A New York City Bassoonist and Integral Yoga Instructor Challenges External Uncertainties with Internal Calm

Notes: Could you describe your life as a musician around the time you began to take an active interest in yoga?

Erik Höltje: You could say it was all part of an "existential dilemma" I was going through at the time: "What am I doing with my life?" I was in my last year of undergraduate studies at Juilliard, I hadn't taken any orchestral auditions, and had applied only to Juilliard for my masters and it was, in a sense, a game of roulette: if I got into the master's program at Juilliard, I'd continue studying music in school, otherwise I didn't know what I was going to do.