School is back in session at the poly I teach at, my 4 month old has decided that he wants to start crawling, despite the fact that he cannot, in fact, crawl anywhere. He’s also brought home a nasty cold from the germ-infested ground zero that is his infant care, and now all three of us are near death. It might be a zombie appocolypse. For all I know, I’m already the walking dead.
Between my day job, teaching yoga and taking care of a sick infant, while being sick myself, my life is a super-duper-extra-special sundae made of exhaustion, with nasal congestion sauce on top. Hurray!
I try to look at these micro interruptions in the vigor of my usual practice; illness, injuries, social obligations etc. as an opportunity to research, to learn, to focus on the technical or philosophical. What is called in yoga; Jnana, yoga of introspection or study.
Since I can’t always take time out to read the Yoga Sutras or push my way through The Bhagavad Gita – the amount of cross-referencing and google searches alone would reduce my reading rate to about a page per week, oh Partha son of Pritha… I’ve been listening to a wack of yoga and spirituality related podcasts, both as a learning tool, and aid to meditation. Here’s my top 4.
Vedanta and Yoga:
https://itunes.apple.com/sg/podcast/vedanta-and-yoga/id160835381?mt=2
Recorded by the Vedanta Society of Boston, MA. And the Vedanta Society of Southern California, this podcast features a series of lectures by various Vedanta monks and scholars. Topics range from interpretations of the Gita to Buddhism in the greater context of Indian Philosophy, practical applications of Krishna consciousness and so on.
Three things make this podcast stand out. Firstly, the recording is good quality for live settings. There’s very little noise or distortion. Secondly, the speakers have very minimal accents. Most serious scholars of Indian philosophy are, not surprisingly, Indian, and accents and clarity of spoken English can vary. Case in point; there's a youtube video on the rarely discussed and deeply under-appreciated Charvaka (a philosophical approach near and dear to my heart), but I can only understand maybe 40% of it due to the speaker’s accent, which makes learning pretty hard. Finally, there is a good mix of the esoteric and the practical, mostly aimed at a generally secular Western audience, as opposed to a group of Hindu devotees already well versed in the topics.
Waking Up with Sam Harris:
https://itunes.apple.com/sg/podcast/waking-up-with-sam-harris/id733163012?mt=2
Known more for his anti-religious polemics than spirituality, Harris; who holds degrees in philosophy and neuroscience, is also a dedicated meditator, primarily in the methodologies of the Dzogchen school of Tibetan Buddhism. He has studied with noted Vajrayana master Dilgo Khyentse, as well as a variety of other teachers, both Eastern and Western, and completed several extended bouts of Vipassana – a practice requiring at least a full 10 days of consecutive silence, meditation and self-reflection.
Since Harris’ views on reason and the predominance of the scientific method as the only legitimate epistemological method, so closely align with my own, I find his approach to meditation and the self-directed study of the mind, free from assertions of supernatural ‘energies’, past-lives, auras or other mystical hangers-on, to be refreshingly clear-headed.
If you don’t mind having some of your most cherished beliefs smashed like cockroaches beneath a well-aimed slipper, give Waking Up a listen.
Asana Academy:
https://itunes.apple.com/sg/podcast/the-asana-academy-podcast/id1037530665?mt=2
I only started listening to this one recently. Asana Academy is really aimed at the active yoga teacher, so the topics tend to focus on practical advice for teachers. Done by Brian Aganad, a yoga teacher and teacher trainer in Palo Alto, California, he has a good variety of guests, including what might be your favourite (mostly) western yoga teacher-celebrities.
What I like here is you get to listen to yoga bad-asses like Dylan Werner talk about their struggles and frustrations; basically the real deal that perfect poses and cascading sunsets of Instagram yoga won’t tell you. There’s also a ton of business advice, technical discussion on advanced or difficult poses, how to structure classes, deal with angry or dissatisfied students, and a lot more.
Mediation Oasis:
https://itunes.apple.com/sg/podcast/meditation-oasis/id204570355?mt=2
Guided meditation by Mary and Richard Maddux, a husband and wife team of meditation teachers and producer/composers. Nothing fancy here, just straight-forward guided mediation, usually done by Mary. I listen to at least one before going to bed at night. A very effective method of picking any chitta vritti out of your third eye before hitting the sack.
Between my day job, teaching yoga and taking care of a sick infant, while being sick myself, my life is a super-duper-extra-special sundae made of exhaustion, with nasal congestion sauce on top. Hurray!
I try to look at these micro interruptions in the vigor of my usual practice; illness, injuries, social obligations etc. as an opportunity to research, to learn, to focus on the technical or philosophical. What is called in yoga; Jnana, yoga of introspection or study.
Since I can’t always take time out to read the Yoga Sutras or push my way through The Bhagavad Gita – the amount of cross-referencing and google searches alone would reduce my reading rate to about a page per week, oh Partha son of Pritha… I’ve been listening to a wack of yoga and spirituality related podcasts, both as a learning tool, and aid to meditation. Here’s my top 4.
Vedanta and Yoga:
https://itunes.apple.com/sg/podcast/vedanta-and-yoga/id160835381?mt=2
Recorded by the Vedanta Society of Boston, MA. And the Vedanta Society of Southern California, this podcast features a series of lectures by various Vedanta monks and scholars. Topics range from interpretations of the Gita to Buddhism in the greater context of Indian Philosophy, practical applications of Krishna consciousness and so on.
Three things make this podcast stand out. Firstly, the recording is good quality for live settings. There’s very little noise or distortion. Secondly, the speakers have very minimal accents. Most serious scholars of Indian philosophy are, not surprisingly, Indian, and accents and clarity of spoken English can vary. Case in point; there's a youtube video on the rarely discussed and deeply under-appreciated Charvaka (a philosophical approach near and dear to my heart), but I can only understand maybe 40% of it due to the speaker’s accent, which makes learning pretty hard. Finally, there is a good mix of the esoteric and the practical, mostly aimed at a generally secular Western audience, as opposed to a group of Hindu devotees already well versed in the topics.
Waking Up with Sam Harris:
https://itunes.apple.com/sg/podcast/waking-up-with-sam-harris/id733163012?mt=2
Known more for his anti-religious polemics than spirituality, Harris; who holds degrees in philosophy and neuroscience, is also a dedicated meditator, primarily in the methodologies of the Dzogchen school of Tibetan Buddhism. He has studied with noted Vajrayana master Dilgo Khyentse, as well as a variety of other teachers, both Eastern and Western, and completed several extended bouts of Vipassana – a practice requiring at least a full 10 days of consecutive silence, meditation and self-reflection.
Since Harris’ views on reason and the predominance of the scientific method as the only legitimate epistemological method, so closely align with my own, I find his approach to meditation and the self-directed study of the mind, free from assertions of supernatural ‘energies’, past-lives, auras or other mystical hangers-on, to be refreshingly clear-headed.
If you don’t mind having some of your most cherished beliefs smashed like cockroaches beneath a well-aimed slipper, give Waking Up a listen.
Asana Academy:
https://itunes.apple.com/sg/podcast/the-asana-academy-podcast/id1037530665?mt=2
I only started listening to this one recently. Asana Academy is really aimed at the active yoga teacher, so the topics tend to focus on practical advice for teachers. Done by Brian Aganad, a yoga teacher and teacher trainer in Palo Alto, California, he has a good variety of guests, including what might be your favourite (mostly) western yoga teacher-celebrities.
What I like here is you get to listen to yoga bad-asses like Dylan Werner talk about their struggles and frustrations; basically the real deal that perfect poses and cascading sunsets of Instagram yoga won’t tell you. There’s also a ton of business advice, technical discussion on advanced or difficult poses, how to structure classes, deal with angry or dissatisfied students, and a lot more.
Mediation Oasis:
https://itunes.apple.com/sg/podcast/meditation-oasis/id204570355?mt=2
Guided meditation by Mary and Richard Maddux, a husband and wife team of meditation teachers and producer/composers. Nothing fancy here, just straight-forward guided mediation, usually done by Mary. I listen to at least one before going to bed at night. A very effective method of picking any chitta vritti out of your third eye before hitting the sack.