The Essays

The essays cluster into four kinds of terrain. New essays are added to these four kinds — the buckets themselves are stable. Any essay may sit in more than one; the placement below is where each one lives most naturally, with a small note where it also touches another bucket.

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The body, and what genuine health actually is

Essays about breath, movement, food, sleep, and the daily rhythm of the body — written against the industrial-wellness idea that health is something you buy. What genuine health looks like when it is not for sale.

• The Brightest Thing In The Body
• You Are Not Unfit. You Are Underfed.
• Charaka knew - Two thousand years before perimenopause had a word
• The Body That Outshines The Sun
• Upstream of the Lab Report
• The Universe Within Our Cells

Also touching Body: The morning I was told to feel my feet (primary in Self); Three Mantras, Three Planes (primary in Lineage); Generation Shaper (primary in Household); Your Morning Belongs To You (primary in Household).

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The self, and the traps of the modern self-project

Essays about how a person is currently being told to organise their inner life — the productivity culture, the optimisation culture, the endless questioning — and where the older tradition offers a different account of what a self is for.

• The Self that Must Win
• The Self That Must Be Chosen
• The Road After the Question
• The morning I was told to feel my feet
• The Four Rooms Of Talent
• The Fourth Room
• Before The World Claims You
• The Pit Stop Before The Blueprint
• The Three 3.0s
• Wants and Needs - What Diksha Did

Also touching Self: You Are Not Unfit. You Are Underfed. (primary in Body — the woman in the mirror).

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The household, and the widening circles of a life

Essays about what a life is actually built out of — the family, the work, the community, the world — and the responsibilities that run through those circles. Written from inside the householder’s ordinary Tuesday, not from a monastery.

• Why a second child began to feel too expensive
• Generation Shaper
• Oh Money In This Too
• Your Morning Belongs To You

Also touching Household: The Self That Must Be Chosen (primary in Self — the widening-circles argument lands here too).

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The lineage, and what the tradition actually teaches

The quieter essays. Reports from inside the practice — the ashram, the Guru relationship, the small daily disciplines the tradition holds. Slower reading, less argument.

• The Rain Was Never the Problem
• Swamiji on Mantra
• The morning Alexander walked back to camp
• The Original Yoga Nidra
• Three Mantras, Three Planes
• The River And The Riverbed

Also touching Lineage: Wants and Needs - What Diksha Did (primary in Self — the diksha framing sits here too).

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