by Donna Farhi, Now that the finger has been let out of the dam, there’s been a deluge of #metoo stories coming from our Yoga community. When we do start naming names, what then? In the past, even when teachers have been revealed for serious breaches of conduct, many of those same teachers were immediately forgiven without skipping a beat, and continued onwards with their glorious careers, seemingly unscathed. A recent article in a New Zealand newspaper by Michele A’Court called “Redemption … [Read more...]
How Patanjali’s ‘Atha’ Applies to Everyday Life
by Heather Robinson, In that moment. In that moment something holds me – here on my yoga mat, here I stand ready for practice, here I am connecting …. Then it happens - Did I switch my phone off? Do I need to check?..... Now I follow my breath with its gentle rhythm, compelling and calming me, now I’m connecting…… Or am I?? I forgot to make that phone call, will I remember later? Is my phone off? Sound familiar? You’re not alone! Thankfully, there is guidance and incentive. Millennia … [Read more...]
How Does Yoga, a Self-Regulating Practice, Regulate itself as an Industry?
by Melissa Billington, MYOGA Freedom & The Amazon Academy The advantage of growing up in the alternative health realms is that I’ve seen the evolution of these arts & sciences over a number of decades. My mother was doing yoga while I was in the womb & a few years later she became a massage therapist. When she worked in a health food store, I would hang out in the back. When we were Buddhist we chanted and had an altar in our home. Our family heritage to the pre-colonized Powhatan … [Read more...]
Could All Yoga Classes be Trauma-Informed?
by Sandra Palmer, Integrative Therapy For most of us reading this article, entering a yoga studio and completing a yoga class will be taken for granted. We may not think twice about wearing tight and revealing yoga clothing. We may be able to follow the yoga teacher’s instructions with ease - some with more grace than others! Sadly, there are many people for whom attending a yoga class is very difficult or even impossible. This is particularly so for those who experienced trauma in their … [Read more...]
How Yoga Taught Me to Live a Fearless & Authentic Life
by Stephanie Spence, Editor's note: This is an excerpt from Yoga Wisdom: Warrior Tales Inspiring You On And Off Your Mat The setting: a luxurious villa on the Caribbean island of St. Barts. A wife and husband, along with several of his clients, are partying on a terrace overlooking the glittering ocean and sun-kissed beach. They flew in from Pittsburgh aboard his private jet that morning. The woman seems to have it all—she’s a self-made success story, wife, and mother. But beneath her mask … [Read more...]
How Your Unconscious Beliefs Shape Your Body & Mind
by KeiShana Coursey, Opti-mum As a midwife and yogi who has walked alongside women and observed (with curiosity and kindness) their navigation through all that is birth, it appears to me that the mind doesn’t mind what you believe about sensation, only that it will loyally serve you to create whatever it is you’ve unconsciously chosen to believe. Let me explain… I became very interested in the vast difference between the individual experience of labour and birth when observing the stark … [Read more...]
Yoga Teacher, Heal Thyself
by J. Brown, Originally published on J. Brown Yoga. There is a performative aspect to teaching and promoting group yoga classes that sometimes leads to a denial of the teacher’s actual state. The conventional dynamics at play between teachers and students, both interpersonal and economic, are presenting obstacles to the kinds of exchange that encourage effective yoga transmission. Maintaining integrity often means having the courage to buck trends in order to reconcile our intentions with … [Read more...]
Being Wonder Woman: Yoga & Feminism
By Sam Loe, Originally published on samloe.yoga I will admit that I thoroughly enjoyed the Wonder Woman movie featuring Gal Gadot. I loved watching a super-goddess with powers of courage, strength and age-defying perfection on the big screen. It makes a change from the usual Hollywood, male-dominated super-heroes anyway. In fact, I went to see it with a bunch of my good girlfriends last year and we came straight home from the cinema and raided the kid's dressing up box and used the … [Read more...]
The Difference Between Being a Victim and Being Victimised
by Freya Vajra, Fierce Mystic I was chatting with a good friend of mine the other day, about all this Agama/sex cult stuff. For those of you who don’t know, one of the biggest Neo tantra schools in the world, Agama, recently got outed by Be Scofield for a whole load of sexual assault and misconduct by the heads of the school. It’s a school I have trained at and didn’t stay at because the waft of dogma and abuse was so strong. My friend, who spent a number of years there, was saying how she … [Read more...]
Why The 3 Bandhas Are Not Optional in Yoga
by Daniel Fow, Cardinal Points: Healing Arts All of the muscles in the body need to be exercised, stretched and worked with. Most of us know this, and we do yoga, go to the gym, walk, hike, run, or do some sort of work with our skeletal muscles. But these muscles are all generally on the outside surface of the body, either on top of our skeleton or immediately beneath. What we often tend to forget about is the importance of muscles that exist on the inside of the body. The pelvic diaphragm … [Read more...]