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When a lesson doesn't feel like it's sticking, the universe tries to make it more clear. Today's lesson – the #kleshas (obstacles to samadhi). The #yogasutras discuss the kleshas in book 2, naming them in sutra 3. I opened up to 2.5 today, which is about ignorance (of the Self, as suggested in Swami Satchidananda's commentary). I talked aloud to myself for 16 minutes thinking I was making videos. The first 9 minutes didn't record at all. Noticing this I fixed the recording issue, but the camera was pointing practically at the floor. In the second round, I reflected on all the obstacles – ignorance, egoism, attachment, aversion and clinging to bodily life. Particularly I noticed how much a dominant culture built around oppressive power structures such as #racism #homophobia and #transphobia make people like me (#queer #poc #transmen) even more firmly seized by these obstacles. Ignorance of Self leads to over Identification with the body/brain as self, leading to egoism and inviting attachments and aversion. We want things we are not and hate what we are, and in that hatred come to fear ourselves and each other, and to be trapped in a push/pull of allowing our wants and being put off by them. Detachment then for me at least has often come out of aversion of my wants, rather than from a lack of craving. The craving is still there, and it creates more aversion. Anyway, no video for my pontificating on the ego. ✌🏾 #svadhyaya #selfstudy

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Can you believe you are worth seeing: 5 minutes of asana

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It is a daily challenge of faith to walk into the world and believe you are worth being seen, even as the world around you seems to give no signal that is true. There is an extreme comfort and social preference (too often) for focusing on likeness, and disregarding connections over difference. This is a challenge for identity groups pushed to the fringe by the mainstream because it is both critical to create safe(r) spaces and risky in that it may replicate a pattern of disregarding differences. Do you dare celebrate the loneliness of your uniqueness and recognize that makes you one distinct expression of the universe? Loneliness need not be isolating, but there is an awesome (fearful and amazing) power in the realization that, in fact, you are the only one of you. What will you do with your differences, and why are you the one experiencing them in that way. For me, this question is in the form of being black and transmasculine, being raised a Muslim, being raised in the greatest educational privilege while coming from a dispersed family without much financial flexibility. This comes from only recently finding myself in spaces that are predominantly black and being in an interracial relationship. This comes from loving data and measurement at the same time as I love astrology and tarot. This comes from feeling displaced in my body and obstinate in my refusal to surgically alter it unless I have to. This comes from developing a successful career but wanting to run away to farm and meditate and go inward to wrestle with all the other unique factors I'm not sharing. So, does this make me lonely? Sure, but I don't for a second believe I'm isolated from others in this exquisite strangeness of living in a capitalistic knowledge economy that profits by replicating and falsely solving broken systems. 😏🤔🙃 Also, here's half a morning asana sequence. . . . . . #netineti #ishvarapranidhana #svadhyaya #visibility #transvisibility #blackandtrans #blackyogis #transmenofcolor #transyogi #transmenofinstagram #transmenofig #ardhachandrasana

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Life Story Through the Lens of Yoga

Regardless of how the physical practice can get distorted, like with any flow state experience, the feeling is something that is both embodied and brings mental and spiritual ease. The bonus with asana is that it has a tradition, literature, philosophy, and sister sciences wrapped around it that can provide a pathway to experience all of life through this flow.

I absolutely don’t know anything about making podcasts, but I’ve been putting together little bites of content to think about what topics spark me most and to test out different media. Check it out and comment with ideas or questions!