CHITHEADS with Jacob Kyle (Embodied Philosophy)

Shambhavi is the spiritual director of Jaya Kula. Her principle training is in the View and practices of Trika Shaivism, the classical Tantrik tradition of Kashmir, and the Dzogchen tradition of Tibet. She has been fortunate to have trained with several great teachers in these and other nondual traditions. Shambhavi is a householder sannyasini and a devotee of Anandamayi Ma. She hopes to bring more people to an understanding of the breadth and depth of Ma’s teachings. Read more about Anandamayi Ma. Shambhavi has studied Ayurveda for self-care for the past 15 years. She is also a Vedic astrologer and expert diviner. She is the author of Tantra: the Play of Awakening (2012), Pilgrims to Opennness: Direct Realization Tantra in Everyday Life (2009), Returning  (2015), and No Retreat: Poems on the Way to Waking Up (2016). In addition, she published an academic book, Avatar Bodies: a Tantra for Posthumanism. She holds an MFA in Fiction from Mills College and a Ph.D. in Modern Thought and Literature from Stanford University. Shambhavi left academia in 2004 in order to devote herself to practice, writing and teaching in her spiritual tradition.   See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Mary Reilly Nichols holds a B.A. in Anthropology from Harvard University and completed five years of residency in meditation ashrams in India and the US.  A devoted student of Muktananda, she has taught yoga and meditation in New York City for over thirty years. Her teaching combines Iyengar, Integral and Anusara styles of Hatha Yoga with the Upanishadic tradition of the wisdom and experience of non-duality. She offers frequent workshops on classical yoga philosophy and psychology, including Advaita Non-Dualism and the Tantric methods of Kashmiri Shaivism. Currently, Ms. Nichols teaches stress management in psychiatric settings and is involved in ongoing research on the mind/body benefits of yoga and meditation.  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Jay L. Garfield directs the Smith's Logic and Buddhist Studies programs and the Five College Tibetan Studies in India program. He is also visiting professor of Buddhist Philosophy at Harvard Divinity School, professor of philosophy at Melbourne University and adjunct professor of philosophy at the Central University of Tibetan Studies. Garfield’s research addresses topics in the foundations of cognitive science and the philosophy of mind; the history of Indian philosophy during the colonial period; topics in ethics, epistemology and the philosophy of logic; methodology in cross-cultural interpretation; and topics in Buddhist philosophy, particularly Indo-Tibetan Madhyamaka and Yogācāra. Garfield’s most recent books are Minds Without Fear: Philosophy in the Indian Renaissance (with Nalini Bhushan, 2017), Dignāga’s Investigation of the Percept: A Philosophical Legacy in India and Tibet (with Douglas Duckworth, David Eckel, John Powers, Yeshes Thabkhas and Sonam Thakchöe, 2016) Engaging Buddhism: Why it Matters to Philosophy (2015), Moonpaths: Ethics and Emptiness (with the Cowherds, 2015) and (edited, with Jan Westerhoff), Madhyamaka and Yogācāra: Allies or Rivals? (2015). He is currently working on a book with Yasuo Deguchi, Graham Priest and Robert Sharf, What Can’t Be Said: Paradox and Contradiction in East Asian Philosophy; a book on Hume’s Treatise, The Concealed Operations of Custom: Hume’s Treatise from the Inside Out; a large collaborative project on Geluk-Sakya epistemological debates in 15th- to 18th-century Tibet following on Taktshang Lotsawa’s 18 Great Contradictions in the Thought of Tsongkhapa and empirical research with another team on the impact of religious ideology on attitudes toward death.  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Matthew Remski has been practicing meditation since 1996 and asana since 2000. He’s taught yoga, yoga philosophy, and Ayurveda in Toronto and beyond since 2005. He maintains an active Ayurveda consultation practice from his home, which he shares with his partner Alix, and their son Jacob. He’s authored several books on yoga and related subjects, and is working towards completing What Are We Actually Doing in Asana? — an examination of pain, injury, and healing in modern yoga. His blog hosts an average of 20K readers per month: http://matthewremski.com/wordpress/.   See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Joe Loizzo, M.D., Ph.D. is a contemplative psychotherapist, clinical researcher, and Buddhist scholar-teacher who integrates ancient contemplative science and technology with current breakthroughs in neuroscience and optimal health. After training in psychiatry at Harvard and completing a Ph.D. in Buddhist Studies at Columbia, he founded Nalanda Institute for Contemplative Science, a non-profit that helps people build sustainable happiness, compassion, and leadership through integrating science-based contemplative skills into their daily lives.  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Born in New York City in 1952, Sharon Salzberg experienced a childhood involving considerable loss and turmoil. An early realization of the power of meditation to overcome personal suffering determined her life direction. Her teaching and writing now communicates that power to a worldwide audience of practitioners. She offers non-sectarian retreat and study opportunities for participants from widely diverse backgrounds.  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Our guest in this episode is Leslie Kaminoff. Leslie is a yoga educator inspired by the tradition of T.K.V. Desikachar. He is an internationally recognized specialist with thirty seven years’ experience in the fields of yoga and breath anatomy. He leads anatomy and yoga methodology workshops for many of the leading yoga associations, schools and training programs in the world. Leslie’s book Yoga Anatomy, (co-authored with Amy Matthews), has been printed more than 12 times and has sold over 500,000 copies.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Anneke Lucas founded Liberation Prison Yoga in 2014. Aside from her duties as executive director , Anneke trains new volunteer instructors on site. She also teaches regularly at several of the eight facilities where LPY has weekly programs. She conducts trainings and workshops for yoga instructors, mental health professionals and NYC DOC and DOP employees,  to bring yoga and mindfulness into work with traumatized populations. Anneke is regularly invited to speak at conferences and universities about the subject of trauma, incarceration, and sex-trafficking. In 2013, Anneke started two groups  at the Woman’s Jail at Rikers Island for survivors of sex-trafficking.  Anneke herself experienced and witnessed some of the worst atrocities known to humankind – before she reached the age of 12. Her background, the obstacles she overcame, and the insights she received into the nature of the human psyche on her journey to health are an inspiration to students inside and outside of prisons, and audiences around the world. The continued healing she receives from her work reminds her that human connection is the agent for change, in teacher and student, provider and client.  In 2008, Anneke created a 500 Hour Yoga Alliance RYT program for a New York City based yoga studio. From 2011 to 2014 Anneke was director of Prison Yoga Project New York. She graduated from the Screenwrting program at AFI in 1993, published a novel in her home country, Belgium, and wrote many articles about yoga and trauma. She has been working on a book about her childhood, previewed in an article about her work in the prisons.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Dana Slamp is the Founder of Prema Yoga Therapeutics, an IAYT member school and the leading training facility for yoga therapists in NYC. She leads advanced teacher trainings at Pure Yoga in uptown New York, Yoga Vida in downtown New York, Three Sisters Yoga in Portland, OR, and the upcoming Ayurvedic Yoga Training at Pure Yoga July 13 - 31. Dana's presented at Columbia Medical University, the Telluride Yoga Festival, and several times at the Yoga Journal Conference. Dana's unique upbringing in a family of ministers and teachers led to a lifelong pursuit of spiritual truth, first in the arts through classical acting and writing, through her legal writing as paralegal, and through the teachings of yoga over the past two decades. Prema Yoga Therapeutics' training for yoga teachers and medical health care professionals can be found at prema-yoga.org. For a list of local classes as well as national courses and international retreats, please check our her personal teaching site at danaslamp.com.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Ramesh Bjonnes is a writer, yogi and workshop leader. Currently residing in the United States, he lived in India and Nepal in the 1980s learning directly from an enigmatic master of Tantra. He has practiced yoga and meditation for over 30 years and lectured on Tantra, yoga and meditation in many countries. The co-founder of the Prama Institute, a holistic retreat center, he is also the Director of the Prama Wellness Center, where yoga therapy, meditation, juice fasting and Ayurveda is used to rejuvenate people’s health and wellbeing. He lives and practices in an eco-village in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina, USA. His is the author of two books on Tantra, Sacred Body, Sacred Spirit (Innerworld, 2013) and Tantra: The Yoga of Love and Awakening (Hay House India, 2014).  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.