Bryan Carey

Bryan’s life has been driven by an identity search—who am I and why am I here? Throughout the phases of his life, he has gradually discovered answers to that question. During his childhood on the family farm, Bryan learned the value of work, simplicity, nature, and community. He experienced a pure innocence that he has since sought to rediscover through the practice of yoga and meditation. In adolescence, Bryan began with a zeal for Pentecostal evangelism that eventually gave way to agnosticism and disconnection from his spirituality. This identity crisis lasted until he met John Thomas Payne in early adulthood and began to discover his higher self. He studied art, psychology, and yoga with Payne for seven years. Then he discovered the work of Dr. Deepak Chopra and studied body work, massage therapy, and energetic healing for another seven years. In 1997 Bryan was invited to his first yoga teaching position at Duke University’s Center for Living. Since then he has taught yoga and meditation at art centers, faith communities, diet and nutrition centers, gyms and health clubs, indoor/outdoor festivals, senior centers, YMCAs, yoga studios, and more. In 2008 Bryan opened his own studio, Patanjali’s Place, in Durham, North Carolina, by request and with support of a subset of his students. The studio offers yoga and meditation classes for people of all ages and abilities.In 2009 Bryan began a three-year program by Dr. David Frawley (founder and director of the American Institute for Vedic Studies) focusing on the valuable coexistence of yoga and Ayurveda. Three years later he met Frawley at a mantra yoga retreat and realized his desire for yoga as a spiritual practice.After the passing of his mother in September 2012, Bryan discovered Sogyal Rinpoche’s Tibetan Book of Living and Dying, which made him feel complete for the first time. For Bryan, the Tibetans bring all his studies under one umbrella that is essentially spiritual, thus bringing closure to the journey that started with Payne in 1985, continued with Frawley, and finally brought him to Rinpoche, whom he met in 2014 and now studies with personally. Looking back, then, Bryan’s life has progressed in approximately seven-year cycles. This pattern continues as in 2015 (seven years after opening Patanjali’s Place) he launches Your True Mind, which will take his teaching beyond Durham into the virtual world. He aims to help people everywhere answer life’s fundamental question—who am I and why am I her