2025-10-31 12:04:49
New group. Invitation to join.
When I invite people to a new yoga group, I never know how others see yoga and what they expect to encounter in a class.
Yoga today has many faces and Instagram avatars. For some it means dynamic bodily postures; for others — silent sitting with closed eyes. It can be linked to great Vedic seers and profound philosophical texts, yet also to “goat yoga” or even “beer yoga.”
The yoga, however, is difficult to describe before it is practised. Many things a new student will meet cannot be fully explained without experience. How can we know what a journey will bring before we take the first step? How can someone explain mathematics to a person who has never studied it? And those who have already “done yoga” often come with expectations that can obscure what a class will truly be about.
Still, I want each new student to have at least a glimpse of understanding of the program. I would describe it like this:
• We will practise yogic postures (āsanas), but the outer form is not what matters — it is about the science of moving and directing energy through the body;
• We will work with practices that «control the mind», exploring the many different shapes that control can take — this is one of the most interesting part of self-study;
• We will discuss emotions, beginning where the mechanics of Western psychology stop;
• We will enter the esoterics of yoga — not as incense sticks or New Age psychedelic imagery, but as a clear and precise inner discipline of communication with others;
• We will study the methods behind insight and mystical experience — beyond the modern picture of an ecstatic or intoxicated figure.
I hope this contrast helps to return yogic categories to their real meaning, apart from how mass culture has appropriated them. We will study yoga; you will discover more about yourself than you knew before. Self-actualisation and transformation will be the long-term goals.
@DimitriosD
When I invite people to a new yoga group, I never know how others see yoga and what they expect to encounter in a class.
Yoga today has many faces and Instagram avatars. For some it means dynamic bodily postures; for others — silent sitting with closed eyes. It can be linked to great Vedic seers and profound philosophical texts, yet also to “goat yoga” or even “beer yoga.”
The yoga, however, is difficult to describe before it is practised. Many things a new student will meet cannot be fully explained without experience. How can we know what a journey will bring before we take the first step? How can someone explain mathematics to a person who has never studied it? And those who have already “done yoga” often come with expectations that can obscure what a class will truly be about.
Still, I want each new student to have at least a glimpse of understanding of the program. I would describe it like this:
• We will practise yogic postures (āsanas), but the outer form is not what matters — it is about the science of moving and directing energy through the body;
• We will work with practices that «control the mind», exploring the many different shapes that control can take — this is one of the most interesting part of self-study;
• We will discuss emotions, beginning where the mechanics of Western psychology stop;
• We will enter the esoterics of yoga — not as incense sticks or New Age psychedelic imagery, but as a clear and precise inner discipline of communication with others;
• We will study the methods behind insight and mystical experience — beyond the modern picture of an ecstatic or intoxicated figure.
I hope this contrast helps to return yogic categories to their real meaning, apart from how mass culture has appropriated them. We will study yoga; you will discover more about yourself than you knew before. Self-actualisation and transformation will be the long-term goals.
@DimitriosD