Written by Davy Marzella

I have been attending Yoga 4 Men sessions for over a year now and have found Yoga practice very beneficial and Rad an inspiring teacher.

"Yoga is here to bring us closer to reality, closer to what is really going on inside and outside of our bodies. Yoga aims at bringing light towards what really is and to find the courage to see clearly and the peace to accept whatever arises, without the necessity to remove or change it. If grief is there, if anger is there or if pride is there, our yoga practice is sure to slowly strip away the layers.

Methodically, like a surgeon’s scalpel we uncover years of psychological armour, escapism and denial, and by doing so we slowly reclaim a life beyond it all. Even though we rarely like to admit it, we are all the kind of person who runs away from our fears, denies our anger and blocks out our selfishness, only to justify the whole story to your own advantage. Me too.
We are like this not because we are mean, bad or unworthy, but because this behavioural pattern is one of our most common tools towards dealing with the impact of life. And it is not making us a bad human being – it is simply making us a human being."
Tim Feldmann - http://www.elephantjournal.com/2012/03/the-mistaken-expectation-of-joy-in-yoga-tim-feldmann/

Yoga, as I understand it, is about union of body, mind and soul/spirit.

Yoga sessions themselves - which focus to some extent on physical exercises - go a long way to developing those practices, as described above.

Although I personally have not yet practised meditation, I believe that is about bringing a calmness to mind and body - to be better able to BE within our-self/s.

Both practices could possibly be seen as being more introspective and isolated to each individual's experience.

I would like to suggest that we could look at ways of extending our Yoga practice further into our everyday social lives.

This is an extract from the site of Ecodharma, a retreat in the mountains near Barcelona which promotes practices of (socially) Engaged Buddhism (which might be worth considering visiting some time)

"We believe that helping to empower individuals and communities to tread a path where committed social engagement goes hand in hand with radical personal transformation is an important task. We see the combining of inner work with outer engagement as the basis for a radical response to our times. That’s why Ecodharma work with individuals and organisations to offer courses and trainings that explore that terrain."
http://www.ecodharma.com/self-society-a-radical-response/self-society-a-radical-response---an-overview

And a video of Michael Stone from Centre of Gravity in Toronto -

Drawing on his experience in the Occupy movement and in deep meditation, Michael politicizes mindfulness and shows how the next awakening is not just individual but social.

"It's time to drop our conceptions of an individual transcendence and re-imagine an awakening that is cultural, technological, environmental, economic and utterly transformative to both the individual and society. We need to push past enlightenment to a life of deep intimacy. The opposite of imagination is addiction. We are a culture addicted to outdated stories. So how do we drop them? And what comes next."

One way of initially becoming more socially engaged could be to talk about it in occasional group discussions. Which could contribute to exercising our minds individually and collectively; where we could discuss together different topics and issues that interest and concern us and to get intimate with the flow of how life is for us all.

eg. spirituality , sexuality , relationships , life stories , current affairs etc. etc.

We could take it in turns to suggest topics. Whatever anybody wants to suggest , maybe circulating any relevant articles etc. beforehand,  where we could bring our experiences and questions to share and discuss and learn from each other.

Please feel free to add any comments or show interest.

Free our bodies, free our minds, free our self/s individually and collectively.

Here is a poem I wrote , inspired by a speech by Audre Lorde  -

Some of Us
( after Audre Lorde )

Some of us say we are content
to live in the master’s house  –
maybe mistaking so-called "respectability",
for real respect .

Some of us make do.

Some of us would make adjustments,
like claiming the right - ( the right ? )
to kill or die
in the service of the master,
or
in begging him to validate our relationships.

Some of us
would dismantle his house
using his tools,
and rebuild it
with his tools
on his foundations.

Some of us dare to dream
- maybe deferred, but our day will come
to take apart the whole house,
and build anew
with new tools
on new foundations.
Davy Marzella

"The Master's Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master's House" by Audre Lorde
http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/margins-to-centre/2006-March/000794.html

Some reading this may think it is too "political". I would not disagree, in that politics should be about how we treat each other and how we live and organise our lives collectively.

In a similar way to how Carl Jung described much establishment religion as a barrier to authentic spirituality; so too, establishment "politics" has become a barrier to authentic participatory democracy.