Note: This conversation touches on sexual assault, sexual abuse and exploitation in teacher-student relationships, and harm inside yoga and spiritual communities.
Sandi Higgins is an international Ashtanga yoga teacher, actress, filmmaker, and author based in Mysuru, India, where she works to connect the inner and outer ecology through yoga, natural farming, Indian heritage, and sustainable culture.
Sandi has been a longtime student and teacher of Ashtanga yoga, a tradition that has been both healing and harmful for the people inside it, and she doesn't ask you to pick a side. She asks what becomes possible if we can hold both.
Sandi talks about medicine and poison, and how the same thing can heal or harm depending on the dose. That one image carried us through shame, devotion, and the parts of ourselves we keep sending away. I share some of mine.
Sandi's Website to learn about her and connect for her documentary.
Her blog post
Books Sandi mentions:
Guruji: A Portrait of Sri K. Pattabhi Jois
Surviving Modern Yoga
Chapters
02:25 · Holding Two Truths at Once
08:31 · Right Distance, Right Depth
10:54 · Shame Is Not a Good Teacher
14:00 · Forgiving Our Younger Self
17:06 · Ferocity as Medicine
26:35 · The God-Man Dynamic
33:43 · Learning What Not to Do
37:38 · Devotion, Poor Teachers, and the Yamas
42:34 · Guruji, and the Conduit
44:31 · Reverence, Trauma, and Trust
Go deeper with the reflection prompt and the themes of this episode on my Substack.
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