{"id":36474,"date":"2015-11-04T22:41:48","date_gmt":"2015-11-05T03:41:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wanderlust.com\/?p=36474"},"modified":"2015-11-04T22:41:48","modified_gmt":"2015-11-05T03:41:48","slug":"gabriel-halpern-on-iyengar-and-ritual-elders","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wanderlust.com\/fr\/journal\/gabriel-halpern-on-iyengar-and-ritual-elders\/","title":{"rendered":"Gabriel Halpern on Iyengar and Ritual Elders"},"content":{"rendered":"

This post originally appeared on Five Tattvas<\/a>.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

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My guest in this episode is Gabriel Halpern, who is an Iyengar yoga teacher based out of Chicago. I first met Gabriel a few years ago, when I took his workshops at Kula Yoga Project in Williamsburg, NYC. Gabriel’s therapeutic approach to asana was intelligent and illuminating, but what I found most inspiring were his elegant and thoughtful dharma talks, which drew heavily from mythology and philosophy. I immediately admired Gabriel as the kind of teacher that I myself would like to be someday.<\/p>\n

We had a wide-ranging discussion about his beloved teacher, B.K.S. Iyengar<\/a>, about various features of the contemporary yoga scene, and his very interesting views on the need for a return of the \u00ab\u00a0Ritual Elder\u00a0\u00bb in contemporary society.<\/p>\n

Gabriel’s path started in a way familiar to a lot of seekers from his generation: with psychedelics<\/em>. His mind was opened through these experiences and in 1971, he moved into an ashram that focused on training teachers to teach yoga, although he did not have any thoughts toward teaching as a career at the time.<\/p>\n

He spoke about how, over the years, the renunciant model of the yoga practice showed itself to be outmoded for our current cultural climate. He calls the \u00ab\u00a0yoga of relationship\u00a0\u00bb the alternative for those who are involved in the world\u2014or, what is sometimes called the \u00ab\u00a0householder path.\u00a0\u00bb<\/p>\n

On this path, each person, however ordinary, is extraordinary, but you have to be taught to look at your own life in a symbolic, meaning-filled way. This is where the importance of the philosophical teachings comes in and the practice of svadhyaya<\/em>, or self-study<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Gabriel speaks of a distinct calling that initiates the spiritual path, one that often asks you to separate yourself from what you know to go on this journey of awakening and transformation. However, there’s no guarantee that you’ll be successful. If you stay the course, your ontological status will no longer be the same after this journey.<\/p>\n

Gabriel celebrates this newfound approach to spirituality<\/a> that no longer requires the imagery and trajectories of organized religion. He quotes one of his teachers as saying,\u00a0\u00ab\u00a0Organized religion is the banana peel, and spirituality is the banana.\u00a0\u00bb<\/p>\n