Laying Sūtras on your Body: Integrating Yoga Postures and Yoga Philosophy

This June, over the summer solstice, I’ll be leading a workshop from Yess Yoga in Minneapolis. I want yoga teachers, long term yogis, and those interested in finding their own feet in a yoga practice to come.

There has been a little bit of an awakening in yoga land. Ten years ago, most people in our culture assumed that yoga meant postures. This is still heavily believed, but studios and pop culture generally are a little bit aware now that yoga is not limited to poses. We know there’s a philosophy. We sorta get the impression it’s a sprirituality or has something to do with mindful, purposeful living. We understand that it is ancient but know very little of the actual details.

I’m proud of us for the little bit of awakening we’ve had. I’m glad that students suspect there is more to it than poses. I thrill every time someone reaches out with curiosity, confusion, a mystified what in the heck is this magic kinda question.

The picture above basically captures our reality. We start with the first circle, in which yoga mostly equals poses, but has a tiny little bit of philosophy in it.

Then, we start to understand that yoga poses are actually the tiny part. They are only a part. They are minor. They may not even be ancient, and might have more to do with European caletsthenics than Indian philosophy.

I think we need one more model. Something that can bridge or resolve these two circles.

Otherwise, we’re still just as stuck as we were.

Come spend three days learning about yoga bodies, yoga anatomy, and yoga posture from a lineaged standpoint. I think it’s exciting. It’s also affirming, reassuring, clarifying. Expect lots of movement exploration, lots of discussion, and lots to move forward with.

Registration is here.

Avatar: the divine in humanity

Yoga philosophy and spirituality is so tricky precisely because it isn’t exactly ‘god’, or ‘religion’, as we understand those things in English. One of my teachers says “God” is not an Indian concept, and it doesn’t occur anywhere in this practice. But there is something…and the process of discovering what that something is is largely what the practice involves.

In Veda, for example, “the Deva-s” are not exactly “gods” or “goddesses”. They are forces of nature, laws of the universe, given a name so that we can identify and relate to them. Gravity, light, and change are forces of nature. Gravity exists whether you ‘believe’ in it or not, and worshipping gravity is just a little strange. These forces, then, are something that we can begin to recognize. What’s more, these forces exist not just ‘out there’ in the world, but within us. As we start to understand how-reality-works, we’re starting to discover those same powers (and where they have been misused, hijacked, resisted or conflicted) within ourselves.

My teacher, again: when you gesture toward the deva, don’t point outward. Touch your own chest.

This all gets more complicated as we realize the problems of both translation (even Indians will now say gods and goddesses all the time, because we simply lack a vocabulary to point to this other thing), personal and cultural baggage or wounds around religion and spirituality, and the tender work of discerning divine power in the world from the purely material aspects of the world. Non-dualism, incarnation, and transcendence in other words.

One way of experiencing non-dualism is through avatars - or times in the world in which the divine ‘descends’ into materiality in order to help us in our ascent or spiritual growth. The tradition holds that there are literally countless avatars - there is divinity in all humans. This is the root or base teaching of “I see the divine light in you” or the practice of trying to do so, all the self-checking of our assumptions and exclusions and othering. to say nothing of the radical and difficult work of coming-to-know the divine light inside ourselves and the pandora’s box of questions that opens up. But most of us are a deeply complicated mixture of divine and misused divine, the ‘demons’ of greed, fear, self-interest, me-and-mine thinking, avoidance, etc.

There have been, in mythological or spiritual time, 9 full incarnations of the divine come to visit humanity. They come when dharma - or eternal law, the spiritual path that supports self, others, and cosmos - has been threatened by the demonic forces. Avatars might appear to be ‘saviors’, but they aren’t, really. They are teachers, friends, co-conspirators in restoration. They mostly come to remind us to do our job.

Krishna - Viṣṇu’s eighth incarnation - is the most relevant to us. For a myriad of reasons: he is the most widely known and hence we have access to the teachings, practices, images. There is music, literature, community we can tap into. We can read the Gita. More importantly, perhaps, are his characteristics and role. Krishna is loving and sweet, familial and flirty. He’s much more human than others. But he also teaches: he will call you out, give you reminders and ways to understand, things to do.

I recently taught the Viṣṇu sūktam and gave this presentation after we’d learned some of the how to sound. The lecture and ideas might be helpful to others - particularly those who are beginning to work with the Gita as a spiritual practice.