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✨ Enrollment is open for our next online course, YS 213 | The Śivayogapradīpikā: Lamp on Śiva Yoga with Dr. Seth Powell. The first live class begins this Tuesday, Feb 13! 🪔 The Śivayogapradīpikā, or the “Lamp on Śiva Yoga,” is a lesser-known Sanskrit text on yoga from medieval South India. Written by Cennasadāśivayogin in the early fifteenth century, this treatise offers important teachings on the psychophysical practices of Haṭha and Rājayoga. This online course will offer, for the first time, an in-depth study of the Śivayogapradīpikā–its historical context, significance, theory, and praxis–through a careful line by line study of the text in Sanskrit and English. Divided into five chapters, and spread across nearly 300 verses, the Pradīpikā teaches a unique system of Aṣṭāṅgayoga, or eight-limbed yoga practice–similar, yet distinct from Patañjali’s well-known model in the Yogasūtra. What is perhaps most unique about the Śivayogapradīpikā, is that its Aṣṭāṅgayoga is taught as a form of ritual worship (pūjā) within a devotional (bhakti) context. Rather than worshiping the deity externally in the temple, the Śivayogin is taught to worship Śiva internally within one’s own mind-body, through the ritual practice of Aṣṭāṅgayoga. The author of the text, Cennasadāśivayogin belonged to a south-Indian religious tradition called the Vīraśaivas (“Heroic Devotees of Śiva”), who it turns out, were important to t

✨ Enrollment is now open for our next online course, YS 213 | The Śivayogapradīpikā: Lamp on Śiva Yoga with Dr. Seth Powell! 🪔 The Śivayogapradīpikā, or the “Lamp on Śiva Yoga,” is a lesser-known Sanskrit text on yoga from medieval South India. Written by Cennasadāśivayogin in the early fifteenth century, this treatise offers important teachings on the psychophysical practices of Haṭha and Rājayoga. This online course will offer, for the first time, an in-depth study of the Śivayogapradīpikā–its historical context, significance, theory, and praxis–through a careful line by line study of the text in Sanskrit and English. Divided into five chapters, and spread across nearly 300 verses, the Pradīpikā teaches a unique system of Aṣṭāṅgayoga, or eight-limbed yoga practice–similar, yet distinct from Patañjali’s well-known model in the Yogasūtra. What is perhaps most unique about the Śivayogapradīpikā, is that its Aṣṭāṅgayoga is taught as a form of ritual worship (pūjā) within a devotional (bhakti) context. Rather than worshiping the deity externally in the temple, the Śivayogin is taught to worship Śiva internally within one’s own mind-body, through the ritual practice of Aṣṭāṅgayoga. The author of the text, Cennasadāśivayogin belonged to a south-Indian religious tradition called the Vīraśaivas (“Heroic Devotees of Śiva”), who it turns out, were important to the early and formative history of Haṭhayoga

Join Dr. Keith Edward Cantú for an unprecedented exploration of the oft-neglected yet important connections between Theosophy and modern yoga. While the roots of Theosophy go even in deeper, we begin with the founding of the Theosophical Society in 1875 in New York City by prominent authors and travelers like Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, Henry Steel Olcott, and William Quan Judge. In addition to these "Founders," however, most of the Theosophical or Theosophy-adjacent authors who were initially behind the increase in global awareness of yoga were not from North America or Europe. They were from various regions of South Asia. They not only had knowledge of occult currents and Sanskrit but also of the regional yoga traditions in the places they lived and worked. 📚 In this course you learn how their efforts as authors, mystics, and pandits led to texts and practices that helped mediate a global understanding of yoga for almost a century. While their perspectives and texts today may often require rethinking and re-editing in the light of contemporary research on yoga, their stories and publications are nevertheless inextricably intertwined with the very fabric of what modern yoga was, is today, and where it is heading in the future. Module 1 — “There is no religion higher than truth”: A global yoga vidyā Module 2 — Yoga Pandits and Theosophical Fellows: S.C. Vasu and Râma Prasâd, M.A Module 3 — A Madras Yogi and the Astral Body: A Mystery Explained Module 4 —

A 9-week online course with Dr. Caley Smith.

YS 211 | Upaniṣads II: Īśa, Praśna, Muṇḍaka

This course offers a close reading of the Dattātreyayogaśāstra, the first text to teach both the eightfold yoga system of Patañjali and the physical methods of Haṭhayoga. The Dattātreyayogaśāstra ("Dattātreya's Discourse on Yoga”) was written in about 1200 CE. It is the first text to teach both the Aṣṭāṅgayoga system of Patañjali and the physical methods of Haṭhayoga. It thus opens the door to the acceptance of physical methods into orthodox Hindu yoga. The text teaches four types of yoga—Mantra, Laya, Haṭha and Rāja, with the teachings on Haṭha constituting 167 of its 193 verses. Haṭha is of two types, an eightfold system corresponding to that of Patañjali, but whose methods are not identical to Patañjali’s and are taught in a more practice-oriented way, and a system comprising of nine physical methods attributed to the ancient sage Kapila. This course will begin with an overview of the Dattātreyayogaśāstra in which we will look into its date (c. 1200 CE), place of origin (probably the Deccan), and sectarian origins (extra-Vedic Hinduism), as well as the content and structure of the text, and the manuscript sources that have been used to establish it. Over the remainder of the course, Dr. Mallinson will do a close reading of the text, in translation, with analysis of the Sanskrit where necessary and contextual commentary. ⁣ 🎧 The course runs live from Jan 3 - Feb 9, 2023, 2023. We'll meet live on Tue/Thur from 10-11:30am Pacific