Heart Yoga Radio

IS ADJUSTMENT OF YOGA POSTURES BY TEACHERS NECESSARY OR USEFUL?

In this podcast, we take issue with the sacred cow of 'adjustment' i.e. the practice on the part of some 'yoga teachers' of taking hold of a student's body during yoga posture (asana) practice in order to 'correct' it. [Free. 21 minutes.]

YOGA REGULATION? NO THANKS

This podcast addresses a situation current on planet Yoga in the UK and will be of special interest to UK Yoga teachers and teacher trainers. The situation I allude to is the decision made by a government licensed body [Skills Active]  in conjunction with the British Wheel of Yoga to institute a 'National Occupational Standard' [NOS] for a Yoga teacher. This was attempted 12 years ago and didn't succeed, most likely because of considerable opposition from the Yoga Community. I give an outline of the history and the players in this mad game and then demonstrate that Yoga should not be regulated by any governmental agency or narrow interest. Rather, I contend, it is necessarily diverse and therefore beyond the scope of regulation. I then give an account of the Independent Yoga Network which was set up 12 years ago in the face of the first attempt at NOS to defend freedom and diversity and promote Yoga.  [Free. 44 minutes.]

MORALITY: CONTINGENCY, LOVE & SELF-ENQUIRY

This podcast is a ground-work for some future engagements we hope to make with this vast and important topic. We touch on the matter of the contingency or morality, drawing loosely upon Nietzsche's Genealogy of Morals (1886). The formation of super-ego / conscience is sketched and the importance of child-rearing and educational practices is thus underscored. We recommend naturally occurring communism as a tendency to be encouraged within communities and enterprises and observe that the love will shout if only one enquires into one's entanglement with morality. [Free. 47 minutes.]

PATANJALI'S ZEN: COMMENTARY ON THE FIRST SIX APHORISMS OF THE YOGA SUTRA

In this podcast, we comment on the first six aphorisms of Patanjali's Yoga Sutra. The podcast stands alone but is also intended to supply the background to a practical weekend to be held at The Parkdale Yoga Centre, Wolverhampton on October 22nd - 23rd 2016. This weekend is ideal for yoga teachers, dedicated practitioners and open-minded beginners in Yoga. 

The section of the Yoga Sutra we concern ourselves with here is very direct, un-ornamented, non-technical and revelatory, if only you look in the direction it points in. [Free. 1 hour 16 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.]

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.]

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.]

ON THE BODY [PART FIVE]: SEX, NATURE, CULTURE & ENLIGHTENMENT

As always this is wide-ranging. We discuss the nature of sexual arousal, sexual practices and the ideas people have about sex, attempting as we go to free ourselves from the conceptual straight-jacket imposed by the popular binary nature-culture. This naturally {!} leads to a consideration of sexual taboos and the transgression of them in Dionysiac/Tantric orgies and a fleeting analysis of the emancipatory potential of raw joy - ananda. We find it useful to identify two recognizable modes of consciousness aroused by sex. In one, fantasy is intensified. In the other fantasy is attenuated and 'immediate' sensations take over. [Free. 53 minutes.]

ON THE BODY [PART FOUR]: THE BODY DIES

The body dies. In this podcast we critically reflect on the existential and cultural consequences of the fact of life that the body dies. [Free. 36 minutes.]