Pragmatic Yoga - What's in a Name

Over a week ago I polled my Facebook friends about the 'Pragmatic Yoga' designation.

I got some great feedback and the least we can say is that it generated a lot of different reactions, including quite some negative ones. Nonetheless I decided to go ahead with this name and this post explains why.

Bad Marketing

When a 'regular' company or person does name research they then pick the most popular name. Here I'm going with it even though the reaction is not that good and that's because it's the best fit for what I want to do.

My quest in the last few years is to be true to myself and embrace my different interests in life. Since then I feel I've made lots of progress on the path and that's very exciting.

What is Pragmatic Yoga?

Yoga is a spiritual path. Yoga means union and refers to the union of the individual (jivatman) self with the cosmic Self (paramatman). It takes resources to move towards that goal; time and efforts. Pragmatic spirituality is about maximizing these limited means to advance as quickly as possible on the path.

Find your own Path

The best yoga approach for me is not the best for you and your best is not the optimal method for anybody else. Pragmatic spirituality aims at helping each aspirant find what works best for them.

To do this we want to use the experience of masters and yogis by following the wonderful ancient tradition of yoga and the word of the guru. But what if we get stuck at some point, why not try different ways which traditionalists disapprove of on principle or by omission?

Many claim that yoga is a science but would not dare to approach the path with typical scientific openness and the necessary readiness to question oneself and one's ways.

It does not have to be hard

You can choose to approach meditation, which is the chief practice of yoga, as if it is impossible or extremely difficult. You can also choose to approach it as if it is easy. For me the latter works much better and I want to share this approach and many other insights that came to me in the last few years.

The Pragmatic Yoga Experience

I'm now developing a 2-week course which I will be offering in August 2011 in Spain via my good friends at the Yoga Center Madrid and I hope there will be other courses as well in locations which are dear to me.

This post is the first of many about this new direction I'm taking. Stay tuned if you want to know more. More posts coming to this space and a brand new web site will be setup soon as well.