Yoga texts old and new talk about sangha, and sat-sangha. Sangha is community, or an assembly of people, and sat-sangha (which is a term often to describe a gathering of people coming together to discuss life and philosophy and yoga) means ‘good company’. Yoga and yogis emphasise the importance of building and looking after your […]
Sunshine in a field; yogaskrit in a tent. The first weekend of this month was Colourfest – a festival of yoga and good feels, in Dorset. I had the pleasure of leading a workshop based on the stuff I’ve been writing about here – a bit of phenomenological anthropology, some asana and meditation, yoga mythology […]
“I understand nothing”, he said. He hadn’t recovered from the wonders he had just seen. He never would. “Retain your bewilderment,” said the voice, his guide. “Your bewilderment will serve you well.” – Ben Okri, 1995, in Astonishing the Gods. Bewilderment. In yoga and in art, bewilderment is valuable. In yoga, you’ll often hear people […]
If you practise yoga for a while, you’re likely to find out that sometimes things come up that you weren’t expecting at all. Time and time again, fellow yoga students and teachers tell me about “this weird thing that happened” while they were in their zone, using their physical practice to work into the depths […]
“Art, like ritual, is associated with the cultural realm of ideas, symbols and aesthetics; both have a social and a collective dimension and take place in the subjunctive mood, a realm of pure possibility in which experiences generated could introduce innovations into the social structure.” (Jones 2013: 126) There isn’t a lot of research out […]