The Shala Daily

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.

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.

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.

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 meaningfully train one without the other showing up.

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 discourse about “natural” practice and our private pharmaceutical realities has become a chasm.

Grasping DNA and its Influence on Wellness Let’s get this straight: the simplistic notion of biological determinism—the outdated belief that our genes are puppeteers pulling the strings of our health—has been thrown out the window. In the old days, genes were seen as tyrannical blueprints ruling over biological function. But after the Human Genome Project…

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‑learning research the distinction between “external” and “internal” cueing is now a fundamental principle—and it was a woman, researcher Gabriele Wulf, whose work beginning…

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 more information—it’s practice.

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 changes how we practice.

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, emotion, and body awareness centers.