If you’re ready to apply yoga philosophy to your own life—or teach it with clarity and feeling—my classes and workshops create space to sharpen your thinking, steady your inner life, and connect your practice to what matters now.
Our next FREE Community Conversation
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Greetings Reader - Our free monthly series, Community Conversations, continues next week. This month, we're going to explore questions around gender identity and spiritual identity. Gender identity is a person’s deeply felt, internal sense of being male, female, a combination of both, or neither. It is entirely distinct from sexual orientation (who you are attracted to) and one's medical classification of sex given at birth. Spiritual identity is a person’s sense of who they are in relation to the sacred, the universe, or a higher power. It encompasses your core values, your search for meaning, and the recognition that you are defined by your innermost essence rather than just your physical attributes, psychology, or societal roles. Yoga philosophy makes a clear distinction between the eternal spiritual self (purusha) and the temporary material mind and body (prakriti), the latter being the realm of who and what we are in this one life, the former being the realm of pure consciousness: the experiencer of this and countless past lifetimes. Which invites the question, "Does our true, eternal, pure, and joyful nature have a gender identity associated with it or does our true nature, in yogic terms, transcend all conceptions of gender?" This month, we’ll explore questions about gender identity and spiritual consciousness: Do we have a spiritual gender identity or are gender-related experiences exclusively tied to the material mind and body? What does "self-realization" mean for bi, queer, or trans folks? What role does neurodivergence play in experiences of gender identity? How might gender dysphoria impact someone's spiritual journey? How are masculine and feminine archetypes as well as gender fluidity represented in yoga wisdom literature? What are the best ways to share yoga and yoga wisdom within queer and transgender communities? Given how limited my experiential knowledge of these topics is, I'll be sharing the hosting duties for this month's CC with a special guest. Together, we'll explore these and other related questions in our next COMMUNITY CONVERSATION a free monthly study group Live via Zoom @ 12:00 pm Eastern Time NEXT CONVERSATION: Wednesday, June 10 TOPIC: "DO WE HAVE SPIRITUAL GENDER IDENTITIES" Registration is free – CLICK HERE to get updates and the Zoom link! This conversation will be recorded - if you can't join us live you can watch the replay anytime. Community Conversation is a FREE monthly online gathering where we connect spiritual ideas to real life by talking about personal challenges we all share, difficult issues we all face, and how the ancient spiritual teachings of the yoga tradition offer practical guidance for navigating our way through life in the modern world. If you haven't registered for our free monthly Community Conversations yet, CLICK HERE to get updates and the Zoom link for the live discussion, and (usually) the recording link so you can listen to the replay if you can't join us live. If you're already registered, you'll get reminder emails with the Zoom link next week and receive a link to the recording soon after the live conversation. Hoping to see you next Wednesday, - Hari-k |
Hari-kirtana das
If you’re ready to apply yoga philosophy to your own life—or teach it with clarity and feeling—my classes and workshops create space to sharpen your thinking, steady your inner life, and connect your practice to what matters now.
Hi Reader, When people think about yoga, they usually think about postures, breathing exercises, and meditation. Patanjali had a different starting point. The Yoga Sutras begin with the yamas and niyamas: yoga's principles of ethical conduct and self-care. Most modern yogis know that ethical restraints and personal observances are the first two limbs of the yoga system, but the yamas and niyamas are often misunderstood. Some people view them as moral rules. Others see them as a list of...
Greetings Reader, The Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam, the principle wisdom text of the bhakti yoga tradition, tells a story about a great king named Mahārāja Parīkṣit. The king was both a strong ruler and a wise philosopher. He was also the grandson of Arjuna, the hero of the Bhagavad Gita, and, like his grandfather, a great devotee of Krishna. Once, while touring his kingdom, he came upon the personality of Dharma in the form of a bull and the personality of Mother Earth in the form of a cow. And he saw...
Greetings Reader, Transhumanism is out. Humanmaxxing is in. Apostles of the cyber-future have apparently given up on the idea of uploading their minds to the cloud and trading perishable flesh and blood for animatronic invincibility. Now they’re all-in on using AI, robotics, and performance-enhancing biotech to optimize human potential. So what does humanmaxxing look like? It starts with the assumption that we’ll all have more time to enjoy a higher quality of life thanks to AI and robots...