On March 10th at Yogasara, Christopher is offering a day of exploration of Vinyasa Yoga and the authentic Heart of Tantra.

In Chester for the northern Kula there is a weekend of Yogasaram, the essence of Yoga where you can unfold as Truth. This is March 17th and 18th.

Again in Bristol, Christopher is hosting Phillipa Lubbock who is running a family constellation workshop in conjunction with morning yoga practice led by Christopher and Sarah. This is March 24th and 25th.

In London on 27th April, Chris is doing a day of Yogic anatomy for Nigel Gilderson’s Amrita school of Yoga.

Christopher is hosting Keef Miles for a day of Yoga and Dance in Bristol on April 29th. This is guaranteed fun, bliss and laughter.

The new moon weekend in May will see Christopher and Ian Ashworth leading a powerful weekend of elemental meditation and natural retreat. We will also be walking on 21feet of very hot coals and breaking arrows with our throats as part of this liberating and challenging weekend. This is a rare event, a must do!

Then there is the fantastic month long summer retreat in Portugal at Miguel and Shobha’s sublime retreat space Gravito and then a weeks retreat in Bulgaria in October at the Yoga Dharma retreat space.

Lastly if you are interested in deepening in practice, Chris is taking names for the next Immersion course. This is a guaranteed, positive life changing experience.  The average Yoga teacher training is 2-500hrs, but then who is interested in being an average teacher. Become the very best you can be, touch your deepest potential with Chris.

Look forward to seeing you soon.

Love Christopher

Please get in touch to find out more about Radikal Freedom.

A workshop with Christopher Gladwell and Gillian Hurst. Gillian is just back from India after working with Rolf and Marcie. Gill and Christopher will be offering a deep look at the primary series. There will be a session exploring the asanas you find sticky, awkward or which you don’t yet understand how to approach them. Gillian’s experience of 18yrs of musculo-skeletal specialist training as well as her history of daily practice and Christopher’s anatomy background and 30yrs of daily practice will help you get what you need. Find an injury free, graceful, energetically sound and intelligent practice. Places are limited. Contact Christopher with enquiries or reservations.  christopher@radikalfreedom.com or call on 07786928458.

We look forward to working with you.

Please get in touch to find out more about Radikal Freedom.

Sri Krishnamacharya is certainly a man to study, a man to listen to in his flow of teachings. A book such as this has to be read and studied by any ardent teacher or student of contemporary Yoga.

You can find the review here.

With thanks to Lakshmi Ranganathan and Nandini Ranganathan for their work of translation and for making this book available.  You can download the Yoga Makranda here.

Please get in touch to find out more about Radikal Freedom.

Some people say we are overpopulating the world, that there are going to be disasters based on over population, that we will use up all the resources and so on. For sure it can look like that, which perspective do we choose to hold?

Which viewpoint reflects what is real and serves to benefit all beings?

However we choose to view the situation, the simple fact is that this planet now does hold 7 billion human beings. This simple fact is also wonderful proof of human creativity and resilience.

In 200AD the Christian philosopher Tertullian said that we humans are burdensome to the world. In the early 1800’s Malthus stated that the earth cannot deal with any more people and the population then was 980 million, not even one billion.

Since then we have heard any numbers of warnings of imminent collapse, warfare over water and land and so on. Now we have 7 billion souls what are we going to do about it?

It is as it is, so what do we do?

My suggestion is that we deal with the negative psychology that continues to generate greed, anger, violence and their finest exemplar warfare. Greed is rooted in fear. Fear is a psychological and emotional contraction whose reality is about creating protection, walls, defences, fortresses, strong boundaries, definitions that exclude, the other, the enemy. Fear is rooted in ignorance of how things actually are, inseparable!

The lived recognition of inseparability is love. Love is open, mutually related, respectful, kind, appreciative, creative, expansive, aware, and is the reality of the inseparable intimacy of life-essence as sacred and unified.

Love works to heal wounds, heal warfare, heal and resolve fear and welcomes every being to reach their creative potential. As Brendan O’Neill author of Spiked says: Human beings especially in the third world are often sneeringly referred to as ‘another mouth to feed’. This mentality ignores the reality that each human being is also more hands to create, more minds to think, more hearts to love. As Brendan says: Seven billion minds are better than one.

Isn’t love that is pragmatic, engaged and embodied the way to turn around the culture of fear on this planet?

What tools do we have available to make this happen?

There are currently over of us 2 million yoga practitioners on planet Earth, at a conservative estimate. Each one of these beings is in some way working towards creating a world of pragmatic love. Many people working through humanism and some religions are also seeking this outcome.

As yoga practitioners we have the power of practice, the continuous generation of love through making every moment perfect with our awareness.

Contraction into fear is simply making this moment imperfect, unsatisfactory and wrong. Suffering requires a consistent moment-by-moment contraction into fear. Fear leads to greed and anger. Greed and anger lead to war. The recognition of inseparability is not just a cognitive event. The embodied realisation of inseparability lives in the legs, the arms, the muscles, the tendons, the joints, the glands, the organs, the heart and in every neurological event that occurs. The realisation of inseparability lives as each perceptual position occupied and in each arising moment of consciousness. The consequences of this lived realisation are what we might call love.

Isn’t this Yoga?

Please get in touch to find out more about Radikal Freedom.

Sometimes today, Kirtan seems to be about celebrities, about performance and about whether you can ‘sing’ or not. The intention of deep devotional Kirtan is to move beyond ego, to dissolve in devotion and reverence. The focus of performance is to be good at something, to be seen to be good at something and to develop a reputation. It’s about cultivating a shiny spiritual ego.

When the heart dissolves in devotion, the neurochemicals of bliss, the pathways of ecstasy are being reinforced. With repeated practice the profanity of the mundane is resolved into realisation of the sublimely miraculous nature of everyday life. As the mind and its view of separation are slowly challenged by ecstatic relatedness to all of life and to the source of life then the ego itself tremors in surrender to that which is so much larger and so much more beautiful.

Being overly concerned with how we appear, what we look like to others, whether we fit in or not and what we sound like, the heart cannot open and the ego cannot let go of its tenacious and fearful grip.

What to do about this business of yoga that insists on commercialising every single practice, this business that seems to insist on turning practices of ego demolition into practices of ego aggrandisement? I feel the solution is to not worry too much. We ‘out’ the business; point out its foolishness and get on with our own practice, development and realisation. The shallow nature of ego aggrandisement, like capitalism itself, is not sustainable. You cannot make Samsara[1] work by creating pseudo spiritual practices that do not resolve the illusion of separation. You cannot make Samsara work by putting glossy coats of spiritual looking varnish on top of the decaying timbers of selfishness.

Sooner or later the facsimiles of practices that have presented themselves through western commercial control will simply fade into obscurity. All that glitters is not gold; simply holding up the authentic jewel of Dharma is sufficient.

Devotion to life and the source of life, deep bio-philia will suffice. There is no running from impermanence. No one escapes alive. Either we authentically face our fabrications and delusions and find freedom, or we start to age, run scared and dissolve in terror in the face of emptiness.

Samsara is egoic living, it can never lead to sustainable happiness, equanimity or freedom.

If it matters what we look like; whether we are in the clique or not; whether we can hit that note or not; how others see us; or how we perform, then we have real problems.  We are trying to make Samsara work! Best wishes with that one, it only ends in tears.

Please get in touch to find out more about Radikal Freedom.

We will be working with Yoga Chikitsa, the primary series as a means to understand the method process and goal of yoga. The day from 10-5 will also look at introducing meditation as a key aspect of the Yogic path.

If you have worked with Christopher and Gillian before then you will know that this day will be both fun, inspiring and full of rich content. Oct 22nd at Yogasara Bristol.

Yogasara founded by Christopher and Sarah Harlow is a community interest company. Yoga, people and planet before profit.

Please get in touch to find out more about Radikal Freedom.

Yogasara means the essence of Yoga.

That’s what we work with – essence, and all the practices are understood through their essential qualities rather than their superficial form.

So back to the class.

How can Yoga class be chaotic and amazing?

Well it was totally real.

What do I mean by that?

Okay I’m going to start at the beginning.

My youngest daughter is now two years old. Her Mum danced and practised yoga when our daughter was in her womb. I chanted to our daughter in the womb. Our little girl has been consciously making yogasana since she was six months old, before that she was doing her baby form of dance. She used to love lying on her back softly wriggling to music, naked.

One time at about eighteen months old after she got out of the bath in the morning she got a yoga mat rolled it out, got on it and did some Updog and Downdog then Ekapadaupavisthakonasana.

Now as a two year old she has several asanas to her repertoire, mimics Nauli and Kapalabhati, she is a wonderful little yogini.

Of course I am utterly biased; she is my daughter!

So, on this particular morning we had four mothers in class. Two were pregnant. Three of the mothers have had two children each and practised in my classes during their pregnancies. The fourth mum who was pregnant is practising in my class with this current pregnancy and brought her two year old along. So we had four mums, two babies in the womb and five little children including my daughter all practising in the same room. There were also three other women present who have had no children yet.

I have had several children but then I am a man, I have never been pregnant.

My friend Jon was looking after the children and doing an amazing job of entertaining them.

So that’s why it was chaotic, five little beings all having fun.

Seven women practising beautifully and the little ones coming at times to do Downdogs next to their mums. That’s why it was so beautiful. These children are growing up with yoga around them, its natural.

All the adults my daughter knows are practitioners of an awareness practice of one kind or another, many of them Yogins. Her world is populated by people taking responsibility for their thoughts, feelings and behaviours. Her world is populated by people who are not projecting their complexes and issues outwards, not blaming others for their woes or the woes of the world. Her world is populated by people no longer caught up in ethnocentric levels of development. Her world is populated by people resolving their selfish shadow and ego strategies  and dissolving them into the light of awareness and consciousness.

I guess that class was amazing for me because I really felt the possibility of a world where awareness and responsibility, love and wisdom are the norm. I began to really visualise a planet where each human being acts with love and respect to every human being.

As I look into my own heart I also see that every other human being, deep inside of them (no matter how deep it may be hidden!), wants the same things. Everybody wants love and respect.

I want to see love and respect happening through the way we all behave because we all get the inseparable nature of reality.

How to co-create this vision? Is it a eu-topia?

‘Eu’ is greek for good and ‘topia’ means place. Eutopia is simply a good place. Yes in that case it’s a eutopia.

The word has an irreverent connotation connected to foolish dreamers though so maybe we have to call it Nirvana or Ogyen or Paradise or Yogatopia.

It doesn’t matter what we call our home. What we have to do is co-create it.

Co-creation is the key here; we build it bit by bit together.

The bricks are love the mortar is wisdom or is it the other way round?

Whichever way we flow the inseparable love and wisdom into community, co-creation is how we do it, together.

What are the obstacles?

• Ignorance of our true nature as divinity
• Ignorance of the self-construct that masquerades as our deepest identity
• Ignorance of the strategies and shadows of the self-construct
• Indifference
• Greed
• Envy
• Jealousy
• Aggression
• Hatred

The same old obstacles as there have always been then?

Yes.

And the method to deal with them all?

Love as kindness and compassion, directed by wisdom as intelligence and awareness, moving through every thought, feeling and behaviour.

The answer, in other words, is Yoga.

Remember Yoga is love and wisdom in action.

The outcome is Radikal Freedom for all beings everywhere.

Remember Yoga is Radikal Freedom.

May our children and our children’s children come to know this as the norm.

Please get in touch to find out more about Radikal Freedom.

Its useful to consider what this means in terms of practice.

When Patañjali refers to Asana as having these qualities, he is almost certainly referring to seated meditative Asanas.  Contemporary  representations of yogic history have a tendency to present Asana sequencing and physical flow through Asanas as if there is a brand new and modern trend arising from a union of revived Hatha yoga and British Army gymnastics.

These academic presentations are rarely rooted in the physical realities of practice.

Have you ever tried Mulabandhasana (the root energy harnessing seat) or Bhadrasana (the fierce seat)?

Have you tried sitting in full Siddhasana  (the adepts seat) for extended periods of time?

Have you tried sitting in full Padmasana (the lotus seat) for extended periods of time?

These are some of the classical Asanas mentioned in the ancient Hatha tradition.

If you have tried, then you will know that practice is needed, as incremental steps of development, in order to be able to do any of these Asanas.

Therefore, academics who do not practice are of interest, but in my view not to be trusted in terms of their outlook on yogic history.

Why?

Because the academic, caught in the illusion of separation and the flow of space-time, characterizes yoga and its history in terms of events joined to one another.

The academic knows nothing of Ishwara, the teacher of teachers, as anything more than a word.

The natural unfolding of dharma, the initiation of Ishwara into deep teaching are not bound by time, space or delineated events.

Traditionally, yogic philosophers are always practitioners.

Sitting on the outside of the stream of practice –  commenting – is of interest, but it is not germane to practice.

For practitioners, philosophy and history are simply in service to the purpose of radikal freedom.

Yoga is Radikal Freedom.

Yoga is love and wisdom in action.

It’s not anything else at root. Everything else is simply a side-effect.

So if you have sat for an hour in Padmasana, you know you will need good spinal extension, you will feel it!

You know you need good lateral hip rotation and clear open breath, you will feel it.

If, in the western context, flows of Asana have arisen as a function of dharma, to get stiff and weak bodies out of chairs, and to convey yogins to the point of being able to sit and pay attention for extended periods, then so be it.

Does it matter if historically things were done differently in differing contexts?

No.

Yoga is always re-presenting itself and recreating itself, to liberate beings, within – and thus from – the context in which they are born.

So, to achieve the state of resting in ease in Padmasana for extended periods, one will have to move through a range of physical, emotional and mental steps of development. These are called kramas which simply means ‘developmental steps’. For the modern body this would judiciously be a flow of standing Asanas, which cultivates body heat and facilitates physical unfolding. Physiologically sound alignment and other keys to the synergy of Asana (more on this later) become of paramount importance if one is to not act with ignorance and do violence to the body. The ‘intelligence’ of energetic synergy in the Asana becomes important if one is to sustain practice over time. Otherwise one simply depletes one’s life force. The ancient practitioner would have utilised a variety of kramas; contextually different due to different bodies and minds, but they would have existed.

How do we know this? Because we are working with body and mind as we practice, not merely postulating academic theories and viewpoints.

If grounded stability is not yet arising – it will arise through the kramas of practice.

If ease and contentment is not yet arising, in these more complex seated Asanas, then they arise through the kramas of practice. One cannot force either of these two qualities of grounded stability or ease, they have to arise through practice.

One cannot effectively sit on the floor in deep meditative awareness if the body is contracted and in pain. First the kramas. Deep meditative awareness will come. Ignorant practice that does not honour physiology only leads to damage and more dysfunction. Pain is not necessary. Moving into pain is usually moving into ignorance, it is shutting off the intelligence of the body. Moving through discomfort and turning discomfort to ease; this is practice.

Ultimately from the viewpoint of realization there is no journey to be made to one’s deepest Self. However, from the viewpoint of separation there is a journey which can often appear demanding so please do enjoy the scenery or the goal-less goal is never reached.  Enjoy your practice, enjoy the kramas, and find stability and ease in each stage of the journey.

Please get in touch to find out more about Radikal Freedom.

Last week I made the observation that yoga has become a way of preening the ego, grooming one’s sense of self and just feeling good, about me.

To cure the condition, first we have to identify the disease.  What is the disease? It is yoga practice that has devolved to become mere competitive narcissism. It is yoga practice that has become a tool for aggrandizing ego and not dissolving it.

Realisation Practice – How do we cure this disease?

First we need to understand the self-construct and the fearful state of ego. Ego is always fearful at its root, no matter how clever, funny, bright, strong, bendy, or wonderful it may temporarily appear. In the first five years each of us learns that we are physically and emotionally separate. In the following five years we learn we are cognitively separate and can have our ‘own’ ideas and dreams. Through this process we create the ‘I’, the sense of ‘self’ with its stories of ‘Me’ and its territory of ‘Mine’. As we grow and individuate we may well be blessed with enough love and support to become a being with a strong, joyous sense-of-self, capable of moving without too much difficulty through the world.

Ego as the self-construct is natural and is an essential function of growing up. It is just that real growing up doesn’t just stop at this point. Real Yoga practice is about growing up!

The ego is the inner map we construct of our-‘selves’ as (in appearances) the separate subject. This map enables us to reference the sense-of-self, who we believe we are, with all the other phenomena of our experience. These phenomena include thoughts, feelings, bodily sensations and possessions (‘things’ we have, possess or experience) and the appearance of the outside world. Like planets orbiting the sun, all these phenomena are then held in our psychic grasp, in gravitational relationship to the crucially important centrifugal point of our ‘sense of self’- the centre of the ego-verse, the all-powerful ‘I’.

Second we establish methods of practice that allow us to really perceive the dynamics of ego. In observing these dynamics, we create the possibility of not simply being them, not simply being a contracted whirr of neurological patterns rooted in an illusion.  We can become something much more interesting, a Yogin.

At Radikal Freedom, we focus on this more interesting work, on the deepening of awareness and perspective. Fitness and outward beauty are merely the potential side-effects of our primary goal – a healthful practice leading inexorably to the realization of consciousness.

Please get in touch to find out more about Radikal Freedom.

We have a real problem of development arising from the misunderstanding of the purpose of yoga practice that is prevalent in the modern world.

Development: the psychological and emotional growth of a yogin. This development is a consistent growth through a deepening of both awareness and one’s perspective. This deepening of perspective, the place we are looking from, is what leads us to realisation of consciousness. For realised consciousness to naturally arise then the activities of the self-construct have to be curtailed and made transparent.

Understanding the self-construct is a really crucial aspect of the living philosophy of yoga. Putting this living philosophy into practice in daily life is essential as only this will test the quality of your insight and realisation.

Practice leads to realisation.

The ancient devisers of yogic practice methods really understood the developmental problems of a human being.

To circumvent these developmental dead-ends, preparatory methods of practice were set up to curtail the egoic tendencies of the practitioner. Within the cultural context of their times, they created the means to assist clear development.

Those methods have to be translated into contemporary understanding relevant to the modern context for them to still be effective. Given this contextual translation, then yogic practices can still serve to contain and thus liberate ego from its sad and unhappy illusion of being separate.

(I will come back in later blogs to look in depth at these methods. The purpose of this piece is simply to identify the problem.)

The masquerade

Much modern yoga practice has become devoid of any real containment of ego energy. This is largely due to the absence of two key components.

• Real engagement with the preparatory practices that are methods of ego containment.
• The absence of realized teachers.

Indeed modern yoga can easily become just another means to aggrandize one’s ego. In studios across the world we see people bending and stretching seeking mostly a fit and funky body; people seeking well-being only for themselves and forgetting the prime basics of yoga.

Yoga has become a way of preening the ego, grooming one’s sense of self and just feeling good, about me.

The I, the Me, and the Mine dominate modern life and easily dominate modern yoga practice.

• I become the sort of person who practices yoga
• The I is now just a yoga-practising I
• The me is now all about pure and healthy diet, wellbeing and how well I can ‘do yoga’.
• I now compare myself to others who I perceive as yogins; Can I bend more or less? Am I more or less enlightened than them?

• The mine is obvious in my practice, my studio, my teacher, my yoga friends, my mantra, my realization, my, my, my.

Yes, this is visible isn’t it? It is happening yes? We see the capacity to fold into shapes, put one part of anatomy on another become of crucial import. We see people sitting still cultivating generosity, feeling good on the inside then be mean and unkind to others. We can see folk ranking themselves according to their physical capacity, and teachers lauded for their flexibility and capacity to do funky moves. The least important aspects of practice have become the most important.

Are we brave enough to also see this happening inside of ourselves? Maybe we can see it clearly and smile at ourselves? Maybe it is still wrapped in shadows of delusion? But it’s here, isn’t it?

Until the point of full awakening we will engage in comparison, judgments, critical views and selfishness.

Being honest about our shadow is a key aspect of practice.

Truthing; speaking truth with kindness is a key preparation for practicing asana, a key preparation for training the mind and a key preparation for developing the realizations that allow us to step beyond ego.

To cure the condition, first we have to identify the disease.

What is the disease?

It is yoga practice that has devolved to become mere competitive narcissism. It is yoga practice that has become a tool for aggrandizing ego and not dissolving it.

(Next week’s blog: Realisation Practice  or How do we cure this disease?)

Please get in touch to find out more about Radikal Freedom.