Yoganand Michael Carroll - a must listen for yoga history + philosophy!

intelligent edge yoga

The intelligent edge yoga podcast was produced by Kathryn Anne Flynn; author of Teach Kind, Clear Yoga: A Guide for Practitioners and Teachers. To learn more about Kathryn, practice online, or find retreats and training opportunities, visit kathrynanneflynn.com

Show Notes:

Maybe one of the most experienced yogis to ever grace this podcast in past or future, Yoganand Michael Carroll is a treasure trove of amazing stories and yoga philosophy. A must listen for anyone interested in the history of yoga and its philosophy!

• How he had an appetite for spirituality that was not sated by his strict fundamentalist Christian family, but found a spiritual path at Kripalu when it was still an ashram
• Yoganand was at the ashram when Amrit Desai, Kripalu’s founder, was asked to leave when it was revealed that he was having extra-marital affairs with students (who were all supposed to be practicing celibacy)
• What yoga has lost by going mainstream, but what it’s gained, too, given the guru culture of India and early-American yoga
• Finding a clear path toward balance, and how our understanding of spirituality and psychology are nuanced
• Practicing the Shat Kriya (six rites/cleansing rituals), and confrontational practices like dhauti (cloth swallowing) from the Hatha Yoga Pradipika
• What excites and interests Yoganand about the Pradipika and scholarship on Hatha Yoga’s arrival in the 10th century, contextualized to the Sutras and Gita
• The variety of definitions of yoga in the Bhagavad Gita and how Krishna was using them to help prepare Arjuna
• How yoga student/teacher guidance used to work before texts were widely available
• How texts used to be written in purposefully obscured language
• Can Kundalini energy be raised with ease or is it only for the enlightened?
• The limitations of the rational mind to understand metaphor for conveying spiritual concepts
• How we stress the body just the right amount to get stronger, and how in the Hatha Yoga Pradipika there’s energetic and physical recommendations of stress to apply for growth
• Chakras have changed, and how they weren’t coloured or associated to musical notes, etc in history, and how you don’t have chakras – you create them
• We conclude with the consolation that there has never been a time where there was a universally agreed upon definition of yoga