Heart Yoga Radio

INDIVIDUAL & COLLECTIVE, (& FARMING)

This podcast is a wide-ranging discussion which ends up entertaining the suspicion that the individual and collective do not make up a stark opposition, as much right-wing propaganda presupposes. The journey includes some thoughts about soil and ecological degradation and cultural shifts taking place regarding struggles over how agriculture should be best conducted. Not to mention, a stab at answering the pressing conundrum, "What is woke, exactly?"  [Free. 32 minutes.] (Click on the link to buy me a coffee.)

LAO TZU 50

In this podcast, discuss Chapter 63 of Lao Tzu's Tao Te Ching. The main theme is how the sage negotiates life through wu wei, or non-doing. In astonishingly few words, Lao Tzu imparts a very detailed account of wu-wei. [Free. 37 minutes.]

THE JUBILEE, PSYCHOANALYSIS & OTHER GOSSIP - INTERESTING TIMES 53

In this podcast, I consider the question of the nature of the UK monarchy as revealed by the current jubilee celebrations, and if psychoanalysis might be useful for answering it.  Recorded as I take my constitutional so contains some real-world sounds :) [Free. 39 minutes.]

LAO TZU 46

In this podcast we consider Chapter 59 of Lao Tzu's Tao Te Ching. This deals with the theme of simplicity of being as being at the heart of both meditation and the leadership qualities of the sage.  [Free.  16 minutes.]

TORIES ON THE ROPES? - INTERESTING TIMES 43

In the light of the MPs second jobs scandal, we ask, 'How much more will the public put up with?' This leads to questions about the nature of ideology, and the contradictory class consciousness of Tories who make light of in-work poverty and the cutting of Universal Credit on the one hand, and then, on the other hand, plead that MPs need second jobs because they can't discharge their familial duty on £82 per annum! We underscore the point that this current scandal isn't anything fundamentally new, but a symptom of the profound and toxic entanglement of corporate and state power in the UK. [Free. 44 minutes.]

REMARKS ON FREUD PART 2 - THE TOPOGRAPHICAL MODEL

This podcast continues with our series of Freud's thought. It focusses on Freud's lecture Dissection of the Psychical Personality (1933), outlining it and critically appraising it's main features. [Free. 55 minutes.]

LAO TZU 40

This podcast deals with Chapter 40 of Lao Tzu's Tao Te Ching. We concentrate on the amazing relevance this chapter has to our current political, economic and spiritual emergencies. In a few short lines, Lao Tzu diagnoses the condition of the working people of his time as subjection to violent and militarily oriented 'robber barons' whilst they themselves are the creators of value and the necessary goods to sustain life. This is exactly our condition too. Lao Tzu offers a meditation to counter the fragmental [non-holistic, non-systemic thinking] which is the ideological counterpart to a kleptocratic economy. [Free. 29 minutes.]

REMARKS ON FREUD PART 1 - THE UNCONSCIOUS

This podcast is the first in an ongoing series on Freud and psychoanalysis which is meant to be useful to our series on fascism and reason, as well as to our many considerations of the workings of propaganda and ideology. Here, give some background to Freud's intellectual journey and elucidate the notion of 'the unconscious' and its significance for humanity's self-image. [Free. 34 minutes.]

LAO TZU 34

This podcast engages with Chapter 47 of The Tao Te Ching which deals with solitude and meditation. The style of meditation alluded to is a letting be rather than a cultivation and gives rise to an intuitive knowledge, a sense of the bigger picture. We suggest how acquaintance with this wonderful meditation can produce social goods and is sorely needed in these interesting times. [Free. 16 minutes.]

REASON ON REASON 4 - MADNESS

In this podcast we examine madness or the loss of reason to further our picturing of reason. We start out with the fact that madness, like reason has a history which offers us a variety of causal explanations of madness, treatments for it, and accounts of its meaning. We also give a brief account of nosological drift. Both of these preliminaries serve to cast suspicion on the notion that we can discern madness through contrast with a supposedly sane consensus reality. Accordingly, we are drawn to consider madness in terms of suffering people and to appraise crazy social and political situations through the employment of a critical awareness rather than accepting the status quo understanding as a yardstick. That critical awareness, we claim, entails acquaintance with ones own potential for irrationality. [Free. 54 minutes.]