Consciously Evolving, with Beryl Bender Birch
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Teacher: Beryl Bender Birch
Host: Colleen Saidman Yee
Yoga is a methodology to consciously work on your own personal evolution, according to master teacher Beryl Bender Birch in the latest episode of Talking Yoga. Beryl, who is one of our hosts and also the bestselling author of several books on yoga, sat down as the guest this time with host Colleen Saidman Yee.
Colleen and Beryl discuss that conscious process of evolution, and how early in our practice we tend to focus on the tangible, physical plane, which is why we start with asana. “The outer limbs come before the inner limbs.” As we deepen our personal yoga practice, Beryl tells, Colleen, “You recognize you have an experience that tells you, not from an intellectual standpoint, but from an experiential standpoint, that there really is only one of us here. And once you have that experience, I think that is the awakening… you experience connection.”
In this episode, you’ll discover why Beryl thinks yoga is more than just a connection between mind and body, but also about connecting the individual self to the divine self. She and Colleen discuss different conceptions of god, and of getting beyond the notion of god as a thing, or a unit, or any of the names people attach to it. “Let’s call it Om,” Beryl says, referencing Swami Satchidananda’s translation of the yoga sutra. “But it is important to recognize that, if we’re really trying to cultivate connection, that other people are going to call it different things, and one isn’t necessarily better, or right.”
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