EP 32 - Staying Local, Going Global with Jessica Patterson - a podcast by Mark Whitwell

Jessica Patterson is the founder and director of Root Centre for Yoga and Sacred Studies, which she offers to the world from her home in Colorado Springs, USA. Jessica is someone who has managed to successfully keep the heart in Yoga. She escaped the "Yoga Industrial Complex," and continues to teach purely as the force of nurturing in local community — and beyond.

 

Jessica speaks with Mark about keeping the Centre going through the pandemic, whilst always acknowledging that "Yoga is Not Commercial Activity". This episode will be heart-food for all practitioners and teachers "swimming against the stream" of commercialism and hegemonic co-optation of the sacred traditions, and navigating the demands of students with warped expectations of what yoga is. She also explains her ground-breaking "Untrainings," and how Yoga functions for students as an unlearning process, rather than the hoarding of more knowledge.  

 

Online educational programs and more information at

 

In this episode you will hear...

 

01:00 The introduction.

05:00 Ancient arrowheads, wandering the ancient worlds. Trespassers and relationship.

12:00 A white trespasser v's indigenous wisdom. Traceable lines of trauma. The opposite of memory.

25:00 Pain is a function of mother nature. Don't meditate or meditate your way out of it. Un-training.

40:00 We should be falling on or knees on the mere sight of each other. Our bodies are not franchises. Yoga is not about the teacher. It's about the student.

50:00 The transition from instructor to teacher with a capitol T. Being here and being hair. When you're full you're a terrible consumer. Confronting patents.

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