MY PHILOSOPHY

I am interested in how to use yoga’s theories and practices to effect personal transformation, which from a yogic perspective is about moving from reactivity to a deeper state of freedom. 

For me reactivity is just a fancy word to describe the fact that we aren’t always really aware of what we’re thinking, feeling or doing.  Everyday, things happen.  Some effect us; most don’t, and of the ones that effect us, they either feel good or bad.  In both cases, this response of feeling good or bad triggers reactions in our minds and hearts.  Sometimes, we’re aware of these reactions, but more often, we’re not, and in both cases, they become the building blocks of the set of habits that we associate with ‘being me’.  Yoga calls this set of habits – habits of thought, feeling and action – the personal self. 

I like to think of that self as a system of habits, processes, or algorithms that’s designed to help me navigate the complexity of the world without needing to consciously process everything that’s unfolding around me.  While this self-system is highly adaptive, 95% of its processing is non-conscious, meaning that we’re only aware of a small portion what’s happening within us and around us at any given moment.  Sandwiched between this fog of unknowing and the voice inside your head, there is a lot of space to get weird.   And in this mode of being, when we find ourselves suffering – whatever the flavour – the tendency is to react to that experience by distracting with external things or by trying to change other people or the world around us to do or be what we want.  This approach can be effective in the short term, but for yoga, it’s not a permanent solution because, fundamentally, we don’t suffer because of other people and the world.  We suffer because we exist in an inner state of disintegration – partially awake and pushed forward by the force of habit – that keeps us bound by our past and unaware of the deeper potentials of our being.  

To live more fully, you have to heal this inner disintegration, which is what all the different practices and teachings of yoga are ultimately about.  The good news is they work.  The bad news is that they work slowly, and the process isn’t always pleasant.  But if you practice systematically, your mind and heart will open to the point that it becomes possible to digest the past and free the energies trapped within you. If you do that, you will awaken the the dynamic intelligence of your body, regulate your mind and become attuned to your deep intuitions.  

Stepping into this process means moving from victimhood to agency, from reactivity to presence, and from doubt to peace.  The journey is not a straight line, but as it unfolds, one thing becomes clear:  our lives are a function of the stories we tell.  These stories are grounded in our lived experience, but what we experience depends on our energetic state.

Change your state, change your story.
Change your story, change your life.

How Movement Becomes Yoga

Yoga is the experience of integration that emerges when you become present with your experience.  To transform movement practice into yoga, all you need to do is continually notice what is arising within the field of your awareness while you are practicing.  In other words, you start to realise that while the poses have intrinsic benefits, a deeper level of practice unfolds if you also use them to train mindfulness.

As you become more skilled at paying attention, five areas of self-experience will become increasingly differentiated in your awareness:  the body, the dynamic intelligence within it, your thoughts, deep intuitive knowing, and present moment awareness.  When yoga talks about union or integration, what it’s taking about is becoming aware of these different dimensions of your experience and allowing them to interact.  Each of these domains of experience contains wisdom, and if you can learn to reliably connect to more of your being, you gain insight about your truth, what is really happening in your life, and how you could respond in ways that serve your highest potential. 

This is the power of mindfulness and the door that transforms movement into yoga.

How to Understand Spiritual Transformation

Spiritual transformation is what happens when you start to wake up to the fullness of your being.  As we open to that fullness, we erode the power that past narratives and conditioned responses exert over our thoughts and actions.  Through this process, we gradually shift from a state of neurotic attachment to our fears and desires to one of empowered awareness that allows us to respond to our lives with grace and courage.

While my teachings on this journey incorporate insights from neuroscience, developmental psychology and mythology, my core framework is the chakras, an embodied system for understanding our multi-faceted selves and the path to inner freedom.  Each chakra is an energy centre that relates to a specific domain of being.  Collectively, these centres describe the essence of what we are in a sort of archetypal sense.  Who we are, or our specific identity, is a function of how our past has influenced our relationship to these different domains of being, while our lives are the product of specific use patterns that have persisted through time. 

In this way, the chakras provide a unified framework for better understanding 1) our potential, or the archetypal forces within us, 2) who we are, or how our lived experiences have effected our relationship to those forces, and 3) how our real-life challenges are constantly inviting us to recognise—and to address—the disconnect between how we’ve learned to exercise our power and the true potential of our being.