Tantra And Yoga History

Dear Yogis.

Here’s a thing! There’s a free online talk tomorrow called The Truth About Tantra by Dr Raj Balkaran from the Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies (OCHS). It’s at 7pm UK time, May 1st. It will be on You Tube, and also on Zoom  (Meeting ID: 976 0395 6109 and passcode: 654263). I’ve written about Tantra before because it is a misused word the West and because it’s part of our yoga history. Dr Balkaran says: ‘Fetishized and appropriated in India and beyond as the resort of hedonists and black magicians, Tantra is a profoundly misunderstood and misused spiritual path.’

At the beginning of the year, I wrote about a British Museum online exhibition of Tantra. Enlightenment to Revolution. Those links still work. I found a practitioner to give his description of Tantra. Professor Sthaneshwar Timalsina says this: Tantra tells you that you have freedom and that you can do anything. What you want, what you desire, that is the law. Tantra says you don't have to do anything you don't want to do. Any dogma, any doctrine, any text, any guru, any god cannot impose anything on you. Whatever you do, that is the law. All your disciplines are not from the state or the law but from the heart.

With that quote you can see that the movement was a protest which was reacting to the Vedic order of the day. Kundalini Yoga is from this context. This is also the context within which The Buddha did his wandering and seeking and would have practiced Tantric ritual.

We’re all wandering and seeking in some way! Maybe see you there!

Zoom Classes 

A three-day weekend! Yay! Yes, I’m teaching on Bank Holiday Monday. I usually do! Come along and have a stretch. I’m also teaching today. I know some of you sign up after receiving this email. I look forward to seeing you later. It’s Ashtanga today at 4.30. Come and have a go.

Yoga in the news 

Psychology Today has: Why Yoga Is a Valid Mental-Health Treatment. ‘Researchers do not understand exactly how yoga helps to improve depression. There is some evidence that yoga’s combination of physical movement and meditation helps to reduce stress levels and lower blood pressure.’

Bushwick Daily has: How A Yoga Studio Survived A Pandemic. A Tibetan philosopher, Shantideva, once said “If a problem can be solved, what reason is there to be upset?” The studio is an ‘infrared panel-heated room which uses hospital grade filters and the windows are popped open for cross ventilation’. There is enforced mask wearing in classes. Solved!