From the category archives:

Yoga Practice and Posture

Yoga and Nature: Good, Bad and Ugly

August 26, 2010

Class brings yoga into nature zone | mydesert.com | The Desert Sun. Yoga and nature immersion are parallel practices. There is a mysterious term in the first chapter of the Yoga Sutra – the term is prakrti-laya, or ‘absorbed in nature.’ I have been fascinated by this term for many years, since it seemed to [...]

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Fox (!) Cites Yoga Health Benefits

August 26, 2010

Yoga Shows Potential to Ward Off Certain Diseases Physiologists have detected lower levels of stress hormones in *expert* (check the definition in the article – it’s pretty darn loose!) yoga practitioners. It will be interesting to see how these findings dovetail news-wise with Fox’s well-known bias in terms of what we might call ‘culture’ and [...]

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Tai Chi Eases Fibromyalgia

August 24, 2010

Tai Chi Eases Symptoms of Fibromyalgia, Study Finds – NYTimes.com. The complex mind-body condition ‘chronic fatigue’ requires an equally mind-body oriented solution. Tai Chi gently moves the physical body and breath in even patterns that distribute attention throughout the organism, thus releasing deeply-held tensions and toxins. It is likely that yoga carries with it many [...]

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Yoga Wars! NPR

August 24, 2010

Yoga Wars! India Blocks Patents On Poses Metaphorical *patents* on spiritual material are well-known historically – every lineage in India has its own private, proprietary set of yoga methods. This becomes a strange brew in the modern world where these techniques can potentially become money-makers if they are understood as publicly proprietary.

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Why We Need the Yoga Alliance

March 8, 2010
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The yoga community must create standards to protect clients from fraud – or others will do it for us.

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Yoga Requires Sanskrit – Yes?

March 4, 2010

Sanskrit is the language of consciousness – but do you need it in order to practice yoga?

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Religion and Symbol Systems: How We Shape Reality (Symbolism Part 2)

March 3, 2010

The Jewish Tree of Life is a fully-integrated, multi-media mystic symbol system, comparable to the Chakra system in Yoga Religions are deeply interwoven symbol-systems. Like their component symbolic complexes, religions are neither true nor false: they are reality-creating systems. They create a cultural world as our adaptive niche, and then project this culturally-mediated world externally [...]

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Symbol Power: How We Shape Experience (Symbolism Part 1)

March 3, 2010

This Dreamtime Pathway from Australia is both a symbol and a map Humans are symbol-making creatures. Symbolic expression permeates our lives, giving them meaning and order. When concentrated and coordinated, symbols begin to form systems. When webbed together into systems, symbols start to function in a new way: they begin to generate and sustain the [...]

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Interrogating the Ego: Jnana Yoga and the Art of Reality Visioning (Part 3)

March 2, 2010

After all, you’re not who you think you are at all If we are to see through the jillion illusions out of which the ‘real’ world is made, it is important to be curious about and to question appearances. A powerful means of interrogating illusion comes from the tradition of jnana yoga, the yoga of [...]

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Playing with Fire: Yoga Philosophy and the Flames of Concentration

March 2, 2010

Jnana yoga enhances insight and brain activity – but too much can create agitation By meditating on the formulas of yoga philosophy, you can access deep insights very quickly and easily. This practice sharpens the mental capacity for focus and intention. But jnana practice is a double-edged sword, for it is very exciting. As a [...]

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