Have you ever wondered why Yoga āsana are named after animals?
We have a whole bunch of them: the cobra, the peacock, of course the dogs, we also have a camel, a fish, and a dove…
When I started with Yoga over 20 years ago i never spent a lot of thoughts on this. I giggled a bit when I heard them the first time, but I didn’t really think about it. After getting used to their names, I put a little effort into pronouncing them correctly in Sanskrit, but that was it…
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Scholars and practitioners hold nearly opposite, contradictory positions when it comes to the roots of sūrya namaskāra practice. But new research sheds some light on the practices of sun salutations.
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Does Haṭha Really Mean Force? For those of us who have discovered profound tenderness and a way OUT of self-force through Yoga, this seems strange and jarring. Has yoga softened over time? What is the basis of these definitions?
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Popey was having a hard time. Things were desperate, dull and dissolute in the lead up to Christmas. The bulls had been kicking up dust in the city office, and the team, including the Drillers and Fieldies, were bored, tired and overworked — a sure-fire recipe for trouble. I was leaving that day for Christmas break despite Popey’s conviction that I had been permanently transferred to his team. Later that day there would be tears, but not from me, for once.
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In this article, we collate advice for those who share yoga in strongly Christian communities, for how to break down barriers and teach in a non-dogmatic way.
Yoga is what you do as your principal devotion. It is your principal practice. Not puja, not meditation, not kirtan, not philosophy. In the ancient times, asana itself was what was done in the temple to your deity.
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There’s nothing like a list of no-nos to inflame the adolescent western mind.
I was sitting in a a circle at a yoga study group in New Zealand, and the only person of Indian descent was reading out a list of their personal list of yama and niyama, which very roughly translates as ethical precepts, dos and don’t dos…
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Oh Corona. Yeah, you had us there for a moment.
After what may be called a “global panic attack”, following the first weeks of disturbing information about the virus on the telly and online, it literally felt like the world had pushed the “pause”-button for a while. Quiet streets, closed shops, empty cinemas and museums. Social distancing strategies have had us wiggle around each other in 1.5 meters distance, giving each other “the elbow” instead of the hand.
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Is there an inherent power dynamic between the Yoga teacher and the Yoga student? Is the teacher powerful and the student less so? Can authentic Yoga be transmitted within hierarchical power structures? In this short essay I want to offer a non-patriarchal framework for understanding the teacher-student relationship in Yoga. A perspective which sees mutual friendship and equality as both the means and end of wisdom transmission. The way through the trauma of alienated social relations is via intimacy…
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God's P.O. box is in the sky, said someone, and from there
he watches us…
A poem by Rosalind Atkinson
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This article is for anyone who is looking to understand the phenomenon of desperate men mobilizing women’s pain in attempts to attain validation from society as a worthy, good, ally, and crusader for anti-patriarchal justice. It is also for anyone witnessing those who seek to take down those whom they falsely perceive to be powerful figures within communities so as to claim that imagined power for themselves in the eyes of others.
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We are given much information about the behaviour of Weinstein and those like him, and analysis of why it’s harmful. There is even recognition that men like him are obvious and particularly toxic examples of an issue that runs right through society, affecting us all, rather than individual moral failures. But why we are facing this failure of the masculine in the present world? And what we can proactively do to heal and move forward?
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“If you want to teach people, you have to love them,” said the tall figure seated near me on the floor.
Shit, I thought. What am I doing here, then? I don’t love people… I hate them! I feel them frozen in fear and radiating phoney bullshit, and I can’t bear it!
I looked around the room at the other bodies. No-one else seemed to be freaking out…
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