#173 - The Yoga of Ordinary Life

Yoga isn't only found in retreats, caves, or on the yoga mat.

It's found in washing the dishes.
Listening deeply to someone you love.
Meeting frustration without immediately reacting.
Preparing a meal with care.
Walking barefoot at sunrise.
Showing up for your children, your community, and your work with presence.

In this short reflection, I explore what it means to bring yoga off the mat and into the ordinary moments that ultimately shape our lives.

If this conversation resonates, I've written a much deeper companion article on Substack exploring the householder path, the middle way, and what it means to be fully in the world without being consumed by it.

Read it here:
→ Yoga Heart Mind on Substack

This conversation is also the inspiration behind my upcoming immersive:

The Yoga of Ordinary Life

Saturday 23 August
CNTRE SPACE, Beaconsfield, Western Australia

A long-form workshop exploring how the ancient teachings of yoga can become a living practice woven into everyday life—not something we escape to, but something we embody.

I'd love to have you join us.

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Thank you for listening, for supporting conscious creation, and for walking this path with me.

With love,

Stuart

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hey everyone. Just going to talk a little bit about the yoga of ordinary life, a theme I'll be focusing in on for my next long-form immersive class happening on August 23rd at the Beaconsfield Shivananda Ashram. I'm feeling really clear, really inspired to focus in on this theme with you all. I do want to give a big shout out of gratitude to my teachers and one teacher in particular, Robert Thurman, who sadly passed away recently. And he talked so eloquently, wisely, humorously, intelligently about this theme a lot of the time. So he really has inspired this. Thank you, Bob Thurman. So grateful. These teachers are and have been such treasures and gems, and they have taken it so deep and offered it for us all. So just gonna play my part in the conversation. So this particular, it's not really gonna be a workshop as such, more of an inquiry, a direct inquiry, exploration, experimentation, practice, sadhana. But I want to really shine the light on this because for starters, the yoga practice, sadhana, has been a real journey for me. Before I met Jo, I really, I mean, I continue to be devoted to Ramdas. But in those early years before I met Jo, I really thought I was going more in that renunciate direction. I really did. Just that was where I thought I was going until I met Jo. And then beautifully everything changed without me even intending it to. So I'm deeply grateful to her and I'm deeply grateful to the mystery, to the trust, to my faith in listening. Because if I was just digging my heels in and stubborn to how I thought life was gonna go, I would still be a single yogi, which would be awesome as well. You know, it was a great time, and I'm grateful for that time. But life and the great mystery had a different plan for me. So I am gonna speak directly to the householder yogi path. Okay. And I feel we need more conversations around this, because there's so many potent classic teachings and teachers that have done beautiful work in the caves, in the monasteries, in the ashrams. You know, if we think of the classic yogi aesthetics that left quote unquote ordinary society to go into the jungle, to go into the caves, to go into the ashrams, the monasteries, the temples. Think of the monks, the nuns, the sadhas, the yogis, many, many examples. And I am so grateful for people living that way and listening to that inner the Dharma. Yeah, that's their Dharma. Even the Buddha, you know, the Buddha, so grateful for Buddha's teachings. But he did leave his family, he did leave the palace. After going so deep into asceticism, deep fasting, deep, deep practice, spiritual practice, and getting the teachings, receiving the teachings, cultivating the teachings that I am so grateful for, he came to the realization of the middle way, the middle path, which we're going to be discussing quite a bit, because to go deep, to continue going deeper and deeper into our spiritual practice, our sadhana, while being a householder, it really does require a refinement of the middle way, the middle path. It really does require so much of us, because life is messy, it's beautiful, beautifully messy, but it's a lot. So I totally get it if we intentionally choose to not be in romantic, intimate relationship, because it requires a lot from us. I get it. I get it why many of us yogis really choose to stay single. I'm not saying it's the easier path, I'm not. But it does, you know, there's a classic practice in yoga to eliminate as many distractions and desires as possible. Again, this is where the middle path comes into it. This is where a lot of the tantric teachings come into it. And even Christ apparently was pointing to this as well: the teaching of being in the world, but not of the world. The great Ken Wilbur, he talks a lot about this as well. To be in the householder role, to be a modern but earnest spiritual seeker, we must be really refined in what he calls transcending and including. See, classically, on the renunciate path, on the monastic path, the main emphasis is really just on transcending, transcending the human experience, transcending the ordinary experiences to be in the sublime, to be in the ultimate, to be in the divine. Whereas the tantra, and again, integral theory, Ken Wilbur's work points to we can transcend and include. Just check that out for a bit. We can transcend while simultaneously being deeply embodied. If we really dig into that a little bit more, he also talks about this process of waking up, cleaning up, growing up, showing up. Okay. So it's one thing to just wake up, and that's important. We as a collective, I hope we wake up. We got a lot of work to do to wake up collectively. Yeah, this is not just about us. We're helping each other wake up to a deeper compassion, a deeper wisdom, kindness, clarity, wake up, clean up. So we've got to do the deeper inner work to clean up, clean up the conditioned mind, clean up in yoga what are called the grantis and the malas and the samskaras, these old, outdated perceptions and knots in our circuitry that really block the flow of prana, kundalini energy and shakti. So we're going to be working on that. Cleaning up, the showing up, the growing up. Yeah, it all complements one another. And the great yogis, many of them, and Richard Freeman, big shout out of gratitude. He talks so beautifully about if we dig into the qualities of the inhalation, merging with the qualities of the exhalation, we can do all of this right here in our body, right here, right now. Merging prana with apana, the current of liberation with the current of manifestation. So we're going to play with a whole variety of ways to inquire into this, to refine our skills of going deeper and deeper into the central channel, into our spiritual heart, into the heart mind, into the big mind. Plenty of moments for meditation, stillness, transformation. But again and again, we're going to be pointing to how we can integrate this into our seemingly ordinary life. I love Jack Cornfield's book. I've been talking quite a bit about it. It comes up regularly in my classes and conversations. I recall it being, I've got it right there, but I recall it being ecstasy than the laundry. Okay. So no matter how deep our meditation is or our breakthroughs are, still got to do the laundry. So that's the ordinariness, isn't it? That as deep as our meditation can be, how's your how's your house? How's your how are your relationships? How's your life? Are you showing up more kind, more compassionate, more present? If not, we've got some work to do. So we we take a good, honest, accountable look. Is our yoga practice actually working? Is it helping us be a better person genuinely? Because very, very often we can, if we're not doing this deeply, do the classic spiritual bypass and kind of cop out to the ultimate truth that it's all just love and light. But then how are your relationships? How are you how are you showing up? So this is where the rubber meets the road for me anyway. Yeah. Oh, when when I don't have to think about money and bills and, you know, got the whole data myself, don't have to pick and drop up the kids. Yeah, it simplifies it big time. Which is awesome. If that is your current Dharma and your flow of life, and you don't have many other people to think about, just watch that one as well. Because the great teachers I can think of, and there's endless great teachers around us, Roshi Joe and Halifax, so many great teachers that have used that bandwidth. We need to serve. Love, serve, remember. We need to serve. So if we've got too much time on our hands and we are just thinking about ourselves, that can be really problematic. Yeah. So that energy, that bandwidth that we really need to think about others, yeah, put that into whatever your calling is. You know, for Roshi Joan Halifax and Ramdust, a big part of their calling was uh really helping people dying. And on their last chapter on earth. And I mean, Roshi Joe and Halifax, just check out her line, her work just in the in the in the prison system, in helping dying people. Really a true spiritual activist. I mean, that's the pinnacle of incorporating the breakthroughs of spiritual practice, sadhana, and then bringing it into really helping people in the world. So as Jack Cornfield often talks about, like I'm paraphrasing, but he often talks about tending to the part of the garden you can reach, you can touch. So for some of us that are coming to this offering, this class, you're gonna be working on bringing that into business, into relationship, into how you how you relate with your beloved, with your kids. Maybe by all means, come if you are single, but very much gonna be talking about relationship. And maybe you're welcoming in a romantic relationship, a beloved, another. Maybe I will be talking about that example a lot. So just FYI, you know, spoiler alert. If you're not interested in relationship, you may be bored shitless. You may not want to come. You may find it interesting, you may, but this is very much tailored to people interested in being in the world, but not of the world. People interested in the middle path, people interested in deepening a healthy relationship with money, with image, with modern day living and how we can work with it in a truly tantric way, truly yogic way, a bhakti way, uh, devotion. I think that's about it. If you've got any questions, put them down below or reach out. But I think I touched upon most of it. It's gonna be a beautiful journey. I do love the space at the Shivananda Ashram in Beaconsfield. Really honored to be teaching this there. And yeah, let's go for it. I did also do an article about this. I'm really vibing off it, if you can't tell. Did do an article on it on Substack. I'll upload this onto Substack as well. And yeah, let's do it. So another one last thing, the the retreat we're doing, the winter retreat. So this is gonna be a great complement. If you are coming on the retreat, this will really help integrate the depth that we dig into on the winter retreat. But of course, come even if you're not coming to the retreat. But especially if you are coming to the retreat, this could really help integrate into ordinary life. The extraordinary, ordinary, right? With this awareness, even the mundane, seemingly ordinary tasks in the day can be much more mindful, much more beautiful, much more yogic. Let's do it. Much love, everyone.