Karma Yoga is the Yoga of Action How often have you heard me say that? It’s an aphorism I like to trot out whenever I notice a certain amount of abherance in stated desired outcomes of change and the measure of perceived effort on my end as a teacher. All talkie-talkie, no walkie-walkie. Big talk when it’s yalls. Quite another when it’s mine. The thing about noticing someone else’s patterns is that it’s easier than spotting our own. It’s that whole puruṣa and prakṛti thing again. But, I digress. I’ve been helping to support my parents, as most of you know, and so it’s a lot of Halls under one roof these days. I’ve been a little overstimulated — which feels like an understatement, but I still feel good and…

Yesterday we introduced the distinction between seeded and seedless samadhi. Today we look inside the first type—samprajñāta—to understand its internal stages. Sutra 1.17 describes four modes of distinguished samadhi. They’re not separate experiences but a graduated refinement—the mind’s object becoming progressively subtler as absorption deepens. 💭 Vitarka: Gross Attention The first stage is vitarka—coarse, discursive attention directed toward an object. The mind settles on something (breath, mantra, image) and holds it. Thoughts still arise, but attention keeps returning. This is where most of us spend our meditation practice. The object is present. We know we’re meditating. The mind is active but increasingly steady. 🔍 Vicāra: Subtle Reflection As concentration deepens, vicāra arises—subtle reflection on the object. The gross qualities fade; subtler aspects emerge. Instead of…

Four years. That’s how long Michelle Eisen has been fighting. The 42-year-old Starbucks barista who helped spark the first successful union at the coffee giant back in 2020 is still on the front lines—now part of an open-ended strike affecting 150 stores nationwide. In Chris Crowley’s intimate New York Magazine profile “88 Minutes with… Michelle Eisen”, we meet a woman who didn’t expect to still be here, still pushing, still believing. And yet, there’s something profoundly familiar in her story—if you’ve spent any time on the mat. The article opens in a Glen Head café, where Eisen notes with evident irony that the very “coffee-shop atmosphere” she’s sitting in was “brought to the States by Howard”—Howard Schultz, the Starbucks chairman emeritus she’s been fighting. There’s…

She teaches six days a week, adjusts with precision, and hasn’t missed a Mysore practice in three years. She’s also been on tirzepatide for eight months. She hasn’t told anyone. Not her teacher. Not her students. Not her practice partner who shares a cup of chai with her every Saturday. When someone compliments her “discipline” or asks about her “transformation,” she deflects to “clean eating” and “consistency.” The lie tastes like ash, but the alternative—admitting she’s on a GLP-1 agonist—feels impossible in a culture that treats pharmacological support as spiritual failure. She’s not alone. 🤫 The Substances We Don’t Discuss Across yoga studios and Mysore rooms, practitioners are quietly managing their bodies with tools they cannot name aloud: peptides for tendon healing, biologics for autoimmune…

Here’s a paradox that would have made Patanjali smile: the smarter you are, the more confident you are in your own objectivity—and the more wrong you’re likely to be about it. Research on what psychologists call the “bias blind spot” reveals something the yogis named millennia ago: we see clearly the biases in others while remaining remarkably blind to our own. In Sanskrit, this fundamental blindness has a name: avidya. Usually translated as “ignorance” or “spiritual blindness,” avidya is identified in the Yoga Sutras as the root klesha—the foundational obstacle from which all other suffering flows. It’s not ignorance of facts, but something more subtle: a distorted perception that mistakes the impermanent for permanent, the impure for pure, the painful for pleasurable, and the not-self…

We’ve spent several articles looking at what brain science reveals about practice—shrinking amygdalas, thickening prefrontal cortexes, immediate metabolic shifts across seven brain regions. Today we turn to what the yogis themselves said about where this all leads. In Book One of the Yoga Sutras, Patanjali describes two distinct forms of samadhi. Getting them confused can mean mistaking a way station for the destination. 🪷 Samprajñāta: With Seed The first type—samprajñāta, also called sabīja or “with seed”—is blissful, luminous, real. But consciousness still relates to an object. A trace remains. This is the samadhi most practitioners touch in deep meditation—the quiet mind, the sense of expansion, the peace that seems to pervade everything. It’s valuable. It’s part of the path. But it still leaves seeds—vāsanās, mental…

The courtroom felt different that morning—smaller, more intimate than I’d imagined immigration court would be. A lot of blue: the walls (a cheap matte blue), his lawyer’s suit, Sergey’s eyes. He sat beside his attorney, hands clasped in his lap, the picture of contained dignity despite the weight of what hung in the balance. I knew Sergey in ways the government attorney could never understand. We’d been dating for about a year. My friend Pam had set us up, thinking we’d hit it off. We did. Sergey was a charmer. Affable, goal-oriented, handsome too. His nose stood a bit crooked—a visible reminder of why someone might need asylum in the first place. Being murdered by your own government for being gay isn’t theoretical in Moscow….

Nine percent. That’s the difference in mortality risk between people with the highest gratitude scores and those with the lowest, according to a landmark study published in JAMA Psychiatry in July 2024. Following nearly 50,000 women over four years, Harvard researchers found what yogis have intuited for millennia: the practice of santosha—contentment—isn’t just philosophy. It might be medicine. The study, led by Dr. Tyler VanderWeele at Harvard’s Human Flourishing Program, represents the first rigorous examination of gratitude’s effects on longevity. Participants ranked their agreement with statements like “I have so much in life to be thankful for” and “If I had to list everything I felt grateful for, it would be a very long list.” Four years later, those with higher gratitude scores showed measurably…

Your grandmother probably told you to clean your room. She may not have quoted Patanjali, but she was onto something the yogis codified millennia ago: external disorder creates internal chaos. Now science is catching up, and the research is remarkably consistent with what the first niyama has taught all along. A 2023 study published in the journal Frontiers in Psychology found that minimalism—the intentional practice of living with fewer possessions—correlates with reduced depression, enhanced flourishing, and increased life satisfaction. The mechanism isn’t mysterious: decluttering lowers cortisol, the stress hormone. Visual chaos signals to our ancient brains that the work is never done, triggering a low-grade stress response that never quite switches off. This is saucha—the first of the five niyamas—described in practical, measurable terms. The…

What if the harshest voice in your head—the one cataloging your failures, measuring your practice against impossible standards, whispering not good enough—isn’t actually yours? And what if, beneath all that noise, there exists a dimension of your being that has only ever regarded you with unconditional acceptance? The yogis mapped this possibility thousands of years ago. In the Taittiriya Upanishad, they described the panchamayakosha model—five interpenetrating sheaths that comprise the full human experience. But here’s what makes this model revolutionary: at its innermost layer rests what they called the anandamaya kosha, the bliss body. Not bliss as fleeting pleasure, but as sat-chit-ananda—existence, consciousness, and a love so fundamental it doesn’t depend on you earning it. The path inward through these layers isn’t about fixing yourself….