💡For the month of August, we're re-releasing a few of our favorite podcasts from the 2023 season so far. Enjoy listening (or re-listening!) to these talks and, as always, tell us your thoughts and send over guest ideas.
Doug Keller's talks with me continue to be some of our most popular episodes. Here in his second episode, we explored what became a set of expanded precepts whose inclusion into modern practice could change yoga practice. Rather than the 10 yamas (restraints) and niyamas (observances) that nearly every yoga teacher at least touches on in a teacher training, he offered 20. These come from the Natha Yogis, who in the 9th-10th centuries carried on with these behavioral suggestions for living a good life and, in doing so, embraced the tradition in yoga of practicing, experimenting, sitting with those experiments, and practicing some more. I think it's time in modern yoga to consider what Doug and I explored here. We also got into politics and social issues! I hope this talk delights you as much as his first episode did!
2. Upanishads: Hindu religious texts in Sanskrit that make up the Vedas
3. Mahavira: founder of Jain spiritual system
4. Vedas: the most ancient Hindu scriptures
5. Mahabharata: a Sanskrit epic poem, which includes the Bhagavad Gita
7. Kleshas: obstacles; the kleshas are considered the cause of suffering and are to be actively overcome
8. Henry Thomas Colebrooke: a Sanskrit scholar and orientalist
9. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel: a German philosopher who is considered one of the founding figures of modern Western philosophy
10. Ralph Waldo Emerson: an American writer and philosopher who led the transcendentalist movement of the mid-19th century
11. Henry David Thoreau: an American wrier and philosopher who was a leading transcendentalist
12. Neo-Vedanta: also called Hindu modernism, the Hinduism that developed in the 19th century
13. Swami Vivekananda: the first Hindu teacher to arrive in New England, taught Vedanta
14. Chakras: seven wheels of energy in the body located from the base of the spine to the crown of the head
15. Hatha Yoga Pradipika: a 15th-century Sanskrit text on hatha yoga
16. Western Esotericism: combines spirituality with an observation of the natural world while also relating humanity to the universe
17. Samadhi: contemplation; the final limb of the eight limbs of yoga
18. Jivanmukta: someone who has gained complete self-knowledge and self-realization and has attained liberation
20. Kama: pleasure, enjoyment
21. Kaivalya: a state of liberation reached by realizing that one's consciousness is separate from Nature (prakrti)
22. Natha Yoga: a variation of Tantric yoga; melded principles from yoga, Buddhism, and the Shaivism branch of Hinduism
23. Bindhu: a point or dot
24. Purusha: the divine Self which abides in all beings
25. Muktananda: the founder of Siddha Yoga
26. René Descartes: a French philosopher, mathematician, and scientist
27. Tantra: a type of yoga using yantra (a sacred geometrical figure) and mantra (a sound formula) to experience the union of the masculine and feminine within the individual
28. Mukti: spiritual liberation
3. Christopher Key Chapple
4. Raja Yoga, by Swami Vivekananda
5. The Weeks Well episode with Seane Corn
6. Doug Keller's guide to the yamas and niyamas
7. The Weeks Well episode with Eddie Stern
8. The Weeks Well first episode with Doug Keller
Original music by Kim's band Governess.
Produced by Alyssa Yeroshefsky and Kim Weeks.
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