Lost Ways of Knowing

Yoga is a discipline that has a complex and accurate understanding of all the things we need to do in order to determine what is real so we can determine what we care about, the nature of our relations and therefore help us determine what we should do.

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This episode focuses on modern, transnational, anglophone yoga, which has tended to emphasize the practice of asana over certain other techniques that were central to the Hatha tradition: e.g. shatkarmani, mudra, and etc. This emphasis is fueled by the influence of European systems of physical education, and the revival of the physical culture movement in India that they helped to spawn. T. Krishnamacharya (the Father of Modern Yoga) is a key influence on modern practice. His tenure at the Mysore palace was a time of great experimentation with regard to Yogasana, and his vision made its way to the west through many famous students. His imperative that Yoga is to be taught via an appropriate adaptation strategy relative to time, place, and culture remains a guiding principle here at the shala. (Vini-yoga)

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This episode focuses on Swami Vivekananda, a key figure who brought Yoga to the West. His political and spiritual leanings show a strong influence from British colonialism, including: Western (Greek) notions of rationality and more universalist interpretations of Christian doctrine. His legacy left us a polarization between systems of yoga oriented by his definition of raja (“royal”, superior), and those oriented toward the more gross-physical (in his estimation) concerns of the Hatha Yogins. We see this value system at work today when, for instance, “gym yoga” is disparaged as “unspiritual”, or we hear “it’s not about the asana.” We should be careful with such ideas...

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The last episode on Siddha based practice looks deeper into two famous aspects of the subtle body: the chakras and the Kundalini. We discover a dizzying array of teachings concerning these matters, not all in agreement with one another. We also find that our modern notions of the chakras and the kundalini as endowments with which we are born is only half of the story, for each must also be created, or “installed” via dedicated practice. This is a paradox necessitated by the nature of the enlightenment endeavor, or what we have already called qualitative transformation in previous episodes, and which is also the central subject of many future episodes.

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This episode elucidates the final stage of the Siddha’s alchemical endeavors, which is known as reversal, or “ulta sadhana”. In reversal, the breath, mind, and seed of the human being are coagulated into a stable substance and directed into the subtle body to be transformed into the nectar of immortality. We look closely at the nature of this process and the specifics of the subtle body itself, which is found to be lunar in its nature: an ebb and flow of spirit and essence, coming into and passing out of being like the waxing and waning moon in its journey across the night sky.

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This episode focuses on the period that follows preparation and purification, which for Siddha based practices is known as immobilization. It turns out that the subtle sexual essences humans produce are also homologs of breath and mind. Breath, Mind, and Seed tend to evaporate and disperse quickly and must be caught and held in one place in order for the transformational process to proceed. The classic techniques of asana, pranayama, bandha, mudra etc are discussed as the means that drive this process.

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This episode focuses on the period of preparation and purification that must precede the generation of the divine body and the emergence of its powers of transformation. We look closely at how preparation and purification are themselves patterned on the Vedic sacrifice, and specifically how the metaphors used to describe the process are those of fertility and gestation.

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This episode is the first in a series that delves into what is known as “Siddha” yoga, which is a combination of indigenous Hindu Alchemy, Tantra, and Hatha Yoga. We discuss each of these areas as key sources for the ideological framework, the aims, and techniques of Modern practice. The images that emerge are those of mystical eroticism, in which all aspects of the universe are in an alchemical process of generating a subtle essence whose symbolic representation is that of divine and human sexual fluids. Via interaction with this sexual essence, the Siddha based traditions aim at the creation of an immortal body with the power to transform reality at any level.

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This episode focuses on the life of the Buddha and the impact of his teaching in the Indian philosophical sphere. We tell a basic story of his life and journey to enlightenment, and detail the essence of his realization as the teaching of no-self (anatman), which represents a radical shift away from the atman based traditions that preceded him. We look at his concept of the Madhya-marga (“the middle way”), expressed in the four noble truths, and the eightfold path.

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This episode focuses on the intersection of the Bhagavad Gita and the Yoga Sutra of Patanjali, which is a key text for modern practitioners. We compare and contrast the aims and means of the two texts by way of the three great yogas, karma, jnana, and bhakti, which show up in new forms in the Yoga Sutra as the elements of Kriya Yoga, known as tapas, svadhyaya, and Ishvarapranidhana. Contrasts center around the place of devotion and surrender in the two texts.

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