Whole Life Yoga Blog
Yoga is a Four Letter Word – a Few More Introductory Thoughts
‘Satyam eva jayate’ - truth alone prevails - so it is stated in the Mahābhārata epic. Truth and truthfulness are at the heart of the Indian tradition, and are the life pulse of yoga, the practical...
Killing Me Softly
I heard he sang a good song, I heard he had a styleAnd so I came to see him, and listen for a whileAnd there he was this young one, stranger to my eyesStrumming my pain with his fingersSinging my...
On Puerarchy and Bully Boys
'I strive for an education that teaches us to think, and against an education that trains us to obey...' I saw this on the wall of a school building in Puerto Escondido, Mexico earlier this year. I...
On The Longing For Village and Conversation
I am finding the lack of village more and more painful to bear, the isolation, the lack of engaged, supportive community of shared ethos. I want to live amidst people willing to witness, support,...
On Injury and Health, Life and Death
I injured my knee at the beginning of August. A month on, I was asked: ‘How is your knee?’ Well, it is not yet functioning to allow full range of motion. Plyometric training not yet on the menu....
On Fullness and Emptiness, Pūrna and Ṡūnya, Wholeness and Zero
Excerpt from course notes for an Indian mythology course I gave earlier this year. Here and there the text is referring to ideas we explored in greater detail in the class, but I think what I share...
Fighting Monkey Reflection – 2021 Zero and Wholeness Injury and Health
I had been interested in Fighting Monkey for several years. 2020, with all my in-person work cancelled, I was able to join their summer intensive. This year, I returned to Ancient Olympia, looking...
Life, Yoga and Contact Improvisation AND I Want to Live in a World Where People Dance on Train Station Platforms
My friend Paul, with whom I have co-taught a few times in different places, is a long-time Contact Improvisation practitioner. We have usually taught in relation to yama-niyama, the foundational...
What Difference Does it Make?
This last year teaching online, on many of the courses I have sent out notes to accompany our sessions. Currently, I am enjoying working with the Āditya Hṛdayam hymn to the Sun from the Vālmīki...
Śavāsana – Sleeping in Peace and The Art of Living and Dying
In the early years of my yoga explorations, living in Thailand, I had the good fortune to attend āsana classes with Adrian Cox at the original Yoga Elements Studio, Bangkok. I remember in one of my...
The Bhagavad Gītā: Reconciling Paradox and Making the Whole Field Sing
Weaving harmony into the fabric of life and making the whole field sing. A few brief introductory notes to the Bhagavad Gītā. A few notes following last Friday’s two hour talk on the Gītā What’s in...
A Few Words on: ‘Why Start a Yoga Practice Session With a Mantra?’
There are many great reasons to work with a mantra at the start of a period of yoga practice or study. For a start, working with a mantra can help set the space of our body-borne field of awareness....