This co-taught practice-oriented session offers different modalities for sharing and experiencing Sūrya Namaskāra or Sun Salutations. The intention is to experiment with different teaching approaches, maintain the authority of the practitioner, and reflect on the felt experience of the practice. Ruth Westoby will open with a traditional Ashtanga-oriented approach. Theo Wildcroft will deconstruct the practice to innovate for accessibility. Eunice Laurel will explore ways to encourage agency to include the autobiographical body. There will be opportunity for self-practice, observation, and discussion. We will take time to reflect on the felt experience of these modes and methods for moving on in our practice and teaching.
Co-facilitated with Eunice Laurel, Theo Wildcroft and Ruth Westoby
This lecture will outline some of the key critical issues in the contemporary study of yoga. As globalised modern yoga becomes a dominant cultural phenomenon there has been a similar rise in the academic study of yoga both ancient and modern. The ‘critical issues’ in modern yoga which have absorbed both scholars and practitioners include power, abuse, gender, race, politics (both nationalism and neoliberalism), and science and religion. This talk will describe these phenomena and the methods from the academy which have been used to illuminate them, and the scope that this reflection may allow for change within globalised modern yoga.
Eunice Laurel, Theo Wildcroft and Ruth Westoby will facilitate a reflective and restorative practice that will incorporate breath work, yoga postures, and creative movements to explore what it may mean to actively practice tenderness within our autobiographical bodies.
What can people expect?
Expect gentle movements and some familiar yoga postures. There may be music or sound to accompany the movement explorations. Lots of soft supportive props are encouraged.
We practice yoga with our sensing bodies. Our bodies are autobiographical. They are imprinted with stories and histories. They dialogue with us through sensation. We exist in an organic and ever-changing network of experience and relationship.
In this talk Eunice Laurel, Theo Wildcroft and Ruth Westoby will share their approach to facilitating in spaces where we teach and practice from an acknowledgement that our bodies are autobiographical; and what are the different possibilities open to us of making pathways home to it through practices that connect – rather than disconnect – and build agency.
Eunice and Theo will touch on the ideas behind ‘trauma-informed’ and whether we need to add new lexicons into our teaching biographies or whether we need to rearrange the pedagogy of modern yoga.
What can people expect?
Lecture and space for questions and discussion.
The eleventh century Amṛtasiddhi teaches, for the first time, bodily practices that become central to haṭha yoga. The startling teachings are explained systematically, in terms of the nature of the body, the practices, and the results of the practice in this tantric Buddhist source text. In this course we will read the Sanskrit and discuss in English the section on ‘the body’ as set out in the first four chapters of the Amṛtasiddhi. The course comprises four online sessions and one in-person workshop in London.