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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

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