The Yoga of the Whole Human Being
What I do is different.
‘I teach yoga’, but what I do may be quite different from what those words might make you imagine.
My work is about including, inviting, gathering; about acknowledging, reconciling and integrating.
It is the yoga – balance, harmony, sustainable easefulness, skillfulness, integrity – of the whole human being.
The principal methods I use to explore this are:
-broad spectrum yogic movement
-practical, applied yoga philosophy – robust, time-tested, antifragile
-meditation and awareness practices
-storytelling, song, sound
-inquiry, circle, council
On 'teaching'
I have been apprenticing myself to the art, science, craft and discipline of teaching and communication for more than three decades, for most of my life. I have taught regularly since I was 16 years old.
I do not believe that anyone can teach anyone anything.
The best we can aim for as a teacher is to create/foster/invite a situation in which learning is more likely to occur.
I see three foundational factors to facilitate this:
One: Teaching as ongoing studentship.
As I started to explore practical Yoga Philosophy, I realized that my ‘best’ teaching experiences were experiences of yoga. The subject, topic or material served as a point of focus around which we could all gather, grow and learn together.
Two: Teaching as Vocation
We have to teach what we love, what we care about, what our souls ask, demand or compel us to teach, what we practice, incarnate and share.
I do not want a teacher who ‘presses play’, who reads obsolete notes, or runs by rote a trusty old lesson plan. I want a teacher who is there with the students, alive in the present moment, so we can alchemise it and honour its unique gifts for learning and evolution.
Three: ‘Yogic’ teaching method
I love what one of my Sanskṛt teachers says about ‘real’ education: “It is not to ‘cram in’. It is not to collect information. Rather, it is to draw forth the deeper wisdom and capacities that are already inside, waiting to be brought to life.”
Since my early days of teaching I have sought to ensure, as best I can, a holistic ‘yogic’ teaching method. An approach that appeals to and includes different learning styles, and which calls on and engages multiple learning intelligences.
Specifically, I want to appeal inclusively to active, pragmatic, theoretical and reflective learning styles. I want to make sure the material and our activities stimulate auditory, visual, linguistic, kinesthetic and emotional learning and intelligences.
Practical Lenses in the Yoga of the Whole Human Being
Yogic movement work that marries the powerful technologies of haṭha yoga with a holistic approach to broad-spectrum human movement. Rehabilitating our physical capacities and the fields of our bodies so we can more readily access the potency of haṭha yoga technologies and experience greater balance, harmony, skilfulness and efficiency through all the movements of life.
Practical, applied yoga philosophy: working direct from the miracle-mirror Sanskrit yoga texts which encode in beautiful, distilled form the super-practical principles of yoga as the art of living and dying, time-tested and peer reviewed over millennia and rendered accessible, relevant and applicable here and now through a relatable, practical and holistic teaching method.
Meditation and awareness practices that you can integrate into your life, to help you move from the centre and operate with greater ease and steadiness.
Storytelling, drawing on stories from the Indian yoga tradition and our broader human heritage to communicate the timeless wisdom teachings and support structures of yoga in ways that we can enjoy, digest and remember - installing them into our cells so they become part of our living memory and active resources.
Kirtan - the yoga of sound and song, like you’ve never experienced it before. Soulful, moving, inclusive and powerful, the simple yet transformative practice of call and response and group singing, using traditional songs and chants from the Indian and broader human traditions and new and original songs of devotion.
Council - Circle - Inquiry Gathering in Circle to explore and inquire.
Most of my formation in the practice and facilitation of Council was at the Ojai Foundation. ‘Council’ is a name to describe an age-old human practice.
We gather in circle and use a talking-piece. Traditional cultures from all around the world have used some form of this type of gathering for millennia. It is a way to help cleanse our psyches, sharpen and broaden our awareness, expand our vision and invite new understandings. As we hear different perspectives, we apprentice ourselves to the nowadays often neglected and sometimes forgotten art of listening and witnessing.
Some of the core, underlying principles of Council are shared with Yoga.
One of the core ideas in Council, also common to Yoga, is that when we are human, we have but two eyes: there will always be more that we cannot see than what we can. Truth is not a black and white absolutist matter. Truth is grey. It is nuanced, multi-coloured, multi-dimensional. Symbolically, we might say that Truth resides in the centre, in the real heart of things. As individuals, we may be limited by our particular perspective, by our conditionings and partiliaties. Still, each perspective can contribute to a bigger picture. When we gather in circle, we can expand our vision. The deep listening and witnessing of different viewpoints is a great support for what I consider among the most foundational yoga practices:
- looking in ways that reach beyond our habitual ways of looking,
- thinking in ways that go beyond our habitual patterns.
This is not always easy. Part of the living wisdom of traditional societies is that they recognized this and so wove into life practices that help us do this.
There are a couple of basic agreements to help form a strong and functional circle. One, respectfulness: no cross-talk. When one person speaks, everyone else listens.
Two, confidentiality: the circle is a safe space to share in confidence.
In addition, there are four concise guidelines that I learnt while training in Council at the Ojai Foundation:
1. Listen from the heart
2. Speak from the heart
3. Be spontaneous
4. Be lean of speech
These four guidelines are mutually complementary. They all ask us to be fully present with all of our awareness; to listen and witness with all of ourselves.
This supports another foundational yoga practice:
-doing whatever we are doing with all of ourselves; unifying our thought, word and deed; consecrating our time and actions.
In Council practice, this means that when others are speaking, we listen. We do not divert energy to planning what we might say. If it is our time to speak, we speak, in a lean, concise way, from the heart. This further relates to foundational yoga practices: of giving ourself permission to be fully here wherever we are, to practice living each moment as if it could be our last: to bring the depth of presence that makes the action its own reward, that makes each moment its own completion.
What I do is different.
‘I teach yoga’, but what I do may be quite different from what those words might make you imagine.
My work is about including, inviting, gathering; about acknowledging, reconciling and integrating.
It is the yoga – balance, harmony, sustainable easefulness, skillfulness, integrity – of the whole human being.
The principal methods I use to explore this are:
-broad spectrum yogic movement
-practical, applied yoga philosophy – robust, time-tested, antifragile
-meditation and awareness practices
-storytelling, song, sound
-inquiry, circle, council
On 'teaching'
I have been apprenticing myself to the art, science, craft and discipline of teaching and communication for more than three decades, for most of my life. I have taught regularly since I was 16 years old.
I do not believe that anyone can teach anyone anything.
The best we can aim for as a teacher is to create/foster/invite a situation in which learning is more likely to occur.
I see three foundational factors to facilitate this:
One: Teaching as ongoing studentship.
As I started to explore practical Yoga Philosophy, I realized that my ‘best’ teaching experiences were experiences of yoga. The subject, topic or material served as a point of focus around which we could all gather, grow and learn together.
Two: Teaching as Vocation
We have to teach what we love, what we care about, what our souls ask, demand or compel us to teach, what we practice, incarnate and share.
I do not want a teacher who ‘presses play’, who reads obsolete notes, or runs by rote a trusty old lesson plan. I want a teacher who is there with the students, alive in the present moment, so we can alchemise it and honour its unique gifts for learning and evolution.
Three: ‘Yogic’ teaching method
I love what one of my Sanskṛt teachers says about ‘real’ education: “It is not to ‘cram in’. It is not to collect information. Rather, it is to draw forth the deeper wisdom and capacities that are already inside, waiting to be brought to life.”
Since my early days of teaching I have sought to ensure, as best I can, a holistic ‘yogic’ teaching method. An approach that appeals to and includes different learning styles, and which calls on and engages multiple learning intelligences.
Specifically, I want to appeal inclusively to active, pragmatic, theoretical and reflective learning styles. I want to make sure the material and our activities stimulate auditory, visual, linguistic, kinesthetic and emotional learning and intelligences.
Practical Lenses in the Yoga of the Whole Human Being
Yogic movement work that marries the powerful technologies of haṭha yoga with a holistic approach to broad-spectrum human movement. Rehabilitating our physical capacities and the fields of our bodies so we can more readily access the potency of haṭha yoga technologies and experience greater balance, harmony, skilfulness and efficiency through all the movements of life.
Practical, applied yoga philosophy: working direct from the miracle-mirror Sanskrit yoga texts which encode in beautiful, distilled form the super-practical principles of yoga as the art of living and dying, time-tested and peer reviewed over millennia and rendered accessible, relevant and applicable here and now through a relatable, practical and holistic teaching method.
Meditation and awareness practices that you can integrate into your life, to help you move from the centre and operate with greater ease and steadiness.
Storytelling, drawing on stories from the Indian yoga tradition and our broader human heritage to communicate the timeless wisdom teachings and support structures of yoga in ways that we can enjoy, digest and remember - installing them into our cells so they become part of our living memory and active resources.
Kirtan - the yoga of sound and song, like you’ve never experienced it before. Soulful, moving, inclusive and powerful, the simple yet transformative practice of call and response and group singing, using traditional songs and chants from the Indian and broader human traditions and new and original songs of devotion.
Council - Circle - Inquiry Gathering in Circle to explore and inquire.
Most of my formation in the practice and facilitation of Council was at the Ojai Foundation. ‘Council’ is a name to describe an age-old human practice.
We gather in circle and use a talking-piece. Traditional cultures from all around the world have used some form of this type of gathering for millennia. It is a way to help cleanse our psyches, sharpen and broaden our awareness, expand our vision and invite new understandings. As we hear different perspectives, we apprentice ourselves to the nowadays often neglected and sometimes forgotten art of listening and witnessing.
Some of the core, underlying principles of Council are shared with Yoga.
One of the core ideas in Council, also common to Yoga, is that when we are human, we have but two eyes: there will always be more that we cannot see than what we can. Truth is not a black and white absolutist matter. Truth is grey. It is nuanced, multi-coloured, multi-dimensional. Symbolically, we might say that Truth resides in the centre, in the real heart of things. As individuals, we may be limited by our particular perspective, by our conditionings and partiliaties. Still, each perspective can contribute to a bigger picture. When we gather in circle, we can expand our vision. The deep listening and witnessing of different viewpoints is a great support for what I consider among the most foundational yoga practices:
- looking in ways that reach beyond our habitual ways of looking,
- thinking in ways that go beyond our habitual patterns.
This is not always easy. Part of the living wisdom of traditional societies is that they recognized this and so wove into life practices that help us do this.
There are a couple of basic agreements to help form a strong and functional circle. One, respectfulness: no cross-talk. When one person speaks, everyone else listens.
Two, confidentiality: the circle is a safe space to share in confidence.
In addition, there are four concise guidelines that I learnt while training in Council at the Ojai Foundation:
1. Listen from the heart
2. Speak from the heart
3. Be spontaneous
4. Be lean of speech
These four guidelines are mutually complementary. They all ask us to be fully present with all of our awareness; to listen and witness with all of ourselves.
This supports another foundational yoga practice:
-doing whatever we are doing with all of ourselves; unifying our thought, word and deed; consecrating our time and actions.
In Council practice, this means that when others are speaking, we listen. We do not divert energy to planning what we might say. If it is our time to speak, we speak, in a lean, concise way, from the heart. This further relates to foundational yoga practices: of giving ourself permission to be fully here wherever we are, to practice living each moment as if it could be our last: to bring the depth of presence that makes the action its own reward, that makes each moment its own completion.
