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January 2026
Mysore Style Ashtanga Yoga
Mysore Style Ashtanga Yoga
Mysore Style Ashtanga Yoga
Led Primary Series
Mysore Style Weekend Edition
February 2026
Sunday Sadhana
Monday Open Practice (Members Only)
Mysore Style Ashtanga Yoga
Mysore Style Ashtanga Yoga
Mysore Style Ashtanga Yoga
The Shala Daily
YOGA • PHILOSOPHY • LIFE
Where ancient wisdom meets the modern world. Daily reflections connecting yogic philosophy to contemporary life.
Why Compassion Feels So Hard (And Why We Try Anyway)
Compassion’s difficulty reveals how habits, grief, and self-judgment shape our hearts and why the practice is worth returning to.
Read More →How Local Journalism Grounds Our Democracy (and Our Practice)
Local journalism is a vital anchor for community engagement, truth, and collective accountability—democracy practiced close to home.
Read More →Lost to Wildfire: The Finest Wood That Made String Instruments Sing
A master luthier’s lifetime of rare woods is lost to wildfire, revealing the power of resilience, impermanence, and music’s enduring spirit.
Read More →Krishnamacharya’s Living Yoga
Krishnamacharya’s legacy shows how tradition, empowerment, and innovation can create a living yoga for both teacher and student.
Read More →The Five Prana Vayus: Mapping the Currents of Life Force
The five prana vayus provide a map for sensing, naming, and integrating the subtle energies of yoga practice.
Read More →Bearing Truth: Being Black in Porn and the Practice of Satya
A documentary explores the vulnerability, truth, and resilience in being Black in porn, revealing the deeper work of identity beyond industry bias.
Read More →Chewing Gum, Focus & the Mind: The Mystery in Our Mouths
Chewing gum may sharpen focus and soothe nerves, echoing how tiny rituals shape mind and body on and off the yoga mat.
Read More →Dr. King, Gandhi, and the Spirit of Ahimsa: A Journey of Nonviolence and Change
Dr. King’s movement revealed ahimsa as a living discipline that inspires courage, service, and transformation in both individual lives and society.
Read More →Academic Freedom, Plato, and the Yogic Path: Truth in Teaching
Philosophy, at its core, encourages us to seek truth and challenge our assumptions, much like the ancient yogic inquiry into the nature of the self. The recent decision at Texas A&...
Read More →When Tradition Meets Accountability: The Ethical Evolution of Ashtanga
The Ashtanga community stands at a crossroads. After decades of enabling harm through silence, we face a choice: continue the patterns, or build something genuinely different.
Read More →What Opens the Door: Readiness, Ardency, and Intensity
Sutras 1.19–1.22 address what creates readiness for samadhi—past preparation, burning aspiration, and degree of effort. Some arrive quickly. For others, the path is slower but ...
Read More →Your Brain on Practice: When Less Becomes More
A 15,000-person brain imaging study reveals that sustained yoga and meditation practice physically reduces the brain's fear center over time—science confirming what the yogis alr...
Read More →FRC Hip Protocol Day 2: Unlocking External Rotation
Part 2 of 2: Today we flip the script—leading with external rotation while yesterday's IR work continues to integrate. Notice if ER has opened as a downstream effect of the balan...
Read More →The Pharmacology of Tapas, Part 2: The Myth of Suffering as Spiritual Credential
He'd been nursing the shoulder injury for two years. A friend mentioned BPC-157. Within months, he was practicing fully again. When his teacher asked about his recovery, he said "p...
Read More →Karma Yoga is the Yoga of Action
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 o...
Read More →The Technopoly and the Cave: When Efficiency Replaces Thought
Media theorist Neil Postman warned that a "technopoly" arises when societies surrender judgment to technological imperatives. What disappears are precious human capacities—curios...
Read More →The Four Stages of Absorption: How the Mind Refines
Sutra 1.17 maps four progressive stages within distinguished samadhi—from gross attention to subtle reflection to bliss to pure "I-ness." A cartography of deepening.
Read More →The Barista’s Battlefield: When Karma Yoga Looks Like a Picket Line
Four years of sustained effort. Four years of showing up when the outcome remains uncertain. This is tapas in its purest form—and it might look like a picket line.
Read More →The Yoga Studio as Sanctuary: When Practice Meets Crisis
Two perspectives from the Bondi Beach tragedy illuminate the many faces of Karma Yoga: action and stillness, rescue and refuge, the courage to move and the courage to remain.
Read More →FRC Hip Protocol Day 1: Unlocking Internal Rotation
Part 1 of 2: A Functional Range Conditioning protocol that prioritizes internal rotation while maintaining external rotation. Both rotations live in the same tissue—you can't mea...
Read More →The Pharmacology of Tapas, Part 1: The Silence We Keep
She teaches six days a week and hasn't missed a Mysore practice in three years. She's also been on tirzepatide for eight months. She hasn't told anyone. The gap between our public ...
Read More →Epigenetics and the Role of DNA in Gene Expression
Grasping DNA and its Influence on Wellness Let’s get this straight: the simplistic notion of biological determinism—the outdated belief that our genes are puppeteers pulling th...
Read More →External vs Internal Cueing — and why deliberate self‑observation is the teacher’s work
Teachers live in language. The words we choose to cue a pose or movement change where a student puts their attention, and that shift changes how the body organizes itself. In motor...
Read More →The Blind Spot Paradox: What Cognitive Science Reveals About Avidya
Cognitive science has discovered what the yogis called avidya: we see others' biases clearly while remaining remarkably blind to our own. The path from blindness to clarity isn't m...
Read More →Two Kinds of Stillness: With Seed and Without
Patanjali describes two forms of samadhi in Sutras 1.17-1.18. One is blissful but leaves traces. The other is seedless, pointing toward liberation. Understanding the difference cha...
Read More →One Practice, Seven Brain Regions: The Immediate Effects of Primary Series
A 2020 study used PET/MR brain scans before and after Ashtanga primary series. The finding: immediate changes in glucose metabolism across seven brain regions—including memory, e...
Read More →The Thickening: How Yoga Builds What Time Takes Away
A 2017 brain imaging study found that female yogis over 60 had thicker prefrontal cortexes than non-practitioners—in the very region that typically thins with age. Eight years of...
Read More →Winter Practice Wisdom: What Cold Weather Reveals About Our Bodies
The stiffness you feel in winter isn't just inconvenient—it's your body's intelligent response to cold. Understanding this physiology transforms how we approach practice in the c...
Read More →The Testimony: When Practice Meets the Courtroom
I didn't meditate my way out of that immigration hearing. I sat in an uncomfortable chair, felt my damp palms, noticed my racing heart, and stayed anyway. That's civic practice.
Read More →The Gratitude Prescription: What Harvard’s Longevity Study Reveals About Santosha
New Harvard research shows gratitude may extend life by 9%. The ancient yogic practice of santosha—contentment—turns out to be more than philosophy.
Read More →The Clarity Effect: What Minimalism Research Reveals About Saucha
Research confirms what yogis have known for millennia: external clutter creates internal chaos. The first niyama offers a path to clarity that science is only beginning to understa...
Read More →The Radical Love Already Living in You
What if the harshest voice in your head isn't actually yours? Beneath all that noise exists a dimension of your being that has only ever regarded you with unconditional acceptance.
Read More →Breath, Bandhas, and Flow: How Yogic Practices May Influence CSF Dynamics
Many teachers and committed practitioners report subtle but powerful somatic effects when practicing bandhas, kumbhaka, and slow deep breathing. Recent imaging work suggests these ...
Read More →The Mystery Upstream: What Your Shoulders Are Really Telling You
That nagging pinch when your arms lift overhead? It might have nothing to do with your rotator cuff. Looking upstream at breath patterns and thoracic mobility reveals where the rea...
Read More →“There’s Still Hope”: Karma Yoga in Action at Bondi Beach
A community of lifeguards, party guests, and everyday beachgoers demonstrated what selfless action looks like when it emerges spontaneously in moments of crisis.
Read More →Fix Your F*ckin’ Feet
Stronger hips. FASTER race times. DEEPER leg behind the head. Well, it all starts at the feet. Below is an easy-to-follow Functional Range Conditioning (FRC) sequence focused o...
Read More →Naive vs Deliberate Practice
Hi friends! Please reply to this message if you’re coming to class in the morning. Feel free to let me know whatever I might need to know in the note. You’re also welco...
Read More →Vairagya and Variables: Seeing Clearly in Practice
Just Because Two Things Happen Together Doesn’t Mean They’re Connected (Or: Why Sarah’s New Shoes Aren’t a Scientific Discovery) In systems thinking, causal independence me...
Read More →Finding Your Practice Rhythm: A Year-Round Approach to Ashtanga
Many of you have asked about structuring your practice around trips to Mysore—or more importantly, how to create sustainable training cycles when annual trips to India aren’...
Read More →CSF Turnover, the Glymphatic System, and Brain Health — Why Sleep, Movement and Yoga Matter
Cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) and the glymphatic system are central to how the brain clears metabolic waste. Emerging research links efficient CSF circulation and glymphatic clearance ...
Read More →The Siren Song of P Street Live
The first sound I hear most mornings isn’t my breath or the hush of the Mysore room — it’s the wail of an ambulance racing down 14th Street. Living in Logan Circle places me ...
Read More →Lotus in the Snow
Below is a focused, safe, evidence-informed 25‑minute session you can do twice a week to build the mobility, end‑range control, and tissue resilience needed for Padmāsana (Lot...
Read More →Kundalini and Cerebrospinal Fluid
Metaphor Meets Mechanism Kundalini imagery—an ascending current of life force rising the length of the spine—has long been a central motif in classical yoga. For teachers and s...
Read More →What is Insight?
There’s a moment in every yoga practitioner’s life—usually somewhere between your third attempt at Marichyasana D and your first truly calm Savasana—when something clicks. ...
Read More →Skill Mastery and the Science of Expertise
Donella Meadows would call deliberate practice a feedback-rich learning system. Naïve practice has weak feedback loops—you act but rarely reflect. Deliberate practice tight...
Read More →Beauty Brings Safer Streets: Environmental Design and the Yoga of Community
In Philadelphia, a profound experiment is unfolding that speaks directly to the heart of yoga philosophy: the transformation of neglected spaces into places of beauty, connection, ...
Read More →The Pharmacology of Tapas, Part 3: Seeing Clearly
The question isn't "pure vs. enhanced." The question is: What is my relationship to these tools? Am I using them skillfully, with discernment? Or am I caught in a cycle of optimiza...
Read More →