How yoga saved one man's life

Standing in his home yoga studio, the afternoon sun illuminating the sparse room, Mathew Koder's smile radiated a pure, childlike joy.

The yoga teacher moved among his students like a gardener fussing over individual buds. The room silent save for his students' heavy nose breathing, he helped one woman into a headstand, then whispered words of encouragement to another. As he guided one student, her posture loosened, her face muscles softened and a blissful twinkle spread from her eyes to the upturned corners of her smile.

To Koder, yoga is love embodied, and he evangelizes this affection to anyone he can.

But this weekend, as producer of the Iowa Yoga Festival, he's upping his game: He plans to drop a "love bomb" on Des Moines.

Masters from all over the world are scheduled to descend on the Iowa Events Center Friday through Sunday, to teach workshops and commune with Midwestern yogis. More than 100 people are expected to attend.

Through the festival, Koder, 29, hopes to help people explore a "deeper dimension of yoga" by focusing on traditional yogic practices.

Most of all, though, he just wants to infuse the weekend with fun.

"It's a festival, so it needs to be a party," he said.

Before class, Koder sat perched atop a rolled-up yoga mat. He's fit, he owns a business, he's running a festival and he's just so darn happy.

But that wasn't always Koder's life.

A poor, angry kid turned a listless young man, Koder hit rock bottom in his early 20s, struggling to hold a job and contemplating suicide.

Then, a free yoga class at his gym touched his soul. The rest, as they say, is history.

"Absolutely, without a shadow of a doubt, yoga changed my life," Koder said. "It enriched my life and cleared away the false perceptions that had been holding me back."

Now, he wakes up every morning with the mission to help others through yoga.

"This might be the dreamer in me," he said, "but if we could create a more joyful, more loving, compassionate, understanding and open-minded Iowa, we could change this nation. And if we created a more meditative America, we would change the world."

To look at Koder now, serene as he moves between yoga poses, you'd never guess he was born into chaos.

His difficult childhood meant he faced the pressures of having to grow up way too fast. He fought regularly, and put up walls to protect his young heart from any more hurt.

"He had nothing," said Cody McCoun, one of Koder's closest friends. "He never got the new stuff, he never got the cool bike. He had to fight tooth and nail for anything that he ever got to call his own."

Koder describes his young life as "tumultuous." He graduated from Harbor-Southeast Polk Alternative School in Altoona and learned how to talk himself into or out of any situation imaginable.

But the bonds of poverty are hard to break, and he fell into a vicious cycle of dead-end jobs.

"I found myself in my early 20s in a place where I was suicidally depressed," he said. "I was as low as a person could get."

Physicality was Koder's only solace, he said. He was never as peaceful as when he was wrestling, riding BMX or running track, so he hit the gym for hours on end.

"I had so much hurt inside me," he said, "that it (was) necessary for me to wear myself out to such a degree that I didn't put a pistol in my hand and contemplate doing something."

Then, about eight years ago, Koder noticed yoga signs everywhere. Everyone in those posters was so happy, he said, and he wasn't. He resented them, and yet he wanted to be them.

One day curiosity led him into a yoga class. After a glimpse, he knew he needed to do it again.

He sought out teachers, he read, he practiced and he moved away to learn more. He absorbed all he could about yoga, and eight years later Koder doesn't regret a moment.

"It's inspiring," McCoun said. "Sometimes when I get stressed about work, my wife and I talk about how the money is good, but we're not happy with our jobs.

"You miss 100 percent of the shots you don't take," he continued. "It makes you wonder, what if instead of talking yourself out of something, you just did it. What if we took a risk like the one Mat took. Where would we be?"

When all of Koder's students seem to be in their respective yoga zones, he begins to meditate. He moves deliberately as he folds himself leg by leg, hand by hand and assumes a seated position. Rubbing the pads of his fingers together, he closes his eyes and turns inward.

A year ago, he took this position often, pondering for hours whether he wanted to organize the festival.

"Even though I kept putting obstacles in the universe's way to prevent me from" producing the festival, Koder recalled. "I couldn't ignore the urge, the driving force, within me to do it."

This year, the festival is slightly different from the five previous.

Those focused on bringing in big-name teachers from a wide variety of yoga practices to entice a wide variety of attendees. Koder programmed the weekend mostly around his chosen field of Ashtanga-inspired, Patanjali yoga.

James Miller, a Des Moines-based teacher, founded the yoga festival six years ago in Iowa City as a way to bring new and different teachers to the area.

"I wanted to upgrade the level of knowledge and experience in the general yoga community," Miller said. "When I went to events across the country, I often didn't see Iowa practitioners, so I decided to bring top-notch teachers to the Midwest."

While Miller doesn't agree with the direction of this year's festival, he's supportive of anyone trying to educate the community.

Miller, who no longer has any involvement with the festival, used to be Koder's mentor before a falling out that neither wanted to explain further.

The yoga masters coming to this year's festival include Andrey Lappa, Srividhya Radhakrishnan and Doug Swenson.

"These are not the people you'd see on the cover of Yoga Journal," said Ann York, last year's event producer, "but once you get into a class with them, you'll see what excellent teachers they are."

Koder described attending their workshops as "tapping into the source of yoga," "like if you've been used to drinking polluted water and somebody handed you a glass of Fiji."

And he hopes these workshops provide attendees with enough restorative energy to last an entire year.

"I want the love bomb to be so powerful," he said, "that it would fuel everybody through a whole year, and then boom, another festival would happen."

As Koder's students wrap up their daily practice, he hugs them, looks them directly in the eyes and leaves them with some final thoughts.

Koder has a way of looking at you so deeply, said Vicki Colby, 65, one of his students, "it's like he's peering into your soul."

Colby came to Koder a year and a half ago hoping to build strength before a knee surgery.

More than a year later, she still hasn't had the surgery.

"I was getting a cortisone shot every six months to take the pain away, and about four months after a shot, my knee would start to hurt again," she said. "Almost eight months after starting with Mathew, I looked up and realized I'm not in pain anymore."

And Koder helps with more than just physical ailments, his students said. According to some of his practitioners, his teachings have made them better professionals, parents and people in general.

"Some of the physical practices and mental practices (of yoga) seem impossible at first, and then you start to realize not only is it all very possible, it's easy," said Kara Sinnard, 42, of Urbandale. "Taking that into my career, I get people who ask me to do the impossible every day. I look at it differently now; it's not impossible anymore. So whether there is a deadline or a client puts unreasonable expectations on me, I look at those things and I say, 'Well, I can get that done.'"

Koder isn't perfect, and he doesn't claim to be. He gets entangled in life, too, but he tries to discard any negativity quickly, he said.

More than anything, Koder is grateful. Grateful to the universe, to his teachers, to the people that helped him when he needed it most. And, of course, to yoga, the lifestyle that turned his life around, the devotion that continues to save him every day.

"I don't question whether I practice in the morning or throughout the day," he said. "I don't question that because I know that is part of my management system. I have to do these things in a particular order so that I give the best version possible of myself to the world."

Then he excused himself. He had some meditations to do.

If you go...

WHAT: Iowa Yoga Festival, an event Friday through Sunday packed with workshops and sessions on how to improve your yoga practice.

WHERE: Iowa Events Center.

COST: $295 for full festival pass; $185 for one-day pass.

INFO: iowayogafestival.com.