145: How To Give a Dharma Talk When The World Is On Fire with Hari-kirtana das (PART 1)
The Mentor Sessions · May 13, 2025 · 49:15
The Mentor Sessions · May 13, 2025 · 49:15
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You don't me to tell you that the world as we know it is burning to the ground. This makes teaching yoga hard, important and strange. A few episodes back I answered the question, "Should we talk about current events in our yoga classes?" By essentially saying, "maybe… but most likely YES." In that episode I talked about how important it was to have an understanding and point of view about what the yoga teachings would say about current events. I received a ton of great feedback about that episode, and also a lot of questions.
So we are diving deeper into those questions with my friend Hari-Kirtana Das.
Hari-kirtana das (he/him) is a yoga teacher, spiritual mentor, and the author of two books on yoga philosophy: Journey Into the Bhagavad Gita: A Guide to Exploring Timeless Principles of Transcendental Knowledge and Integrating Them Into Your Life and In Search of the Highest Truth: Adventures in Yoga Philosophy.
Hari has been practicing devotional and other yogic disciplines for over 40 years, has lived in yoga ashrams and intentional spiritual communities, worked for Fortune 500 companies and Silicon Valley start-ups, and brings a wide range of spiritual knowledge and life experience to his classes, workshops, and presentations.
He's on the faculty of numerous Yoga Teacher Training programs, offers live online workshops and courses throughout the year, and his mission is to illuminate the many ways in which the yoga wisdom tradition can guide us toward meaningfully transformative spiritual experiences.
In this episode, you'll hear:
why it makes sense for yoga teachers to talk about current events and politics in class
how teachers can start to make the connections between current events and yoga philosophy
Hari's formula for delivering a great dharma talk
ideas to help teachers integrate philosophy into asana class
And stay tuned for Part 2 of this conversation coming soon!
Learn More From Hari-kirtana Das:
Hari-kirtana das' book Journey Into the Bhagavad Gita
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