People sometimes quote that line at me – as happened here, in a thread that grew out of this article. But this easily spins into infinite loops of “who guards the guards?” logic, in which one person’s well-meaning comments are another’s policing.

Ironically, trying to add nuance – by suggesting that things aren’t as simple as often presented – gets interpreted as rigid adherence to one point of view. This is even more likely if it cites academics, whose ideas might run counter to traditional perspectives.

Some think that makes it important to challenge scholars’ arguments, even seeing what they say as disrespectful. Others talk about a fight for control of the narrative, sometimes seeking to defend their preferred interpretation from sceptical analysis.

All of this gets turbocharged by politics, from debates about “cultural appropriation” to “Hindu nationalism”. So some of those labelled “the yoga police” might themselves want to discuss “yoga robbers”, who reinterpret yoga to mean anything they want.

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I once wrote an article – based on a talk – which said that policing other people was the opposite of yoga. There’s an important distinction between asking questions and attempting to impose a fixed point of view that rules others inadmissible.

These are complicated topics to discuss, however – particularly when historical facts conflict with how things are interpreted on a personal, emotional or religious level. So it helps to have some protocols for how to go about it.

My teaching aims to make space for a range of opinions. As I put it on the year-long Path of Knowledge: “This is a diverse international group, so it’s a great opportunity to hear how others think, and to consider perspectives you might not share.”

There’s also a focus on critical thinking, standards of evidence and making sure an argument is grounded in facts as opposed to assumptions. It gets easier to agree to disagree if one is “open to hearing alternative interpretations of the same evidence”.

Enrolments for this year’s intake are closing soon. There’s still time to join us via the button below – materials for the opening module will be released in two weeks, and our first live seminar is on Sunday, September 27.

THE PATH OF KNOWLEDGE

In the meantime, scroll down for a video from a recent discussion. And see below for a sample of my thoughts about policing – click the “read more” link for the rest.

“What bothers me is self-righteous posturing – lecturing others about what is and isn’t yoga. Unfortunately, many people do that. I should probably stop before I do it myself. But having started, I might as well finish. Since yoga is self-inquiry, it’s an introspective process. Even if Patañjali says it can show us the minds of others (by means of the siddhi in Yoga Sūtra 3.19), most of us find our own minds to be quite enough trouble... Besides, telling others they’re wrong rarely changes their minds. And in any case, who says we’re right, and not deluding ourselves with more self-serving stories?”

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IS ANYTHING ACTUALLY TIMELESS?

Recording of an online discussion on August 26

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Don Lattin is the author of Distilled Spirits: Getting High, Then Sober, with a Famous Writer, a Forgotten Philosopher, and a Hopeless Drunk, which highlights the impact of Gerald Heard, who got Huxley interested in Eastern wisdom, and turned on many others to LSD – including Bill Wilson, the co-founder of AA.

This book is the prequel to an earlier bestseller, The Harvard Psychedelic Club: How Timothy Leary, Ram Dass, Huston Smith, and Andrew Weil Killed the Fifties and Ushered in a New Age for America. Previously, Don was a reporter, covering religion for the San Francisco Chronicle while becoming an addict and alcoholic.

We discuss how his own story overlaps with those he writes about, from religious doubts to experiencing oneness on LSD. In the process, we explore whether altered states lead to mystical insights or resolve mental health issues – topics addressed by Don’s recent books, God on Psychedelics and Changing Our Minds.

These days, Don shares reflections on cults and other new religious movements via his Substack, , which I highly recommend.

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WHAT DOESN’T CHANGE? – FREE TALK / Q&A

Wednesday, August 26 | 7:00 pm (UK time)

As yoga keeps evolving, is anything constant? 🧐

Texts often highlight the eternal, timeless and infinite nature of being. But immortal perspectives aside, aren’t worldly things impermanent?

When so much has changed in the history of yoga, can there still be continuities in methods and objectives?

Join me to discuss these sorts of questions! We’ll reflect on why things change, as well as what connects them to what came before.

We meet on Wednesday, August 26 at 7:00 pm (UK time – for other locations, check this calculator). Click the button below to receive the Zoom link.

A recording will be shared with all registered participants.

REGISTER HERE

KEEN ON YOGA PODCAST

Episode 289 (August 16, 2026)

I recently had a chat with Adam Keen, Mary Paffard, Richard Rosen and Rodney Yee about modern yoga and how it relates to traditional teachings. You can stream that here, watch the video below, or find the Keen on Yoga podcast on all platforms.

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Elizabeth Sulis Kim is the author of the recently published Book of Beasts, which is subtitled “Reclaiming Animal Wisdom”. She is also the founding editor of Cunning Folk, an independent magazine about magic, folklore, mythology and the occult.

Our conversation explores how these interests overlap, with a particular focus on the power of telling stories to present new possibilities – or as Cunning Folk puts it: “to innovate, we have to imagine”. In the process, we consider how to foster better treatment of animals and live more harmoniously with our surroundings.

Elizabeth’s second book, The Art of Folklore: A Visual Miscellany of Myths, Lore and Legend will be published next year. She’s also working on a novel that examines how the stories we tell shape our future.

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Fifteen years ago, I spent a long time here. As someone else put it back then – scroll down for a video – “I feel good and I feel fresh, hangin’ out in Rishikesh…” 🎶

However, things slowly changed and I haven’t been back - hopefully, one day! For the moment, here’s something I wrote about a Rishikesh hangout while feeling somewhat jaded with life as a yoga bum:

“Back in the Seventies, when hipsters lived in Kabul, most backpacker trails converged on Kathmandu. When he got there, a German named Klaus missed wholegrain bread. So he made some himself, in clay pots on a kerosene stove. Before long, he’d upgraded to ovens, and started selling his loaves to fellow travellers; in Nepal and down in Goa by the beach, where he opened a restaurant with a bakery attached. Four decades later, there are probably more ‘German Bakeries’ in India than McDonald’s…”

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It’s scary how quickly time flies. Still, I look back on those days with affection – and even gratitude for reaching my limit with what the article called “living in a bubble”. Deciding to return to the UK took me back to university to study yoga history, which started me teaching, which led to me writing The Truth of Yoga, and eventually this.

So on that note, I’ll hand back to Sky – a.k.a. Thomas Slansky – for whatever the opposite of Rishikesh blues might be (though a YouTube commenter nonetheless writes: “I watch this almost 13 years later & it brings great joy & laughter but also some sadness, thinking what became of the place nowadays…”):

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This conversation with my friend reflects on what we’ve learned from decades of practice – not least that it’s ultimately not about us. So we talk about ways of processing unhelpful conditioning, avoiding being triggered and the value of what Matthew calls “relational mysticism” – i.e. doing this communally.

Matthew is global investigations editor for the climate website DeSmog. He trained as a collective trauma integration facilitator with Thomas Hübl, co-hosts the What Is Collective Healing? podcast, writes Resonant World, and is co-founder of the Resonant Man international men’s group. He offers Tarot readings here.

The book I quote from at one point is Awareness by Anthony de Mello. Matthew also mentions his wife Genevieve, a clinical psychologist and parenting coach.

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This clip is an excerpt from our discussion. A transcript follows below.

If you’d like to explore how yogic traditions relate to modern practice, join me online for The Path of Knowledge – it’s a year-long immersion that starts in September. We meet twice a month for discussions, with videos and readings to help us prepare…

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VIDEO TRANSCRIPT

From a discussion about authenticity

“I think the biggest confusion in the modern yoga world is the idea that yoga is a practice. Because that immediately means that yoga means postures. It’s the thing that you do.

“For most of the history of yoga, the idea has instead been that yoga is a state of being that is attained through the doing of something else. Hence these weird Sanskrit compounds – bhakti-yoga, the attainment of the state of yoga through devotion; haṭha-yoga, through physical effort; dhyāna-yoga, through meditation; karma-yoga, through worldly activities.

“So that sort of philological textual analysis, scholarship makes it very clear that there’s always been an understanding [that] there are many paths to this state. And at the same time also there are many ways of embodying that state, so it’s not that they all lead to the same place necessarily.

“There is a very world-renouncing tradition, where all that really matters is basically being dead to the world while still alive. And so having no real sensory, mental, or physical engagement with anything, just sort of being the glowing vegetable sat in the corner.

“And then there is the tradition of being so well established in this state of clarity that it’s possible to go about one’s day-to-day business, completely uncontaminated by the things that cause problems to most other people. So unaffected by sorrow, unattached to pleasure, not impeded in any way, in the conduct of day-to-day mundane tasks, happily whistling while you wash the toilets. It’s absolutely fine.

“And then there’s a problem with some of that, because that is part of how the hierarchical structure of Indian society is rationalised in texts like the Bhagavad Gītā, which basically invented this worldly yoga as a tool for propping up social inequality, and combining the ideas of the yogic renouncer with the realities of a worldly society.

“And so there isn’t really out of all of that one definition of what’s there, but there is a number of common threads that we can see in lots of different yogic traditions about something that’s internally clear, that is unafflicted by the ways in which the mind distorts reality, and that most of that ends up coming back to – as the last slide I was pointing out observed – self-centred thinking that tries to rearrange reality to make us feel better, perhaps at the expense of others, and also is fixated on the idea of getting things in order to feel better.

“And the yogic perspective is to really not need anything. Look at the definition of contentment in the Yoga Sūtra. The commentarial lines that go with it basically say it’s to not need any possessions other than what you need for bare survival. And if you can be happy with that, that’s sixteen times better than any other imaginable pleasure, whether it’s in heaven or here on Earth. So, not wanting is really the key. It doesn’t have to mean not doing, but for a lot of yoga history, it did.

“I see an ever more needy, identity-focused, you know, sort of greedy and anger-fueled tendency colonizing the minds of not just the public at large, but those in the yoga world arguing on the internet about what is and isn’t yoga, or what isn’t appropriate behaviour in response to, I don’t know, the politics of the Middle East, whatever else it might be. I do not see much evidence there of any of that. I see, actually, the opposite. And often the people who are shouting the loudest are the least well-established in whatever that clarity might be.

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“However, again, we’re talking about this spectrum between two things pulling in the opposite direction – because if you really take that to its extreme, you do have an indifference to the world, and that’s not healthy. We live in a world that’s got a lot wrong with it. And if it’s possible to bring some of that clarity back into day-to-day life, and to try and be at least not part of the problem, and perhaps even part of a solution, then that’s helpful.

“To just say ‘I’m checking out because there’s too much problem’, which seems to have been the go and live in a cave approach, I don’t think helps all that much. So yes, I think the short answer is people are very confused about what yoga means, and are instead arguing about other stuff.

“And, yeah, to a certain extent, I’m part of that problem. I’m talking a lot about the analysis of philosophy and history, and that’s a lot of ‘about yoga’, rather than being yoga. That’s what I do, I’m a yoga nerd, people seem to find that interesting on a certain level, but I’m also mindful of the fact that I’ve put a lot more energy into that in the last 10 years than I have put into what I spent the previous couple of decades focused on, which was yogic practice.

“And, yeah, I still practise yoga in some form. I still try to touch in to some of this possibility, but I do notice my own capacity for it being eroded by things like screens, and by the difficulties of day-to-day life, and, you know, the struggles to earn a living, and everything else.

“And so I would like to actually see more conversations about that reality, how to try and pursue those two things at once, to be a person in the world who has concerns, who is obsessed on a certain level with getting enough, and at the same time trying to embody the state of ‘we’ve already got enough, we don’t need anything, it’s all absolutely fine’.”

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In one sense, very little – assuming yoga means a state beyond mental activity, as ancient texts teach. However, nowadays, it’s used to refer to something else – a practice based on sequences of postures that developed more recently.

My new book, The Evolution of Modern Yoga, is an engaging guide to the shifts in priorities that shaped new methods and objectives over the centuries, making yoga more appealing to contemporary practitioners. Drawing on the latest research, it examines key trends, influential teachers and issues of authenticity, among other topics. The overall aim is to explore how innovation relates to tradition.

This episode includes a brief sample, along with some reflections on broader ideas. The book is part of a series from the Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies. It will be published in October and it’s available for pre-order via the following links:

BOOKSHOP.ORG

AMAZON.CO.UK

AMAZON.COM

See the publisher’s website for other online options, along with endorsements. And send me an email if you have any questions about placing orders or anything else.

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Posting here, Indu Arora says a popular “squatting position” – known in Sanskrit as mālāsana – “helps people who need easier bowel movements because it changes the angle of the rectum and relaxes the puborectalis muscle, reducing resistance”.

To bolster this description, she goes a step further, suggesting the name of the shape comes from mala, which literally means “dirt” and is used in Āyurveda – traditional Indian medicine – for bodily waste, including faeces. “Hence the name ‘defecation pose’,” Arora says, and “NOT Garland Pose”, as it’s commonly identified.

Her caption adds that “Mala is often confused with Mālā”, which means “garland” and is used for floral wreaths and strings of beads. However, what she says about the name seems to add to this confusion. It “has nothing to do with a garland, I can assure you,” Arora writes – despite there being no evidence of any other source for it.

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The Encyclopaedia of Traditional Asanas, compiled by researchers at Kaivalyadhama, mentions two pre-modern texts that teach mālāsana – the Haṭhābhyāsapaddhati and the Śrītattvanidhi. These are closely related and provided inspiration for Krishnamacharya, an influential pioneer of modern yoga. Their descriptions are as follows:

“Place the hands on the ground and the knees on the shoulders. Raise the ankles and the thighs. This is mālāsana, the garland.”

— Śrītattvanidhi 44 (trans. Sjoman)

“Having supported oneself on the ground with the hands, one should place the knees on the shoulders, the heels on the chest and remain thus. This is the Garland pose.”

— Haṭhabhyāsapaddhati 57 (trans. Birch and Singleton)

In other words, the legs are used to garland the torso, which couldn’t be done at the same time as squatting on them. So the original shape was different. As the scholars Jason Birch and Mark Singleton note, it seems to be an extension of the challenging backbend that immediately precedes it in the Haṭhābhyāsapaddhati.1

One of Krishnamacharya’s most famous students, B. K. S. Iyengar, teaches two forms of mālāsana, both of which involve squatting. Practitioners use their arms to encircle the legs so their hands can be clasped behind the back. As Iyengar writes in Light on Yoga, “the arms hang from the neck like a garland, hence the name.”

The names of these shapes combine mālā (i.e. “garland”) and āsana (a word meaning “seat” used for any yogic “posture”). No historical record exists of a compound based on mala. The alternative name for squatting was most likely invented to highlight the benefits Arora identifies. Yet she also says that speaking of “garland pose” is “doing a dis-service by mistranslating Sanskrit”, which is simply misleading.

There are nonetheless issues with how Sanskrit is transliterated. Some of its sounds have no direct equivalents in roman alphabets, so extra symbols such as dots and lines have to be added to render them accurately. These diacritical marks distinguish mālā (i.e. माला) from mala (i.e. मल), but they’re not widely used outside of academia.

To make my last book, The Truth of Yoga, as accessible as possible, I left out diacritics and adapted some spellings for ease of reading. Unfortunately, that would have meant that mālā looked identical to mala. Other books from the same publisher run into that problem, as the example in the video illustrates…

My new book, The Evolution of Modern Yoga, is a little more scholarly – but hopefully no less engaging – so I’ve included diacritics, as I do in all my teaching. You can find out more about the International Alphabet of Sanskrit Transliteration (IAST) here. The easiest way to type it is using this keyboard.

VIDEO

Via my Instagram @truthofyoga

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Tamara Cohen wrote her PhD about the Yogavāsiṣṭha – a text whose original name was the Mokṣopāya, or “means to liberation”. Structured as a dialogue between the sage Vasiṣṭha and the young prince Rāma, it explains how to set oneself free from conceptual delusions.

As we discuss, the text suggests its method is the ultimate summary of all possible philosophies. In the process, it incorporates yoga alongside Buddhism, Śaiva Tantra and – in the Yogavāsiṣṭha – non-dual Vedānta. It also brings ideas to life by telling stories, presenting worlds within worlds that stretch beyond imagination.

You can find out more about Tamara’s work here. She taught a course on the text at the start of this year and she’s writing a book about its teachings on yoga. For now, she recommends this translation by Swami Venkatesananda (which can be found online). The Sanskrit of the Mokṣopāya is here – it’s also available in German.

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This French expression for an unappetising blend of incompatible ingredients seems a good metaphor for many modern versions of yoga philosophy. The closest synonym is probably “mish-mash”, but gloubi-boulga also carries hints of “gibberish”, which in the age of AI might translate into “slop”.

Before I say more, I should make it clear that I’m not a traditionalist – at least not an inflexible one. Innovation has always been part of how yoga evolves, which has helped it stay relevant as contexts change. Yet throughout that process, there were generally threads that maintained a connection to earlier teachings.

This is not always the case in modern yoga, particularly not if what’s taught involves making things up, or reinventing ideas to serve different priorities. That wouldn’t be a problem if people admitted as much, but they tend instead to source their creations to Patañjali or other ancient authors – as discussed in a recent podcast and article.

However, going it alone can also have pitfalls. I wrote about those at the end of my last book, The Truth of Yoga, which discusses the variety of yogic traditions, and how contemporary practitioners might seek to integrate them. To quote the conclusion:

“Everyone is free to create a new version of yoga philosophy. However, it seems wise to engage with tradition before going freestyle. The alternative is like trying to play jazz with no knowledge of scales, or trying to paint abstract art without learning to draw. We might well be gifted with insight, but the chances of making a mess are considerably higher.”

That’s pretty much the textbook definition of gloubi-boulga. French Wikipedia calls it “an imaginary dish and the favourite food of Casimir the dinosaur, who was the main character in L’Île aux enfants, a children’s television show broadcast in France from the mid-1970s to the early 1980s”.

In an episode transmitted just before I was born (embedded below), Casimir explains gloubi-boulga is a dessert that “everyone can’t help but love” because it’s “so delicious”. The recipe mixes unspecified amounts of the following into a bowl:

• powdered chocolate

• strawberry jam

• crushed banana

• mustard

• Toulouse sausage (lukewarm but raw).

This sort of combination is common in yoga. Texts throughout its history have mixed and matched different systems of philosophy. However, this has got more blurry with globalisation. To quote a chapter on the topic in my forthcoming book, The Evolution of Modern Yoga (about which more soon):

“Modern yoga is a synthesis of influences. Postural practice is usually described through the prism of a text – the Yoga Sūtra – that promotes sitting still, while [contradictory] ideas about oneness from different traditions are used to explain this. Non-yogic sources, from poems to psychology, are also widely cited…”

Add to that such hybrid developments as using crystals to cleanse rainbow-coloured cakras – none of which is found in Sanskrit texts – or “manifesting” what one desires, despite the yogic emphasis on conquering desire, and things get more complex.

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This isn’t to suggest that there’s anything wrong with combining ideas to develop new methods. It’s just more helpful when it’s clear that’s what’s happening and what might get left out. Scholars use another French term to discuss this. To quote an article by Véronique Altglass, which references two modern yogic lineages:

“Despite being untranslatable into English, ‘bricolage’ has had a remarkable trajectory in the social sciences and beyond. The term designates activities of fabricating and repairing, meaning something like ‘do-it-yourself’ and ‘tinkering’. It also conveys the idea of an amateurish or not serious practice: ‘bricoler’ in some contexts can be translated as ‘fiddling’…”

Nonetheless, Altglass notes, the “diversification of cultural and religious practices” has its own validity, and is driven by “manifold social, cultural and political logics” that are difficult to isolate, so what comes from where can be hard to untangle.

Since the constituents of gloubi-boulga are just as commingled, it might even help to make that a focus of practice. The Buddhist scholar-monk Anālayo suggests mixing all one’s food in a bowl to diminish attachment to sensory pleasure. As he writes in Satipaṭṭhāna Meditation: A Practice Guide, “artificial sweets like chocolate or cookies lose all their attraction on being mixed with soup, rice, and vegetables”.

As a result, he says, one learns that “the main task of eating is to nourish the body, rather than to entertain the taste buds”. And should one wish to take the practice further, “there is the option of chewing our food and then, before swallowing it, taking it out of the mouth again for a brief moment of inspection”.

Mmmmmmm, gloubi-boulga! 😋

VIDEO FLASHBACK

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Sam Akbar is a clinical psychologist and Oxford-trained classicist. Her new book is The Odyssey Mindset, which explores timeless guidance from Homer’s epic on finding purpose and strength in the face of life’s challenges.

Sam’s speciality is trauma. She’s worked with refugees who’ve fled torture, war and sexual violence, and she draws on that experience to address a general audience with practical suggestions for overcoming difficulties.

Together, we consider how Odysseus’s long journey home can be read as a metaphor for seeking security. We also discuss how it helps to have mentors, perhaps including therapists, and to identify core values with which one aligns.

Along the way, we talk about this trailer for Christopher Nolan’s new Odyssey movie, as well as the translation by Emily Wilson that Sam recommends.

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The evolution of yoga shows that traditions doesn’t have to be old to be authentic. However, that raises the question of how innovations align with the past, as well as whose authority defines what’s yogic and what isn’t.

As we discussed in a recent philosophy club, this is complicated by many layers of cultural exchange. Some techniques now presented as yoga began as something else, as in the example on the image above – from a 1930s exercise manual by Mollie Bagot Stack. Arching the spine up and down is widely taught today as the “cat” and “cow” postures, but there’s no trace of this movement in pre-modern yoga texts.

The Oxford English Dictionary defines authentic as “legally valid” and “in accordance with fact or stating the truth”. However, it also adds that “the usual sense” in modern usage is “not feigned or false”, and what “truly reflects one’s inner feelings”.

These alternatives illustrate a tension between and objective fact and what’s often called “my truth”. This sometimes arises in people’s discussions of yoga history, which is usually framed to endorse what they teach. One example that crossed my screen in recent days (embedded below) is from the prominent teacher Simon Borg-Olivier.1

In the video, he outlines a variant on alternate nostril breathing. This uses the tongue – instead of fingers and thumb, as is commonly taught – to restrict the flow of breath. The caption attributes this to the fifteenth-century Haṭhapradīpikā, whose historical authority provides validation. As Borg-Olivier’s narration puts it: “This is what’s meant to be done”, because it’s “the way it’s described in the texts”.

That claim stems from a reference to baddhapadmāsana – the “bound lotus posture” – in Haṭhapradīpikā 2.7. Today, this name means what the video shows – wrapping arms behind the back to hold each foot. But there’s no indication of this in the text, despite Borg-Olivier’s suggestion that “it says take your right hand around the body and grab your right leg, and take your left hand around the body, grab your left leg...”

With both hands clasping the feet, there’d be no way of using them to close alternate nostrils at the same time. Hence Borg-Olivier’s rationalisation for using the tongue, which turns upward and backward to plug nasal cavities.

However, none of that is taught in the Haṭhapradīpikā, which gives no explanation of baddhapadmāsana. A new scholarly edition (available here) translates it simply as “the lotus pose”, in which legs are bound together in a pretzel shape. There’s no suggestion that hands are bound too, requiring other techniques to be used for breath-control.

Meanwhile, an earlier source – the Dattātreyayogaśāstra (available here) – teaches alternate nostril breathing using hands. Sitting in padmāsana, it says in verses 59-60, “the wise man should block the Piṅgalā [the right channel, linked to the sun] with the thumb of the right hand and slowly inhale through the Iḍā [the lunar left channel]”.

None of which is to suggest that there’s no potential benefit to using the tongue. But it’s simply misleading to say that doing otherwise “is not how the old texts describe it”, particularly when this is geared to selling workshops and trainings.

“I believe we’ve just simplified what we couldn’t do,” Borg-Olivier’s caption says. “So real yoga is much more complex, and often stranger, than only doing fancy postures in fancy clothes”. Hence: “If you want to learn more, join me live or online.”

In that spirit, if you want to learn more about how yogic traditions relate to modern practice, join me online for my year-long course, The Path of Knowledge… 🙃

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N.B. I commented on Borg-Olivier’s reel. He replied: “thank you for sharing this. Will look into it. I haven’t really updated my knowledge on this for a while!” I also made a video here. Borg-Olivier responded to that here.

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That’s just a sample of the thought-provoking papers presented in Paris at the Yoga Darśana Yoga Sādhana conference last week. This podcast shares a few reflections on what was discussed, plus my own presentation on misleading books that manipulate readers to generate sales (slides available here).

Expanding on a range of conversations across other panels, I also outline some possible responses to broader concerns about misinformation. In the process, I consider ways to bridge gaps between scholars, yoga teachers and practitioners, journalists, activists and the general public.

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Yoga Darśana Yoga Sādhana is a meeting of scholars who write about yoga in one form or another. Since the first event in Krakow in 2016, it’s become a biannual gathering.

This year’s theme is “authenticity, authority and adaptation”, and my contribution is based on work I’ve published here – including reviews of Stewart Home’s Fascist Yoga (here), and Shyam Ranganathan’s Yoga – Anticolonial Philosophy (here).

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David Mazower is the author of Yiddish: A Global Culture, which accompanies an exhibit he curated at the Yiddish Book Center in Amherst, Massachusetts.

Our conversation explores the heritage and influence of Yiddish – the everyday language of East European Jews, which became a diaspora lingua franca and the medium for bold creativity, from avant-garde art and subversive writing to radical politics that shaped socialist and anarchist movements.

David’s great-grandfather, Sholem Asch, was a pioneering Yiddishist writer and another of his ancestors – his father’s father Max – was a revolutionary in tsarist Russia, becoming involved with a socialist party called the Bund, whose deeply humanistic perspective has since been marginalised.

As David observes, the impact of the Bund is now the focus of a book by Molly Crabapple – titled Here Where We Live is Our Country. And an outing of London Bundists from the early 1900s features on the cover of David’s book.

Before joining the Yiddish Book Center as its research bibliographer and editorial director, David was a senior journalist with BBC World News and deputy curator of the Jewish Museum London. He writes for a range of publications on topics from Yiddish theatre and popular culture to British Jewish history.

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Appearing at an interesting time – yoga blogging was dying, social media had started imploding and glossy magazines were still hawking contortions – Pushpam strove to do something different, combining contributions from practitioners, teachers and scholars, as well as a cook. But although it succeeded, it ran out of steam.

Billed as “bi-annual (or so)”, it delivered in the sense of an issue every two years on average. The last was in 2022, and it’s unclear if another will appear. In the hope of a revival, I’ve brought back some memories of a fun conversation in Hamish’s kitchen.

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Yogic traditions present different frameworks for ethical conduct, with varying degrees of engagement in worldly affairs. If their aim is to promote liberation, can they also support human rights? Might ideas about the highest good, or a self in all beings, provide orientation? If so, which philosophy seems the best fit?

Brett Parris explored these themes – among many others – for a doctorate from Oxford. A book based on his thesis, which was titled Yogic Metaethics: Comparing Patañjali’s Yoga, Nondual Śaivism, and Vedānta, is now in the works, and he recently presented his findings here.

Together, we discuss how key teachings relate to modern challenges. At one point, I quote this line by the sceptical scholar Agehananda Bharati (from his book The Light at the Center): “You don’t learn ethical behavior through yoga and meditation any more than you learn loving your neighbors by playing poker or cello.”

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More than they used to be, thanks to the input of Ian Alexander, who’s personally edited between a third and half of them. Many of these meet the criteria for what the free encyclopaedia calls a “good article” – combining clear, neutral writing with verifiable sourcing and broad coverage.

For the 25 years since Wikipedia launched, it’s been dependent on the work of volunteers. In an age of hallucinating chatbots, this human commitment is all the more striking. Our conversation explores how it works, why Ian got involved and where the yoga WikiProject might go from here.

We also talk about other things – from pages on the writings of Tolkien to Swami Propagandananda, a nickname for Sivananda that Ian included in one of his edits. He’s a longstanding yoga practitioner, as well as writing books about nature and software engineering.

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