Enlighten Up!

Boston-based film director and yoga enthusiast Kate Churchill is convinced that yoga can change anyone. To prove her point, she embarks upon a six-month international journey with skeptical journalist Nick Rosen to investigate the spiritual practice.

Starting in the United States and spanning across Northern India, Churchill was inspired to create an armchair journey to an audience that hadn’t yet been able to delve deep into yoga’s more spiritual prospects. “It would be an opportunity that most people probably couldn’t take,” she tells me over the phone. “So at first it was kind of about exploring.”

Finding her guinea pig became about finding the everyman, someone inexperienced in the yoga world. After interviewing several candidates and throwing around a few names with the executive producers, Nick Rosen was chosen to embark upon the journey of a lifetime. His skepticism about the $5.7 billion “spiritual” industry, along with his journalistic skills and investigative abilities, all played a role in landing him the position.

Barriers needed to be broken and expectations needed to be dropped before the real discovery and enlightenment could take place however. But Churchill had never intended on getting so swept up in the process, or finding herself shown in the final version of the film. As Nick battles his feelings about yoga and spirituality, Churchill realizes she is also battling some of her own demons. “I had so many expectations going into this journey and into this film that they were often a detriment,” she says. “It really took getting frustrated with all of them and giving up on them to allow both myself and Nick to have a sense of freedom and being a lot more present, which is being a lot more yogic in a way.”

It wasn’t until the trip was over, the film had wrapped and the editing had started that Churchill really realized how special her experience had been. Even after they finished the five-year editing process, she still feels the ripples of her journey.

The effects took a while to really change Nick’s life too. In the closing credits of the movie it reads: Nick currently doesn’t practice yoga. Yet, now he does. “It’s the kind of thing that actually does take a journey like that to have impact that hits you six months afterwards,” says Churchill.
Churchill’s advice for youth trying to find their own enlightenment is to simply explore and persevere. “Just do what seems right, and try. And if it doesn’t seem right, try something different. Don’t be afraid to try things and explore. Don’t let anybody tell you that you can’t, because you can if it’s truly of interest to you.”

In the end, Churchill wants to leave the film’s conclusions up to the audience. It is about taking what you see in the film and letting it make its way into a conversation that is bigger than the movie. It then becomes more about change and questioning the choices we make on a daily basis. Namaste!