The Influence of UG Krishnamurti on Yoga

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The Influence of UG Krishnamurti on Yoga

There was no denying UG Krishnamurti was an ususual and extremely attractive person, in the way that a cat is attractive. He was a natural man.

Because I was a student of Desikachar and Krishnamacharya, a student of yoga, I had to relate what UG Krishnamamurit was saying to yoga.

He made it easy, he spoke about it a lot and he sat on the ground with myself and with Melissa Forbes and showed us what natural movement looked like without any struggle, without any seeking.

It became clear that should any yoga arise, it is completely natural. It is what the body does naturally when it has been traumatised.

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Go Home Stay Home Yoga

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Go Home Stay Home Yoga

Since March, the pandemic has upended the global Yoga industry with thousands of studios filing for bankruptcy and international teacher training events cancelled. In these times of isolation, we can take stock of just how far the glamour and brand of corporate Yoga has departed from the wisdom culture in which Yoga arose. Yoga was never a one-size-fits-all exercise class, but a beautiful practice of reality embrace that you do in the sanctuary of your own home.

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On Casual Sex and Hookup Culture

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On Casual Sex and Hookup Culture

In this article, Mark offers an alternative to the culture of casual sex by offering the practical tools to restore Sex to its rightful place as a function of the Heart.

Apparently the culture of casual sex hookups and “friends with benefits” relationships now rampant on college campuses and elsewhere in American life isn’t living up to expectations. In her book The End of Sex: How Hookup Culture Is Leaving a Generation Unhappy, Sexually Unfulfilled, and Confused About Intimacy, researcher Donna Freitas reveals that although she expected to find that the vast majority of college students revel in the casual sex ethos, “instead I encountered a large percentage who feel confined by it or ambivalent about it.”

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Reflections on Teaching Yoga Online

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Reflections on Teaching Yoga Online

In this blog post, Mark shares insights from the past four months of teaching online, helping people establish a home Yoga practice during lockdown.

In this time of our physical isolation from each other, we have no choice but to reach out and teach online. We have no choice but to teach or, a better word, share our Yoga. Paradoxically, Yoga has always been a personal practice that you do in the sanctuary of your own home and in the temple of your heart which is the whole body. This time of extreme difficulty is the time to establish a home Yoga practice, personally and then in the public.

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Precious Memories of Desikachar in India and New Zealand

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Precious Memories of Desikachar in India and New Zealand

In 1973, I went for my first lesson with Desikachar in Madras (now Chennai). I had been participating in the circus of spiritual India, and Desikachar was just one more place to go, but from the moment I met him I knew I’d found gold. When I arrived, his father, Tirumalai Krishnamacharya, was seated on the front porch in a wicker armchair reading the newspaper, dressed in traditional Brahman dhoti and shawl. He looked up for half a second, and greeted me with a short smile and lively eyes.

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"Don't Wait Until the Sh*t Hits the Fan" — An Interview with Mark Whitwell and Nico Sarani

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"Don't Wait Until the Sh*t Hits the Fan" — An Interview with Mark Whitwell and Nico Sarani

Mark Whitwell: So tell me, Nico, how did you as a young woman from Germany transform into a Yogini?

Nico Sarani: My Yoga journey really begun in 2013 when I was studying in New York City at NYU University. At the time I was dealing with a lot of challenges in my personal life, like relationship problems, and the demands of a top American University left me feeling super stressed, leading to episodes of anxiety and panic attacks…

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Yoga is About Embracing Reality, Not Witnessing It

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Yoga is About Embracing Reality, Not Witnessing It

The ultimate expression of Buddhist and Vedantist dharma could be expressed as follows: There is no separate object, and there is no “self” that is a subject to the object. There is only Reality of existence in which everything is happening.

In other words, you are not an imagined interior “subject” making a presumption of separate objects—although you seem to be. This imagined subject can be described as the “ego I.” It is a demand on our attention. You’re sure it’s there, but like a mirage in the desert, it’s not really there. This unsteadiness means it forever needs propping up and defending. But like a mirage, it can disappear.

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What Kind of Yogi Am I? Jnana, Bhakti, Hatha, Karma and Kriya Explained

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What Kind of Yogi Am I? Jnana, Bhakti, Hatha, Karma and Kriya Explained

Jnana, Bhakti, Hatha, Karma, Kriya, Sidhha Yoga are one. Our teacher Krishnamacharya described all the different yoga categories as belonging together as an integrated holistic approach to be adapted to the needs of each individual. He insisted that it was a wrong approach of Western thinking to split them apart as if they could be isolated from each other...

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The Urgent Need for Standards in Yoga Teaching

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The Urgent Need for Standards in Yoga Teaching

The public has been hoodwinked. What seemed to be a sincere social phenomenon of hope is turning out to be shallow and even dangerous activity. Most of the public has been intimidated by Yoga or just think it is silly. It has been confined to an obsessive minority, a privileged demographic who unwittingly duplicate the misogynistic patterns of muscular gymnastics and male dominance. Mr Iyengar, K. Pattabhi Jois, and many teachers within their derivative schools and styles have been called out for verbal, physical, or sexual abuse of students and their assumption of ridiculous spiritual authority. Many brave people are coming forward to share their stories. With great compassion for the Yoga world and for all those who are enamored or repelled, it is time now to see through the hoax of these early experiments with Yoga in the west and add appropriate standards to these brands to make them effective and safe.

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You are a flower blooming in your own garden

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You are a flower blooming in your own garden

Your first form arrived as one cell known as the heart. A spark of Life, initiated by giving and receiving the union of opposites, the catalyst of nurturing, your spirit took form and the source became seen. This one cell is the portal to absolute nurturing reality, mother source. Poetically it is the jewel in the lotus. She has unfolded like a flower in bloom as a subtle body, the movement of energy through your whole form…

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The New Masculinity and The New Feminism

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The New Masculinity and The New Feminism

On a moonlit night in 1973, I was standing on a rooftop in Madras, thousands of miles from my home in the South Pacific. Having met with my teachers, Krishnamacharya and Desikachar, I was suddenly filled with a sense of wonder. It was sublime: a deep, spontaneous feeling of well-being, bliss, and love. I felt completely nurtured, my whole body fully integrated with everything in the natural world and with everyOne around me...

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Lineage and Yoga Wars

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Lineage and Yoga Wars

Recently a storm of protest arose in our community against Kausthub Desikachar, who has taken legal action to copyright the word Vinyoga for his yoga business around the world. Kausthub is the son of T. K. V. Desikachar and grandson of the great Tirumalai Krishnamacharya. You may like to read Leslie Kaminoff’s post on Facebook “I teach Viniyoga… So Sue me.” Here is my response...

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A Soft Message for a Hard Time

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A Soft Message for a Hard Time

I recently saw a YouTube video in which the actor Jim Carrey gets really excited about having discovered Eckhart Tolle. It seems that in reading and listening to Tolle, Carrey also had a sudden “wake-up” moment, as Tolle had. He realized that he is consciousness itself, the one who is aware of every “thing,” even of his worries in all their profound insignificance...

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