So there was a recently a spurious patent issued for shooting video of a yoga asana class from a particular angle. From my view, this is the inevitable result of “yoga” not being about … well, yoga. Fortunately, there can never be a patent on the inner state of awakening that makes one lead a […]
Read more "On the YogaGlo video patent"In a recent discussion with an attorney about the US FDA and the current state of science and medicine, he shared this joke to summarize his view: Comedian Tim Minchin sums this up best when he says, “By definition, Alternative Medicine has either not been proved to work, or been proved not to work. You […]
Read more "Ancient, Alternative, Emerging Science and Medicine"A friend posted to my Facebook wall this recent NPR article entitled “Do Vegetarians and Vegans Think They’re Better Than Everyone Else?” Despite its cheeky tone, the question seriously got me thinking about the community of vegans — do we think …
Read more "Being Vegan"A persistent topic among my Insight Meditation circle of friends is that of anatta — non-self. On this theme, a quote from Tricycle’s Daily Dharma was recently shared: The Limited Mask of SelfOf all the words we use to disguise the hollowness of …
Read more "Evolving into Love through Self and Non-Self"I’ve been sad lately. On April 12, I celebrated 10 years of continuous 12-step recovery; it was a moment shared with over 100 people, including my mother and so many dear friends, to celebrate this gift of life I’ve been given. In the moment, one …
Read more "April 12, 2012"a blog post in five parts by Vikram Surya Chiruvolu I. A Global Culture of Addiction To begin with a small example: a friend recently posted to their Facebook page about the book, It’s Just a Plant — a children’s book about marijuana. In the prev…
Read more "Yoga, Addiction, and Recovery"A friend recently asked me about my view on how to get started with meditation. Here’s my answer in the form of five keys. The first key is — know that meditation is anything that centers you, purposefully. Different people at different times in …
Read more "Getting started with meditation"There was a Newsweek piece today cheekily entitled Bow Down to the Yoga Teacher that brought up some interesting thoughts for me on why people do just that. Posted three comments about it, two to YogaDork.com where I first heard about it – http://…
Read more "Celebrity and Refuge"I’ve been meditating recently on how better to describe the type of yoga I practice – and its relation to all the other ‘yoga’ out there. An intuition has been evolving and recently distilled itself into this: My yoga is decidedly not the objectif…
Read more "Objectification and Yoga"One of my first spiritual and most important teachers in adult life was my great uncle Dr. NC Surya, an Integral Yogi in the Sri Aurobindo tradition. He wrote that yogic speech is accurate, compassionate, appropriate, and useful. If it can’t be al…
Read more "Teaching yoga and spiritual activism"