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 challenges faced by neurodivergent people, particularly in yoga communities and classes. Neurodivergence is a non-medical term describing people whose brains function and process information differently from the "typical" social standard. It is an umbrella term, not a diagnosis, encompassing a wide spectrum of natural human variations such as Autism, ADHD, dyslexia, and dyspraxia. It's also common for neurodivergence to accompany gender-fluidity and expansiveness (queer / trans / non-binary identities). Expanding on a thread from last month's conversation, we’ll explore questions about how yoga teachers and practitioners can recognize, understand, and constructively respond to neurodiversity in yoga spaces and communities: What specific challenges are unique to neurodivergent individuals? How can yoga teachers modify their language to be more inclusive and make the practice of yoga accessible? What kinds of classes are especially challenging for neurodivergent practitioners? What kind of language and attitudes can create shut-down experiences for autistic and gender-expansive individuals? How can teachers respond to questions about traditional sequences or gender-specificity in the yoga tradition practices in ways that are both truthful to the yoga tradition and respectful of the needs of neurodivergent students? Once again, taking my limited my experiential knowledge of these topics into account, 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 Daylight Time NEXT CONVERSATION: Wednesday, July 8 TOPIC: "NEURODIVERGENCE IN YOGA SPACES" 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.
Greetings Reader, I was talking with a friend this past week about an interesting thought experiment he and a few other guys are collaborating on. The experiment uses a fictional story, set in a post-capitalist future in which AI-driven robots do everything that needs to be done and all basic human needs are (somehow) provided for, as a vehicle to explore two questions, posed by the story’s main character: “Does my life have any meaning if I don’t have to do anything?" "If not, how do I...
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...