The only problem I have in my life is that I utterly believe everything I say and in this way am knowing it is totally possible to evolve our species and our world into one of love, respect and simple decency of one human to another. it is possible even with our population of seven billion to create a world of sharing and generosity.

Everyone wants love. The distorted strategies some use to find facsimiles of love are only deserving of compassion. how tortuous to live like this?

Yoga has always been about real or as I call it Radikal Freedom. Yoga has always been about bringing the super-conscious into daily life, here on planet Earth. By honouring these essential aspects of yoga we are in lineage, in flow and dancing with the essence of Yoga. Yoga is love and wisdom in action, not how far you can bend in any direction. Physical practice is an awareness practice not a show of mere capability. Physical practice is a practice of somatic intelligence not a way of pushing the body beyond its physiological limits, to prove what?

I am writing weekly blogs on Yoga. Some are about asana and somatic practice, some about mindfulness and meditation. Some of my blogs are about what I read in the papers of what books I’ve been reading. Some of these blogs are controversial teachings, some are radical approaches to awakening and what this means and some are on Engaged Yoga, making this planet habitable for our children and our children’s children, all of them Buddhas to be.

So to read these blogs click the button on the top right of my website www.radikalfreedom.com  and sign up for the blog.

Please help spread the word if this feels good to do. Tell your friends, retweet, like and so on and get the word out there. When we know ourselves as inseparable we are truly free. Such freedom is responsibility, such freedom is utterly radikal.

With Love. Christopher

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Challenge yourself, refocus and transform your life with Christopher Gladwell and Ian Ashworth on this full  7metre firewalk.

This weekend is replete with preparation, transformational work, elemental meditation, yoga, the full firewalk and more.

This is happening on the new moon, which itself is auspicious, at a very beautiful location in Mid Wales this workshop is the way to spring into new life for 2012.

You can look at the Facebook page here.

You can download the flyer and pass it on to your friends. Come Firewalk with me

Contact Christopher to book on 07786928458 orchristopher@radikalfreedom.com

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

Keef Miles trained in Anusara and with the School of Movement Medicine is joining us on Sunday the 29th as a guest teacher to work with Christopher and to offer this fantastic joint event.

We will move through a strong and subtle yogic practice that will allow deeper opening and flow as the dance begins. The ever-present dance of yoga will be explored as the relationship between gravity and levity, the roots and the wings.

A soundtrack of eclectic music from around the world will lead to an exploration through the yoga of dance into “being” as the body and as ‘energetic flow’. Ride the waves of breath and spontaneous movement organically arising from deepening awareness and surrender to your unique inner dancer. Honour your Whole-Self as you dance with body-heart-mind as both temple and playground. Consciously awaken the dancer within and dance with the sentience that pervades all of life; hearts beating, bodies breathing, surfing sacred sweat in the present moment.

Keef Miles is a Multi-Certified Yoga Teacher and a Teacher of Movement Medicine. Keef’s innate passion for life, people, music, yoga and dance in communion with Christopher’s vast experience of realized yoga will facilitate an uplifting and inspiring exploration and celebrations of human spirit. This event will encourage you to access your hidden strengths and potential, guiding you toward deeper awareness of body, heart, mind and breath.
Find out more about Keef on; www.yesyogadance.co.uk
The Sunday is open to all.

The cost is £45 for the day. Concessions are available. Please contact Christopher to dive into this fabulous workshop. christopher@radikalfreedom.com or 07786928458

Download the invitation here… Roots and Wings

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An opportunity for all you Radikal Freedon fans in london Town to come and explore the relationship between western physiology and the yogic anatomy of flowing meridians that cause wellbeing or illness.

What is the great yogic inquiry?

What is the relationship between ahimsa and alignment?

How can you practically experience mind as body and find a deeper practice?

In what ways are stress and love related?

Contact Nigel on:  thewitnesstree@aol.com  admin@awayoga.com or 07976 650886

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

To unfold the somatic we will use asana and movement in alignment with breath and mind. To unfold the heart we will use breath and chanting. To unfold the conceptual knots we will explore the view and meditation of the non-dual. Explore this Yogasaram, this essence of Yoga and unfold.

You can contact: kirstyjackson@btinternet.com to book on this weekend.

You can download the flyer for this event by clicking here.

Looking forward to working with you.

Christopher

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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.

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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?

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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.

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