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helped me<br />
with the anger<br />
I had as a rebellious<br />
teenager”. Two years later,<br />
Dunx learned to put those teachings<br />
into practice when his friend devastatingly<br />
passed away in a car accident. Dunx says,<br />
“The meditations and yogic/Buddhist<br />
philosophies we were taught by his father<br />
became very important to me, and they were<br />
a way of dealing with the grief and unfairness<br />
I felt towards the loss of my best friend and<br />
the cruelty of the world.” Dunx says his<br />
physical practice didn’t begin until years later<br />
after an injury in the army motivated him to<br />
try Hatha Vinyasa.<br />
Beginning in his late teens, Dunx served<br />
as an officer in the army for six years.<br />
Because of the contrast between the two<br />
disciplines, he is often questioned as to<br />
why he joined the army. “They seem polar<br />
opposites,” he says. “In its volition it is, but<br />
the discipline for practicing yoga and being<br />
in the army are very similar … I joined the<br />
army because I was a very troubled<br />
teenager. Even though I had already been<br />
introduced to yoga, I was a confused young<br />
man who lacked direction.” And although<br />
Dunx’s reasons for joining were in reaction<br />
to his distress, he acknowledges the<br />
importance of this time of his life. “My<br />
he started<br />
giving them<br />
tips and private<br />
lessons. Eventually he hired a<br />
surf lifesaving club, and every<br />
Saturday morning his friends would <strong>com</strong>e<br />
along with their donation, which Dunx<br />
passed on to charity. He says, “After that<br />
I started teaching at the only ‘power yoga’<br />
studio in Sydney and helped to run it.”<br />
In 2004, Duncan started running Power<br />
Flow which quickly became the busiest<br />
studio in Australia. Soon after, Dunx<br />
purchased the business and renamed it<br />
Power Living. He was teaching up to 18<br />
classes a week while also working as a<br />
full-time business consultant. “I slept on<br />
the floor of the studio many a night, waiting<br />
to get up to teach the next morning before<br />
having to go to work. I felt plugged in,<br />
directed, a force was working through me<br />
and nothing was going to stop me teaching<br />
regardless of how hard I had to work.<br />
“My whole life changed. I<br />
now<br />
many<br />
festivals, yogi<br />
celebrities, diluted yet<br />
popular practices, and so much<br />
<strong>com</strong>petition driven by people with only<br />
business goals. It’s now mainstream … yoga<br />
is to fitness as organic is to food. My attitude<br />
to it is to let it evolve but stay true to what I<br />
feel is a sincere practice in a modern<br />
world.”How does Dunx stay grounded and<br />
authentic in the modern world of yoga<br />
fame? “I didn’t really have a vision to be<br />
‘Mr Power Living’. It just happened because<br />
I wanted to teach transformational yoga<br />
because of the way it had really helped me.<br />
People who lose themselves in the yoga<br />
celebrity world are either very young or<br />
have lost touch with their practice. I’d<br />
whole life changed. I had ambitions and<br />
be lying if I didn’t say I know this from<br />
felt for the first time in my life that I<br />
had ambitions and felt for<br />
experience. There have been times when<br />
could make something of myself.” the first time in my life that I lost my practice and got lost in fame,<br />
At 24, Duncan sustained a lifethreatening<br />
illness – a ruptured ulcer that<br />
success. But my practice motivation was<br />
fortune and the seductive <strong>com</strong>fort of<br />
I could make something of<br />
occurred during an army exercise which myself.”<br />
always to be at inner peace, so I always<br />
had been designed to assess his leadership<br />
skills under high levels of stress. As a<br />
result, he was medically discharged from<br />
the army and went on to work as a business<br />
consultant. He remembers this time fondly<br />
as he was able to explore the leadership<br />
qualities that continue to <strong>com</strong>e so naturally<br />
to him. However, by the time he had turned<br />
26, Duncan decided to follow his heart and<br />
set off on a two-year travelling stint<br />
through South America, Europe, and India.<br />
It was during this time that he was able to<br />
reconnect with his true self – the young boy<br />
who had discovered yoga all those years ago.<br />
I’m curious about how one of Australia’s<br />
largest and most successful yoga businesses<br />
came to be. Dunx tells me he was working<br />
through the Ashtanga series quite seriously<br />
I wanted to share yoga’s joy with<br />
everyone,” he says. Since then, Power Living<br />
has thrived. It has nine owners and studios,<br />
employs 130 yoga teachers and has<br />
graduated more than 1000 teachers from its<br />
trainings. Dunx tells me, “The evolution of<br />
the studios was really an organic process,<br />
as junior teachers of mine wanted to make<br />
careers out of yoga and the industry allowed<br />
this to happen.”<br />
Dunx has seen great transformation in<br />
the yoga industry since he began practicing.<br />
He says, “I think the longer you’re in the<br />
yoga bubble, the harder it is to let it<br />
naturally morph into something bigger.<br />
Sometimes I get lost in how it was and<br />
should be rather than how it is. So, I try<br />
<strong>com</strong>e back to that. When it <strong>com</strong>es down<br />
to it, we (the Power Living crew) realise<br />
our success is a divine essence working<br />
through us, not just us, as individuals,<br />
being amazing.”<br />
Dunx says it’s not always easy feeling<br />
the expectations of the yoga world upon<br />
you. “I struggled with myself for years as<br />
the stereotype of what a yogi should be<br />
was thrust upon me. Now I just accept<br />
who I am and that’s it.”<br />
What advice would Dunx give to his<br />
beginner yogi self? “Do it all again the<br />
same way. <strong>Yoga</strong> <strong>com</strong>es from your heart.<br />
Be yourself, honour tradition, and create<br />
from that. There is so much wisdom<br />
to learn. Don’t be so hard on yourself. You<br />
need no-one’s permission to be who you<br />
at the time, and when friends showed interest to just observe impartially and see the truly are, but remember everybody else<br />
in why he was so strong, flexible and clear, positives of the industry growing. There are shares that potential too.”<br />
39<br />
august/september <strong>2016</strong> yogajournal.<strong>com</strong>.au