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
|
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, Yoga’s effects extend far beyond muscles, joints, flexibility, and strength. A single yoga practice can leave us energized or peaceful, focused or expansive, grounded or inspired. The same posture can feel completely different from one day to the next. Why? According to the yoga wisdom tradition, what we experience in practice is shaped not only by the physical body, but also by subtle layers of energy, awareness, emotion, and consciousness that exist beneath the surface. In Yoga’s...
Greetings Reader, I heard they finished the Bridge to Nowhere. And then demolished it. It’s too bad. I kinda liked it. The Bridge to Nowhere was an architectonic faux pax on the Long Island campus of an otherwise respectable institution of higher learning. The idea was to build a raised pedestrian walkway that would connect the Student Union to the Library. Construction began. Then the funding ran out. So construction stopped. As did the bridge, the last portion of it surrealistically hanging...
Greetings Reader, The summer of 1977 was a rough time for New York City: the fallout from a crippling financial crisis reduced municipal services to nearly zilch, trash was everywhere and nasty-looking graffiti was all over everything, property values were falling so fast that landlords were burning down their own tenement buildings to collect insurance on them, a serial killer who claimed to be acting on orders from a demon who spoke to him through his neighbor’s dog was on the loose, and,...