Over the years a lot of people have come up to me after class and said, “Yoga has saved my life.”

My usual response is, “Mine too.”

I don’t know how sensitive people survive in this culture without it. Unfortunately, survival often morphs into escapism – attempted through insidious addictive behaviors – drugs, alcohol, food, sex, shopping, gambling etc. And while we know how harmful addiction is on one hand, on the other, our culture fosters, condones and promotes these behaviors. Why be uncomfortable for one second when there is a distraction for everything that irritates you? Why feel bad about yourself or your society when there’s a pill to fix that feeling?

Of the millions of people who are entrenched in addictions in the U.S., less than 10 percent get treatment – and that treatment often is ineffective. Addiction rips apart lives, families and communities. It is one of the largest public health crises that we face as a society and at the same time, the fact that our culture is plagued with addiction is not even remotely surprising. We are fighting against ourselves.

While people tell me “Yoga has saved my life” for many reasons – one of the biggest is their recovery typically from a drug, alcohol or food addiction – followed by the reclaiming of their purpose, meaning and joy in living.

Yoga teaches us to tolerate the feelings in our bodies – the good, the bad and the ugly. And to be okay with whatever sensations arise. To be able to tolerate them and remember that everything passes. It also heals – physically, emotionally and spiritually – the devastation that addictive behaviors can wreack.

In a 2009 study on reducing addictions with yoga, the Kissens wrote, “[it] can be argued that the overall yoga experience is antithetical to addictive tendencies and behavior. The ritualistic aspects of yoga are uniquely self-soothing & produce atmosphere of comfort & feelings of being held w/out the self-harming aspects inherent in addictive behavior.”

I’m looking forward to teaching about yoga as an integrative part of substance abuse recovery again at the Mountain Area Health Education Center’s yearly conference – Addiction: Focus on Women. I’m also teaching Yoga for Reducing Depression and Anxiety at Charlotte AHEC tomorrow and later in the summer – another one day course at Northwest AHEC.

Yoga is quickly gaining acceptance as an important component of recovery. It’s not a stretch to say that addiction affects everyone, and yoga can be a powerful part of the healing process for individuals, families, and communities.

I believe that yoga can help anyone at any point in their lives whether they are dealing with a disease or illness, recovering from it and trying to reclaim life, or enjoying good health and moving towards  self-actualization and thriving. I also think yoga is one of the most powerful prevention tools available to young and old alike. I mean who doesn’t need to both move more and find more quiet?

Not only does yoga benefit physically and emotionally, perhaps the greatest benefit is spiritual – an area that conventional medicine is just starting to understand:

“By ignoring the spiritual dimension of health, for whatever reason, we may be depriving ourselves of the leverage we need to help empower individuals and populations to achieve improved physical, social, and mental health. Indeed, unless and until we do seriously address the question—however difficult and uncomfortable it may be—substantial and sustainable improvements in physical, social, and mental health, and reductions in the health gradient within and between societies, may well continue to elude us.” - John-Paul Vader, University of Lausanne Medical Centre, Institute of Social and Preventive Medicine, Lausanne, Switzerland

So how do we reach people who don’t think yoga is for them? How do we bridge the chasm between the yoga world and the conventional health world? These are questions inform my work of getting yoga out into the world. All of our programs are designed to help train teachers who can confidently walk that bridge and interface with community health providers to institute yoga as a key part of truly transformative integrative health care strategies.

I want to introduce our conceptual model to you. Now before you stop reading or your eyes glaze over, take a moment to consider this: The lower right corner is about treatment – what most people think about when they try to help people. But health is a complex web of relationships and individual behaviors. Our model helps to expand our idea about what health is and how yoga can help. The health care world is starting to understand that we have to address all areas, not just treatment.

Things are changing in the yoga world too. The celebrity allure is falling away. Practitioners have a strong desire to share the wellspring of wisdom that yoga offers and to deliver it in a way that meets the needs of the people they are serving. As practitioners and teachers, if we are to see our profession grow and flourish and really make a dent in our ailing nation, we need to learn the language of the medical people and the mental health professionals. We need to offer our practice in community context and perhaps strip if of some of the cultural trappings that keep people away.

Yoga is for everyone, let’s figure out how to bring it to them.

How old is Yoga? Reply to Waylon Lewis.

By Ramesh Bjonnes from www.Elephantjournal.com

Waylon Lewis asked an intriguing question in one of his blogs: How old is yoga?  A little more than half a dozen decades older than Waylon Lewis, responds one of the experts, Nick Rosen, over at Yogadork. There is undoubtedly some truth to that quick and concise historical assessment. But only if one equates the practice of yoga with the practice of asanas, the physical exercises most people today associate with yoga. It is true, Waylon, modern yoga—as taught by Krishnamacarya and later by B.K.S. Iyengar, who imported it to the West—is indeed a mixture of Western gymnastics, wrestling and Indian Hatha Yoga. This is true. This has been documented.

If you think of yoga as these forms of practices, which today have morphed into numerous other yoga styles, including Power Yoga and Bikram Yoga, yoga is indeed no more than 90-100 years old. Not much older than one of Bikram’s Roll Royces. But let’s not conflate yoga to the level of the body only. As the Einstein of consciousness, Ken Wilber, would say, that’s flatland science. That’s conflating reality to one dimension only: the physical. And, Waylon, that does not work in the world of yoga.

As you know, in yoga, we divide reality up in at least three dimensions: body, mind, spirit. And, says Boulder’s Einstein, Mr. Wilber, we need to understand each of these levels on their own terms. Not conflate them all to the level of the body. Hence, yoga does not equal asanas only. So, to understand the history of yoga, we need to understand that yoga is more than the physical exercises exported to the West by B.K.S Iyengar et al. Luckily, more and more yoga students today understand that. And Iyengar certainly understood it. Iyengar certainly knows and respect the fact that he has borrowed from a tradition that is thousands of years older than Waylon Lewis.

So here goes:

The most recent record of authentic Hatha Yoga scriptures from India in existence is the Gheranda Samhita, which was written in the 17^th century. This book describes 32 of the most common asanas used today. This book builds upon another book, the Hatha Yoga Pradipika, from the 15^th century (there are also versions of this book hundreds of years older), which list a dozen yoga postures. So, Waylon, we already know—by using only measurable and scientific methods acceptable to the Western flatland mindset—that yoga is at least 500 years older than you are!

The Hatha Yoga Pradipika mentions in its introduction that these exercises were developed by Shiva and that there were 84 in all. Other written sources, such as the Shiva Samhita, say the same thing. Shiva is the original founder of Yoga. That is why in India, Shiva is called the King of Yoga, and that is why you see posters of this dreadlocked hippie everywhere. This is no coincidence. If we want to trace the history of yoga, we must follow the smoke, including the smoke from the sadhu hashish pipes, leading us back to this one sadhu king named Shiva. Because, if we want to know yoga and its origins, that’s our man.

But before we go tracking down Shiva, we need to visit with some other yogis, the Tantric yogis of the Middle Ages. From about 400 AD to about 1400 AD, India experienced a spiritual renaissance of Tantric dimensions. This is the period when all the books on Tantra were written, including the Hatha Yoga Pradipika.

So, if we want to understand the roots of yoga, we cannot leave out Tantra. Why? Because everything we associate with yoga (asanas, kundalini, chakras, pranayama, mantra, and so on) have been developed by Tantric yogis. Even Patanjali (200 BC) acknowledged that and many other important teachers acknowledge that Patanjali’s Asthanga Yoga System built upon Tantra and Samkhya. That is why Ashtanga Yoga is also called Raja Yoga. Kriya Yoga or also Kundalini Yoga. Hence, also the Tantric saying: a true yogi combines Hatha Yoga with Raja Yoga to create body-mind-spirit balance. In modern language: combine the heat of Bikram with the upward coil of Kundalini and you’re getting closer to the real deal!

So, Waylon, now we have established that yoga is at least 2200 years old. Because, even Western academics acknowledge that the Yoga Sutras are that old, give or take a few hundred years. And, we have also clearly established that yoga is more than asanas, the physical flatland stuff, because Asthanga Yoga is divided into eight limbs, and only one of them deals with asanas.

Let’s move another few hundred years backwards into history. Some say that the Samkhya philosophy was written about 500 years before Christ, some say it was developed around 1500 BCE. This is very likely so, because all of yoga history and its philosophy existed for a long time as oral tradition before being written down. Interestingly, this philosophy, which is the foundation of Ayurveda and also, to some extent, Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras, was also called Kapilasa Tantra after its founder Kapila.

Another word for Tantra is Shaivism. And Samkhya is a Shaiva philosophy. In other words, Samkhya is basically a Tantric yoga philosophy. Hence, there is also a deep interrelationship between Ayurveda and Tantra. In South India this Tantric medicine is called Siddha medicine. Moreover, many traditional Ayurvedic doctors in India will say that Shiva also developed Ayurveda. In other words, both yoga and Ayurveda can be traced back through oral history to this dreadlocked sage.

And, if you want to read this oral history, read the Puranas. The Shiva Puranas in particular concludes that yoga and Tantra come from the same ancient source.

Note here that we have not mentioned anything about the Vedas yet. Many Western scholars claim that yoga originated in the Vedas. That is very unlikely. The oral tradition of the Vedas was upheld by the Vedic priests. The oral tradition of yoga was upheld by the yogis, the Shaivites, the Tantrics. You just don’t go to a Vedic priest to learn about yoga, especially if you are a woman.

The Vedic dogmas do not think highly of women. In Tantra, on the other hand, women could be teachers and gurus. No problem. Indeed, according to oral Tantric tradition it was Shiva and his wife Parvati who developed the Agamas and Nigamas, the teachings of Tantra. Hence, yoga’s earliest roots can also be traced straight back to a woman, to Parvati.

Around 1500 BCE, there lived a great man named Krishna. He introduced three forms of yoga: Bhakti Yoga (yoga of devotion), Karma Yoga (yoga of action) and Jinana Yoga (yoga of knowledge). Krishna’s teachings are outlined in one of the greatest spiritual books ever written, the Bhagavad-Gita. (It has now been proven that Krishna’s city Dvarka lays under the sea on the west coast of India; it dates back to 1500 BCE)

In the period after Krishna, many other yogic scriptures were developed: the Brahmanas and the various Upanishads. All these scriptures signify a blending of two cultures and traditions, the Vedic and the Tantric, the priest and the yogi.

These sophisticated spiritual scriptures are often termed the Fifth Veda. Many scholars in the West, I would say most, do not accurately distinguish the great difference between Tantra and Veda, and do not appreciate the great value Tantra has had in supplying the yogic practices, the spiritual technology that enabled the yogi sages to have inner experiences that in turn enabled them to develop such sublime philosophies as outlined in this period, as well as in the later tantric renaissance of the Middle Ages.

When we speak of Hinduism, we speak of the blending of Tantra and Veda. But we must also remember that Hinduism is a Western term, a recent term that is pretty meaningless when we trace the real spiritual history of ancient India.

A few thousand years before Krishna (1500 BCE) there was an early Dravidian and Tantric civilization in India, the Indus Valley civilization. It is this civilization that has produced the Pashupati seal of the horned yogi sitting in a certain bhanda (lock) with his heals pressed into the scrotum. Many mistake the position in this seal for the lotus position.

The Horned Yogi

This shows that the people of that period, as early as 4000 years before Christ, were intimately familiar with various yogic bhandas. Now, pay close attention: As mentioned earlier, Shiva had developed 84 yoga positions, many of which have been written down in various books, such as the Hatha Yoga Pradipika. Some of these 84 positions were also bhandas (as seen above), which are often more sophisticated than the asanas, as their main goal is to awaken kundalini.

Hence, I venture to claim that this yogic seal proves that yoga asanas existed as far back as 6000 years ago. If these folks knew bhandas, they certainly also knew how to practice asanas. More importantly, they also knew how to meditate. Indeed, there is another statue from this period in which the person gazes at the tip of his nose. This meditation exercise is called dharana and is part of the much later Ashtanga Yoga of Patanjali.

So, what about Shiva? Did he vanish in a cloud of hashish smoke? It is indeed unfortunate that many Shiva followers today, the sadhus, do little else but smoke hashish all day long. Because, in spite of all the legends and the stories, it is unlikely that was how the prehistoric Shiva spent his time.

When I was in India, I learned from my Tantric teachers that Shiva, just like Buddha and Krishna, was a historical personality who lived around 7000 years ago. And if that is true, we know that yoga is a lot older than Waylon Lewis. The same teachers told me that Shiva lived during the first Vedic Aryan invasion to India, 5000 years before Christ. The genetic science of Dr. Spencer Wells and his famous Genome Project has now proven that is a fact.

Indeed, the history of yoga is very long. The history of its motherland, India, is also very long. Yoga did not come from the Rigveda, nor any of the other four Vedas. Yoga came from the tradition of Tantra, the tradition of Shiva and Parvati, the tradition of Shaivism.

After thousands of years of comingling between these two mighty spiritual rivers, the Veda and the Tantra, the yoga of the Gita, the yoga of Samkhya and the yoga of Patanjali develops. Hence all of the yoga technology of asanas and pranayama and mantra meditation we know today can be traced back to prehistoric Tantra, and most of its philosophy comes form the Upanishads and the Gita, also called the Fifth Veda, as well as the various books we call Tantras.

So, Waylon, if you think of yoga as asanas taught in a Power Yoga class, many aspects of that kind of yoga is not that old. However, even some basic Power Yoga exercises have their roots in the ancient practice of Tantra. Moreover, as you know, yoga is so much more than asanas. And when we include the whole shebang that is yoga—the whole body-mind-spirit aspect of it, then we realize that yoga is very old. Some say as old as that dreadlocked king they call Shiva. That ancient king, not of modern Pop Yoga; that king of  ancient Tantra Yoga.

By Brett Sculthorp

Susan Reinhardt’s Jan. 24 column “The Benefits of Yoga Outweigh the Risks” is typical of the imbalanced perspective of yoga that needs to be rectified by yoga professionals through clearer marketing and communication and better interviewing with/education of journalists.

Popularly yoga, or more specifically yoga postures or asanas, are propagated as a form of exercise and for some people, a sport with performance measures such as sweat, extreme stretching and a competitive environment. The word “yoga” and its holistic philosophy and practices have been narrowly defined, simplified for consumption, reduced to suit a western worldview. Materialistic science and culture has focused on gross anatomy and physiology and de-contextualized asana practice from spiritual development. Subtle anatomy, which includes nerve and glandular systems that are known as chakras, is the traditional orientation of this “innercise”. While there are musculo-skeletal benefits of asana, the neuro-endocrine system in particular is more important in terms of preparing the mind for spiritual practice – the original purpose of yoga postures.

As long as achievement on the mat is infused with group competitiveness, vanity and gross anatomical manipulation rather than the holistic needs of the individual, people will continue to get hurt. We need to bring yoga ethics, Yama and Niyama to the physical practice and understand that asanas should help balance or diminish the vritis (psychic tendencies) such as pride rather than exacerbate them.

There is no correlation between hyper-flexibility and/or physical strength and spiritual development – if there was, everyone in Cirque Du Soleil would be enlightened. Unless yoga professionals actively communicate a deeper message about what yoga is, it will be largely stay confined to the studio and gym and the modal attendance will be people of certain age range, socio-economic status, ethnicity, body type and gender. Further, such communication should be considered part of our service or seva. Without it, our broader ability to effect lasting and meaningful social change will be inhibited.

Yesterday, at the Enka Campus of AB Tech Community College the Land of Sky Regional Council hosted the first public meeting to establish working groups for GroWNC, Western North Carolina’s Livable Communities Initiative.It is a 3-year project to develop regional and local strategies for economic prosperity, quality growth, and sustainable development with a focus on Haywood, Transylvania, Henderson, Buncombe and Madison Counties.

The work groups were divided up into: “Economic Development”, “Energy”, “Housing”, “Land Use”, “Natural and Cultural Resources”, “Transportation” and “Health”.

(Interestingly, “Health” was actually only added after some public feedback about the process.)

Here’s the issue – the Health Work Group was not attended by yoga professionals (or any other Complementary and Alternative Medicine practitioner for that matter). Why? Because as a culture we tend to see yoga as being in a certain little box (usually labeled “studio or gym-based exercise”) and CAM is for individuals with money, not for struggling communities – there are not many yoga professionals engaged in local public policy processes, even though they may personally subscribe to concepts like sustainability, prevention or community empowerment, and work on these things from a bottom up, or grassroots perspective.

But yoga has much to offer individuals and communities on a policy level - from treatment of diseases, and mental health conditions through to health promotion and on from there to human flourishing.

Most local and regional planning is still focused on physical development – how well are people doing physically – Got enough to eat and a job? Got the blood pressure or diabetes under control? Sometimes mental health and cultural issues are mentioned at this level, but the paradigm is still largely materialistic.

The yoga worldview is centrally spiritual and yet even yoga professionals are challenged in taking this to the street – because we’re part of that materialistic paradigm and we’re still figuring out how to break out of it.

Spirituality as a factor in sustainability is a radical idea in public discourse but it is central for yogis – at least ideally.

Andrew Harvey’s Sacred Activism asks us to look more deeply into our spiritual process:

“A spirituality that is only private and self-absorbed, one devoid of an authentic political and social consciousness, does little to halt the suicidal juggernaut of history. On the other hand, an activism that is not purified by profound spiritual and psychological self-awareness and rooted in divine truth, wisdom, and compassion will only perpetuate the problem it is trying to solve, however righteous its intentions. When, however, the deepest and most grounded spiritual vision is married to a practical and pragmatic drive to transform all existing political, economic, and social institutions, a holy force – the power of wisdom and love in action – is born. This force I define as Sacred Activism.”

- Andrew Harvey

Harvey’s vision takes time – and requires psychology flexibility in order to expand out of typical ways of thinking and informing ourselves, to establish new networks, and to take on new roles in our communities.

The process at AB Tech yesterday didn’t require any new kinds of thinking about social problems – it was just business as usual. It appears that future meetings will be about choosing priority strategies based on nothing more creative than reorganizing existing data. No one embraced any progressive methods that could give us new power and perspectives. Einstein famously said, “You cannot solve a problem from the same consciousness that created it. You must learn to see the world anew.” I would suggest that yoga is a technology for that helps us to continually “see the world anew.”

In yoga we often talk about personal transformation and leading business thinkers like Peter Senge are also comfortable with such challenges but we have a dearth of people really striving for this on policy level who are demanding really meaningful change in these kinds of public processes. I hope this vacuum will eventually draw more of us out of the studios and gyms, out to do seva that radically juxtaposes the status quo – and eventually integrates yoga into public/community policy work.

When I think about opening up to something new I feel a sense of curiousity and wonder rather than a need to accomplish or achieve. Their zen perspective brings a balance to the western idea of resolving. While resolving is important and useful, opening offers a sense of spaciousness –  I can take control of certain aspects of my life by intending or resolving and also I can balance that effort by being open to what arises. Certainly our efforts are important. However approaching the New Year with a sense of opening reminds that while each of us is an integral part of the universe and we each have a vital role to play in it, we are not solely responsible for it, nor are we the sole controllers of it. Whew, that’s a relief.

One of the Japanese characters for their New Year’s greeting looks like this:

This means something like the coming together of the sun and the moon. Sounds familiar, huh? “Ha” plus “tha” – the sun and the moon coming together is also the meaning of “Hatha Yoga”.

When the sun and the moon come together there is a new dawn, a new opening, a new awareness, and perhaps, ironically enough, a resolution.

I recently returned from Melbourne Australia where we spent the holidays visiting my husband’s family.

A somewhat precarious Warrior 3 on Cape Shank, Victoria.

Our trip took us on several plane rides with stopoffs in two other countries before we reached Australia. The yogis say that traveling burns one’s karma, which I guess is why the yogis of old often wandered around India – having new experiences and surviving through the kindness of strangers. All traveling, even to Ohio to visit your Aunt Bev, opens you to new ways of looking at things, to new perspectives and to different ways of being and living. It can open you to reflect on your own life and values.

So if you had a chance to go somewhere this past holiday or have a chance in the near future to move around a bit, I would encourage you to think about what it opens in you, what you can open to because of your travels, and what you are able to leave behind.

Happy New Year and Congratulations on your new opening.

I like to think of this as the time to process the gratitude and create its counterpart in generosity. Acknowledgment for what we receive becomes the foundation for what we can offer. And the process of transforming the gifts into the offering is where the magic, the beauty and the growth lie.

That creative space between reminds me of the kumbhaka – the space between the breath, where time stills and shifts take place. I hope you get to take some time this season to tap into the magic of stillness in order to make your offering even deeper and more meaningful.

After all these years, I’m still amazed by what 15 minutes on my mat does for me. How the unconscious tensions begin to unfurl, how my breath stretches out from its cramped quarters, how my mind calms.

Right now, as the world gets busier and more uncertain, taking the time to pause every day is essential – it’s a way to be here in the moment and enjoy the beauty of it all. So perhaps, rather than furiously flinging yourself towards January this year, you may want to consider breathing, right now, and enjoying the mystery of the pause between.

But she wasn’t. “We need people to help us get yoga out there, let’s kick it off with a convention.” she suggested.

So, on October 1, we’re going to meet at Community Yoga in Charlotte.

(The Charlotte convention center was unavailable on such short notice – but don’t worry, we’ll reserve it for next year!)

What we are serious about is changing public health through yoga.

We believe that yoga, which currently is only practiced by a small sector of the population, has the power to revolutionize the state of health and the quality of life of millions more people – of the whole culture. If nurses, teachers, behavioral health professionals and other health and human services industry folks can begin to understand how yoga can benefit them personally, and also benefit the people that they serve, we can begin to make a significant change in the health outcomes of our country.

And, unfortunately, there’s really no where to go except healthier.

I mentioned this in the Charlotte RYT200 training last weekend, and one of my students responded, “Yeah, the only sicker we could get is dead.”

What do we know about our dismal health outcomes?

• The U.S. spends twice as much on health care per capita ($7,129) than any other country. Source: National Center for Health Statistics
• 75% of all health care dollars are spent on patients with one or more chronic conditions including diabetes, obesity, heart disease, lung disease, high blood pressure, and cancer. Source: Health Affairs
• The United States ranks 43rd in lowest infant mortality rate, down from 12th in 1960 and 21st in 1990. Some of the other 42 nations that have a lower infant mortality rate than the US include Hong Kong, Slovenia, and Cuba. Source: CIA Factbook (2008)
• Life expectancy at birth in the US is an average of 78.14 years, which ranks 47th compared to other countries. Source: CIA Factbook (2008)
• About half of the bankruptcy filings in the United States are due to medical expenses. Source: Health Affairs Journal 2005

What do you we know that yoga can do?

Dr. Timothy McCall has compiled an evidence-based list of over 50 conditions benefited by yoga practice some of the highlights of these studies show that:

• Yoga mitigates stress, depression, anxiety, drug and alcohol abuse, and PTSD
• Yoga helps manage diabetes
• Yoga helps heart disease, high blood pressure and congestive heart failure
• Yoga help back pain, neck pain, chronic pain, arthritis, osteoporosis, scoliosis, carpal tunnel, balance problems, obesity, insomnia, infertility…whew - you can read the rest of the list and studies here.

Yoga  can be delivered affordably, in many different contexts beyond fitness centers or yoga studios, it can be adapted to meet the challenges of most conditions, and it is personally empowering. Plus there is a growing body of evidence that demonstrates its efficacy.

What do we know about the social forces that are driving the market for yoga?

• The current trend of healthcare is integrative medicine – NIH, SAMHSA and the IOM are all calling for integrative approaches to health and wellness. Yoga is the original integrative medicine, equally attending to the body, mind and spirit.
• The future of medicine is prevention. There is no better prevention strategy than a daily yoga practice.
• In June the White House released it’s National Prevention Strategy which included the need to expand preventative services in local communities. Let’s get yoga to the people.

That’s where you come in. As a yoga teacher or enthusiast, you have the power to share one of the most transformative tools available – a tool that can not only change each individual’s health, but can also change the health of families, communities and the entire society. The power is in the practice. And we want to help you access that power and bring yoga to the people that matter to you.

Join us October 1 at Community Yoga near Charlotte. We will strategize about how we can bring yoga to various underserved populations and share ideas about bridging the gap between the yoga world and traditional health care. You can  increase your knowledge base with two workshops: “Yoga for Cancer” and “Yoga for Trauma.” Some of the graduates from Subtle Yoga Trainings will be presenting how they’ve been bringing yoga to various populations.

We’d love you to join us and be part of the yoga solution! Let’s move forward together to share the healing power of yoga with the world.

For more info and to register, click here.

This book undermines entrenched ideas about success being contingent upon mental stability. The most successful people are actually a little wacky.  And then there’s the issue of “success” in and of itself. And the definition of this term depends on the worldview ascribed to. A culture that views success as the accumulation of wealth, power and fame also values mental stability as a necessity in moving towards that goal. Mental stability becomes less essential from a worldview that see value beyond the material realm.

The yogis have the idea of the “avadhuta” the “crazy adept” who eschews social norms in search of the divine. Finding the divine is the mark of success and materialism is irrelevant from this worldview.

What’s interesting about Ghaemi’s argument to me is that it implies that even in the quest for the typical money, power, fame trinity, socially defined “mental/emotional stability” is not necessarily an asset.

A First Rate Madness

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