Author: iamronen
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Religiousness in Yoga Part 4: Vinyāsa, Laṅghana & Bṛṃhaṇa
Excerpts from “Religiousness in Yoga” by TKV Desikachar Part1: Vinyāsa … Will someone who knows nothing about Yoga recognize the difference between it and gymanstics … merely by looking at a book on Yoga āsanas? Yoga … is not an expression of form for others to watch. We are doing it for ourselves. We are…
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Religiousness in Yoga Part 3: Avidyā, Dhyāna, Svatantra, Pratikpaksa, Duḥkha, Guṇa, Prajñā, Kaivalya
Excerpts from “Religiousness in Yoga” by TKV Desikachar 1: Avidyā ” … We never know when a particular form of avidyā might arise. It is like planting seeds. The moment they get water, fertilizer and air, they sprout … We should never relax when we appear to have no avidyā … Therefore, we emphasize that…
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Religiousness in Yoga Part 2: Asana, Sukha, Sthira
Excerpts from “Religiousness in Yoga” by TKV Desikachar 1: Asana The practice of Yoga provides us an occasion that might give us a feeling for the meaning of the word Yoga. Despite any incidental benefits, this is the fundamental reason for practice … In our practice we focus upon the body, the breath and the…
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Yoga Practice & Well-Being Charts 2022 part 1
The experiment in charting my well-being continues through subjective Yoga-practice related indicators. Monthly Charts The monthly charts being 10 days before the beginning of the month and continue 10 days beyond its end in order to give the month some context. 6 Month Charts The 6 month weekly median and daily charts stretch back into…
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Religiousness in Yoga Part 1: Yoga, Avidyā, Pariṇāma, Puruṣa, Sādhana
Excerpts from “Religiousness in Yoga” by TKV Desikachar 1: Yoga Yoga is one of the six principle systems of Indian thinking known as darśana. The word darśana is derived from the Sanskrit root drś, meaning “to see.” Fundamentally darśana means “view” or “a particular way of viewing.” It also has a further meaning which suggests…
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How Electricity Actually Works
I remember when I studied electronics and electricity in high school I was able to do the math ( V = IR ). It was presented to me as something “very intuitive” but it didn’t feel intuitive to me … and I didn’t dare to ask, because if it was “obviously intuitive” and I wasn’t…
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Born to fight
Michael was overjoyed to see him. No one had known exactly where Isaac was, or if he was going to make it back. Other young men from the kibbutz had been arriving and disappearing into the war, and it seemed there were questions being asked about the ones who still hadn’t shown up. Maybe not…
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The Art Of Life
Because sometimes you have to make a film about the man you just met on the beach a gift from Anna-Maija
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Celebration and … the Sacred?
Maija asked me recently about my relationship with celebrating … and I am generally uncomfortable around celebration. Today I encountered these two stories from Rick Rubin, a master of delicacy. The first story sets the context for the second story and the second story (wait for it after the song and forgive the clumsy but…
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Realms Beyond Reason
” … the crisis is being caused by the inadequacy of existing forms of thought to cope with the situation. It can’t be solved by rational means because the rationality itself is the source of the problem … the solution to the problem isn’t that you abandon rationality but that you expand the nature of…
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Who By Fire – Leonard Cohen, Israel … and I
I’ve been distantly aware that Leonard Cohen visited Israel during the 1973 Yom Kippur war and sang for soldiers in the desert. So I went into this podcast episode about this event with a sense of curiosity. The story is told with care and subtlety and I look forward to reading the book. My curiosity…
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Yoga Practice Charts 2021
In some past Yoga check-ins, I tried using graphs to illustrate how my sense of well-being fluctuates. The graphs were created in retrospect and I invented data to try to express how I felt. In 2021 I initiated a journaling experiment to see what real data might look like. I use a spreadsheet to collect…
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Greg Bryant on Generative Sequences
I feel that generative sequences are one of the most overlooked and valuable discoveries in Christopher Alexander’s work. When you learn to see them for what they are you can find examples of them everywhere and then you can increasingly notice when/where they are missing. I have adopted an attitude in which I assume that…
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Custodial Relation to a Sentient Landscape
This morning I wrote this in a Samkhya journal entry: The text itself is not a body of knowledge. It is a place-holder, a seed around which knowledge can crystallize. The knowledge is held in a kind of morphic field of all the teachers and students who have together engaged and explored the text and…
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סתיו כמו חורף
גל של קור עבר פה בימים האחרוניםהלילות קפואים, התנור בוער בבוקריבש בחוץ, האדמה קשההשמש גם היא ביקרה בימים האחרוניםכמעט כל יום יצאתי החוצה וישבתי לקרוא עטוף בקרניה אני פוגש שוב את החיוניות בתרגולזו איכות שמופיעה מעצמה כשהתרגול ממושך וכשהלב שקטלא חוויתי אותה מזה כשנתייםבשנה שעברה בזמן זה הרגשתי מתפורר מהקשר עם יוליההנשימה הייתה שבורה וגם…