Heart Yoga Radio

A CRUEL DECEPTION: THE MANUFACTURE OF DISCONTENT AND THE SPIRITUAL SUPERMARKET

In this podcast, I take issue with a couple of examples of a common new age trope that promises the fulfillment all your desires easily if only you partake of this or that snake oil. I assert that this idiocy both exaggerates and underestimates the promise of meditational quietness given that its motivations lie in a quest for profit and influence. The discussion briefly explores will, desire, the tendency to wish-fulfillment fantasy and suggests what the real possibilities for meditation might be. [Free. 18 minutes.]

GETTING INFORMED IN THE INFORMATION AGE

In his podcast, we consider the problems of negotiating the unprecedented access to information that characterises the modern age. We note that too much information becomes no information unless we have the means to evaluate what is relevant to our questions, to discern what is reliable and what not, and unless we have some grasp of interpretation and how it relates to states of affairs in the world. We go on to consider the struggle for the internet and the broad shape of the power which tries to determine and exploit our lives. [Free. 60 minutes.]

TURBULENCE: TURKEY, BREXIT, THE STRUGGLE FOR THE INTERNET

This podcast starts with a discussion of flux which I characterize here as 'turbulence' and 'fragmentation'. The turbulence in Turkey [where there was an attempted military coup the day before this was recorded], the fragmentation in UK politics post Brexit, and the struggle for control of the internet are then considered. [Free. 36 minutes.]

RE BREXIT [PART TWO]

Further comment as things move on. I entertain a conspiracy theory or two: looks like the corporations will do well, less so workers unless they resist, network and build. [Free. 34 minutes.]

YOGA AND ANATOMY

This squib questions the relevance of anatomical study to the practice of Hatha Yoga and the training of 'yoga teachers'. Warning: lots of swearing. [Free. 33 minutes.]

TRAVELLING LIGHT

We started this podcast with no topic in mind. Consequently it meanders from a consideration of the plasticity of mind through the matter of the historical variety of cultures and the character formations they produce and require, on through a story about our current situation in which consumerist capitalism requires hyper-individualism as the preferred human character, on through a narrative connecting discomfort with this plasticity with social conservatism and the metaphysics of stasis. Somewhere amongst this, we remember childhood and celebrate and recommend travelling light. [Free. 51 minutes.]

CHAOS AND COSMOS PART FOUR

Here, somewhat belatedly, is the final part of Chaos and Cosmos, a talk given at Parkdale in 2015. The main thrust of this part of the talk is to abstract the practicalities implicit in the discourse thus far for practitioners of meditation and creativity. We also hear about Taliesin's shit-or-bust attempt to win the high priestess.

For the sake of intelligibility, I've pruned some labyrinthine Q and A and ribald interaction. The other three episodes are still on this site as you'll find if you go back a bit. [Free. 30 minutes.]

THE ROLE OF THE 'SPIRITUAL MASTER'?

In this podcast a specific instance of the authoritarianism that often accompanies spiritual culture is treated critically. Listeners are urged to value their autonomy and hone, not repress, their critical faculties because both of these are conditions for spiritual inquiry to take place at all. [Free. 15 minutes.]

YOGA & COMMERCIALISM

A short squib proposing that the modern entanglement of yoga with commercialism is actually inimical to yoga, at least as understood by Patanjali. Patanjali's practices of satya and aparagriha are invoked in relation to advertising and yoga's place in the economy. A way of collectively combating the unholy alliance between yoga and commercialism is suggested and those who think that the razzmatazz is all very fine  are asked to justify their position. [Free. 16 minutes.]

ON THE BODY [PART SIX]: THE SENSES AND PROCESS

This is a meander which attempts to elucidate the senses and perception. We start off by saying why it is preferable to consider the senses as though processes rather than structures are primordial, as indeed our life-world and lived experience suggest. [The philosophical tradition largely considers the senses through a structural metaphor which understands the human being as like a camera and this is briefly taken issue with.]  The path of thought winds its way towards the intimation that the entanglement of the processes of nature, psyche, culture and consciousness which is human life allows the universe, potentially, to see itself. [Free. 59 minutes.]