💡For the month of August, we're re-releasing a few of our favorite podcasts from the 2023 season so far. Enjoy listening (or re-listening!) to these talks and, as always, tell us your thoughts and send over guest ideas.
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Dr. Shyam Ranganathan holds an MA in South Asian Studies and an MA and PhD in Philosophy. He’s a strong voice on social media, and this is one of the few yoga handles that actually stops my scroll. That's for the same reason he kept me rapt in our conversation two months ago. We talked about his research on understanding how Non-Western traditions such as yoga are marginalized in a Western world and how BIPOC traditions of philosophy can help understand colonialism and inform our way forward and away from it.
We discussed how he approaches the practice of yoga, which he basically equates with the word 'Bhakti' since both words point to devotional practices; he describes yoga as being about devotion to individual and personal autonomy or sovereignty. Since so many of us don’t speak or study Sanskrit as a language or study yoga the way Dr. Ranganathan has, it strikes me that there is a lot to learn here. He offers a fresh perspective on pre-colonial yoga and how we can reclaim threads of it into our modern understanding of what we’re doing and how we’re practicing. I absolutely loved this conversation and hope you do too.
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Terms:
1. Logos: an appeal to the audience's sense of reason or logic
2. Religio: A Greek term originally meaning an obligation to the Gods
3. Dharma: duty
4. Churning of the Milk Ocean: an event in Hindu mythology when the gods obtain immortality by consuming the elixir of immortality
5. Ishvara: in Hinduism, God understood as a person
6. Tapas: spiritual austerity
7. Svadhyaya: spiritual study
8. Samskara: mental impression
9. Puja: worship service
10. Virtue ethics: a philosophical approach that urges people to live a moral life by cultivating virtuous habits
11. Consequentialism: a theory that says whether something is good or bad depends on its outcomes
12. Deontology: the study of nature of duty and obligation
13. Bhakti: devotional worship directed to one supreme deity
14. Kaivalya: experience of absoluteness
15. Dharmamegha samadhi: cloud of virtue samadhi (contemplation); when you have lost even the desire for enlightenment
16. Brahmans: members of the highest Hindu caste
17. Asmita: ego sense
18. Vyasa: a revered sage in most Hindu traditions
19. Samkhyakarika: the earliest surviving text of the Samkhya school of Indian philosophy
20. Vrtti: modification
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References:
1. Dr. Shyam Ranganathan's Yoga Philosophy website
2. Dr. Shyam Ranganathan's Instagram account
3. Hatha Yoga Pradipika, by Swami Muktibodhananda
5. Anjali Rao's episode on The Weeks Well
6. Shannon Crow's episode on The Weeks Well
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Episode credits:
Original music by Kim's band Governess.
Produced by Alyssa Yeroshefsky and Kim Weeks.
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