triyoga talks

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Gurmukh Kaur Khalsa is a teacher of Kundalini yoga and a pioneer in the field of pre-natal yoga. She studied directly with Yogi Bhajan, who gave her her Sikh spiritual name meaning “one who helps people across the world ocean”. Since then, she has dedicated her life to fulfilling that responsibility – co-founding and directing Golden Bridge with her husband Gurushabd, the premier centre for the study and practice of Kundalini yoga and meditation in Los Angeles, and travelling around the globe to share her teachings.

In this episode of triyoga talks, Gurmukh and Gurushabd talk about their experiences of studying with Yogi Bhajan, the vast oral history and traditions of Kundalini yoga and how Gurmurkh’s own experiences and grief shaped her teaching of yoga for pregnant women.

Speaking on life’s struggles, she says, “Sometimes struggles are exactly what we need in our life. If God allowed us to go through our life without any obstacles it would cripple us. We would not be as strong as we could have been. We could never fly.”

On teaching, she adds, “You’ve got to […] find those who aren’t as lucky as you and say, how may I serve you? I don’t know a better gift than giving to the world and those who are suffering:  yoga, meditation, and going within.”

To find out more about Gurmukh and Gurushabd and the history of Kundalini, listen to our full podcast online or subscribe using the buttons above.

Gurumukh and Gurushabd are leading a three-day workshop, spirit in action: the awakening, at triyoga Camden from 14 – 16 December. They will also be back in February 2019 to deliver their 220-hour Kundalini yoga teacher training as taught by Yogi Bhajan. For full details and to book, click here.

Listen to our other podcasts in the ‘triyoga talks’ series here.

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Wellness and breathing expert Max Strom is one of the world’s most respected yoga teachers. He is a TEDx speaker and best-selling author, travelling from the west coast of America to continental Europe and the Middle East, giving speeches to major corporations, government bodies and hospitals.

In this episode of triyoga talks, Max discusses the ethics a yoga teacher should uphold, how breathing techniques can release feelings of grief, and how technology is driving us apart instead of bringing us closer together.

Speaking on happiness, he says, “I don’t think I really started discovering a continuous feeling of happiness until I started practising Hatha yoga. After practice, I would have tears running down my face and I had no idea why… What was happening was all the grief I had suppressed was leaking out because of the ocean breathing – or ujjayi breath. It wasn’t that it was making me happy; it was unburdening me.”

Max’s best-selling book, “There is no app for happiness,” argues that technology is contributing to unhappiness and creating an obstacle to intimacy. The key, Max teaches, is in our breathing. “Our society now needs breathing patterns more than we have ever needed them, because of the explosion of anxiety, depression and sleep disfunction… To me, because breathwork can help so much, it is the primary thing we should be offering [people] and have the postures support a breathing practice.”

Max has also developed his own code of ethics for yoga teachers, based on existing teachings, which he calls the five causes.To find out more about Max’s five causes and his further thoughts on breathing, grief and the UK’s new ministry for loneliness, listen to our full podcast online or subscribe using the buttons above.

Max will be teaching a weekend of workshops on “from chaos to beauty” at triyoga Shoreditch from 17th-18th November. He will be covering how movement and breathing patterns can release us from our own self-built prisons. He is also be running a special workshop for men, “the calibrated man,” on 16th November. Click here for full details and to sign up.

Listen to our other podcasts in the ‘triyoga talks’ series here.

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Richard Rosen has been a student of yoga for nearly 40 years. He trained at the Iyengar Yoga Institute in the 1980s and, in 1987, co-founded the Piedmont Yoga Studio with Rodney Yee. He has also written four authoritative books on breath, pranayama and the traditional practices of yoga. In the latest podcast in our triyoga talks series, he talks with Genny Wilkinson Priest about yoga in the modern world, how traditional practices have evolved over the centuries, and whether there is really any such thing as authentic yoga.

When asked whether yoga’s popularity opens it up to distortion, he says, “Westerners are often accused by traditionalists of distorting yoga. But the fact is that what we received was already a distorted version of the practice to begin with; although we were told differently and we didn’t really know what we were getting.

“And the question is, why did this happen? The Indian teachers who reinvented yoga, they found themselves between a rock and a hard place. Regarding the practice, the one thing that they valued most was age and tradition. The older something was, they believed the more authority it had. So they distrusted innovation and newness. The problem was then that what they had in their hands was an entirely new form of yoga, which by their own standards lacked authority.”

On the purpose of asana and whether it matters why we practice, he adds, “I think it matters more how you practise yoga than why. You can probably practise yoga for self-aggrandisement or to profit off it in some way. Even practising for the wrong reasons, we might reserve judgment to see if the practice changes the student’s purpose. Despite all its shortcomings, modern yoga can have a really transformative effect, even if you’re not really expecting it. In yoga, it is really important how you practise, with attention and with dedication.”

Richard will be teaching an online workshop with Annie Carpenter entitled ‘the evolving practice’ on 8th September 2020. Click here to learn how to sustainably evolve your practice over the years from this pair of incredibly experienced international teachers.  

Listen to our other podcasts in the ‘triyoga talks’ series here.

Click here to read Richard’s follow up to the podcast, with more on Vedic secrecy, the sutras and God.

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Sharon Gannon is an author, musician and animal rights activist. She is perhaps best known as the co-creator of Jivamukti yoga, a path to enlightenment through compassion for all beings. In this latest episode in our podcast series, she talks with Genny Wilkinson Priest on the nature of teachers and students, her own personal sadhana and more.

When asked if the best yoga teachers are the one who have suffered, she says, “I don’t know if I could say 100 per cent that’s true. What somebody suffers in this lifetime, or doesn’t suffer in this lifetime, doesn’t portray the whole many past lives that that jiva, that individual soul had. So, sometimes, we see people and we say ‘wow, they’re really riding on easy street, they’ve had so much luck in their life,’ but we don’t know what kind of suffering they went through in previous lives.”

On being a student, she says, “A good student should not be an adult, because the definition of an adult is someone who has stopped growing.” On teaching she adds, “You would expect if you were going to a doctor, that the doctor did the job well. We should expect the piano teacher to know how to play piano and have a deep experience with music. A lot of yoga teachers these days don’t go deeply into the yoga practice themselves… If you’re going to devote yourself to yoga, it’s a 24-hour job.”

Sharon Gannon will be teaching two workshops on the 15-16 September at the Oval Space, London. Sign up for the full weekend or individual workshops here.

To purchase Sharon’s best-selling novel “The Magic Ten and Beyond” visit the shop in one of our centres.

Listen to our other podcasts in the ‘triyoga talks’ series here.

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Click here for details of Bo Forbes upcoming online workshop at triyoga on 30th May 2020: “balancing anxiety: building resilience in the mind, body + brain in times of crisis.”

Bo Forbes is a clinical psychologist and is at the forefront of new approaches within the world of yoga. Having realised that the field of psychotherapy was missing something crucial, she investigated body-centred and spiritual approaches in her work. The result? A synthesis of healing philosophies drawn from yoga, science, mindfulness and psychology that can have a profound impact on mental, physical and emotional wellbeing.

We asked Bo why psychotherapy and yoga are such natural fits. She explains, “Psychology has always had this desire, this drive, to understand the human mind and emotions and, depending on what we study, the spirit and how they interact. Yoga philosophy and a lot of the texts have embedded in them a kind of manual for emotional healing. To me they are very complementary. Today, if you teach yoga in any respect, you really are going to be teaching classes where the majority of people are struggling with emotional wellbeing and systemic oppression and trauma.

“We are really at a turning point in our modern approaches to wellbeing. Soon we won’t accept treatment that isn’t inherently integrated and speaking to more than just the mind or more than just our biochemistry.”

In our latest podcast, Bo also talks about how yoga teachers can speak to students suffering from anorexia nervosa, and how yoga can be used as a tool for social justice in creating politically awake communities.

Bo will be coming to triyoga from 3-5 August 2018 to teach a series of workshops on yoga, science, psychology + social justice: creating individual + collective wellbeing. Sign up for the full weekend or individual workshops here.

Listen to other podcasts in the ‘triyoga talks’ series here.

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