Hi Reader, If you’ve been teaching asana classes for a while and feel like your students are asking for something more, something deeper . . . The yoga and meditation market is moving away from high-intensity asana workouts and toward practices that focus more on somatic healing and nervous system regulation. Offering guided meditations is a powerful way to meet that demand. A great guided meditation is more than just relaxation cues and visualization prompts. There’s a science to using your...
5 days ago • 1 min read
Greetings Reader, A couple of weeks back I wrote about how right reasoning depends more on true premises than on a well-constructed argument. For example, “All horses can fly, all horses are tomatoes, therefore, all tomatoes can fly” is a well-constructed argument that’s based on two obviously false premises. If it were just a matter of armchair philosophy, then it wouldn’t really matter. But falling for logical fallacies can have real-world consequences. For example, if you think alignment...
9 days ago • 3 min read
Greetings Reader, Last Sunday, I shared some examples of faulty logic that I've seen circulating through the yogaverse. I was planning on sharing some other examples today, but I'm going to put that off until next week. This week, I have something else on my mind. I was one of many protestors standing, waving, chanting, and drumming out in front of the White House this past Tuesday evening. Fortunately, it became another TACO Tuesday before the evening was over. Of course, I was relieved when...
16 days ago • 3 min read
Greetings Reader, We visited my hometown Krishna temple in NYC a couple of weeks ago. It was wonderful to be there: fantastic kirtans in the temple room, exquisite Deities on the altar, and a very nice talk about the connections between bhakti philosophy and our search for happiness. After the lecture, we sat with a few other attendees as we all enjoyed the delicious vegetarian dinner that the temple offers as part of their regular Sunday evening program. I’m sure no one really wanted to go...
23 days ago • 3 min read
Greetings Reader, I hope you had an inspiring No Kings Day yesterday. Here in our nation's capital, as in many other cities big and small, the creativity of protestors was on full display with clever banners and costumes designed to ridicule Trump and his administration. There was also a lot of singing and joyfulness, which was very encouraging because prioritizing joy is one of the most important elements of a successful resistance movement. Tyrannical governments want to be feared; joy...
about 1 month ago • 4 min read
Greetings Reader, Next Saturday is “No Kings Day” here in the United States. Again. Technically, every day here is “No Kings Day,” but it's painfully clear that some people need to be reminded that the legitimacy of our government is still supposed to be derived from the consent of the governed. As opposed to being derived from the consent of the spiritually-enlightened intellectuals, which is what the yoga wisdom tradition recommends. It may sound anachronistic, but you can make a reasonable...
about 1 month ago • 3 min read
Greetings Reader, My younger self never aspired to master the art of cooking. Nor did I ever think it would turn into an enjoyable outlet for creative expression. And yet, here I am, in the kitchen, riffing off a recipe to cook up another culinary masterpiece All right, so, perhaps I'm indulging in a bit of overstatement. Cooking has become a form of meditation for me. Once I'm in the kitchen, my mind locks into the process and stays there until the repast is ready. My meditative orientation...
about 1 month ago • 4 min read
Greetings Reader, I get a lot of questions from yoga teachers about how to explain karma-yoga — the yoga of liberation through action. And I frequently get asked for advice on how to speak about bhakti-yoga, the yoga of devotion, in yoga classes. Speaking about karma-yoga is challenging because it seems impossible to act in the world without generating some kind of reaction. Speaking about bhakti-yoga can be tricky because yoga is not a religion but bhakti is theistic by definition. But what...
about 2 months ago • 6 min read
Greetings Reader, Last summer, I posted an Instagram reel about how the principle spiritual equality provides a rational basis for social justice. How so? Materially, none of us are equal. We all have a little more of this or a little less of that and when we add it all up, no one is materially equal to anyone else. Spiritually, however, the yoga wisdom tradition tells us that we are all equal; that we’re all made of the same spiritual stuff and that we are all equally infinitesimal parts of...
about 2 months ago • 4 min read