus and anima, strident declarations and silent subscriptions to unspoken convictions. We are human, we are complicated. Yoga has many paths, all of which lead up the geomantic mountain. And it is there, deep in our practice, without prejudice or opinion, that we find the truth we need.
In 2013, Wendy and Bradley’s middle daughter, Eleanor, went to Boomtown festival in Wiltshire. On the Thursday afternoon, after her first shift as an Oxfam steward, she drank a couple of cans of lager, took a moderate amount of very pure Ketamine – and died. The death of a child feels like an aberration of nature – and yet it happens, has always happened. The aftershocks of Eleanor’s death continue to inform Wendy’s every breath, and her death is woven into the lives of all who knew her.
Wendy has always been a prolific writer, though she has only published 3 books: Walking to the Mountain (Asia 2000, 1996) and Yoga for Pregnancy (Gaia Books, 1999) and Integrating Philosophy into Yoga Teaching and Practice (Singing Dragon, 2020). As a yoga teacher/ teacher-trainer, Wendy writes about Yoga – and about Eleanor and the effect her life and death has had upon her, her family and friends. On the 8th of every month she posts a piece on Facebook – an amazing resource. Who would have thought that the combination of Yoga practice, philosophy and Facebook would have been such a channel? Salvation appears in mysterious ways.
Wendy continues to be an active member of the British Wheel of Yoga. She has been training teachers for the Wheel since 2007 and has served on the education committee (BWYQ) off and on since 2008. She believes that Yoga belongs to no religion, creed, nation, organisation or cult: Yoga is here for all of us. Let us each tread our own path with respect and love.