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family.md: Full rewrite in Kenneth's voice — mentions Sarah, blended family reality, Malachi, and links to related essays. No more template language. yoga-meditation.md: Lead with personal practice instead of encyclopedia entry. Jnana Yoga front and center, meditation warning prominent, cross-linked to themes and essays. great-music.md: Curated albums with personal annotations, consolidated artist lists, own music section. Removed raw iTunes data export table. Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.6 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
35 lines
2.7 KiB
Markdown
35 lines
2.7 KiB
Markdown
# Yoga & Meditation
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I consider myself a practitioner of Jnana Yoga — the path of knowledge and self-realization. My interest isn't in the physical postures that Westerners typically associate with yoga. It's in the philosophical tradition underneath: the Upanishads, the Bhagavad Gita, the inquiry into what consciousness actually is.
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I use the term *vedic* to encapsulate these various philosophies and understandings of the Eastern spiritual traditions. It's a more accurate and respectful term than "yoga" for what I'm actually practicing, which is closer to contemplative inquiry than exercise.
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## What I Practice
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The four main paths of yoga are:
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1. **Jnana Yoga** — The path of knowledge.
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2. **Bhakti Yoga** — The path of devotion.
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3. **Karma Yoga** — The path of selfless action.
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4. **Raja Yoga** — The path of meditation.
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My path is Jnana — understanding through inquiry. The same analytical instinct that drives debugging and API design drives my spiritual practice. Different objects of attention, same quality of attention.
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## On Meditation
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**Meditation is not universally good practice.** This is important enough to state plainly. Meditation can be destabilizing for people with certain mental health conditions — PTSD, dissociative disorders, psychotic spectrum conditions like mine. I've written about this in [The Meditation Trap](/essays/2025-09-08-the_meditation_trap_when_mindfulness_makes_things_worse). Consult a mental health professional before starting a practice, especially if you have a complex history.
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When it works for me, it works well. When it doesn't, I stop. No ideology about it.
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## On Misappropriation
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The Western "yoga" industry has largely reduced a comprehensive spiritual tradition to physical exercise.<label for="sn-true-yoga" class="margin-toggle sidenote-number"></label><input type="checkbox" id="sn-true-yoga" class="margin-toggle"/><span class="sidenote">Traditional yoga encompasses eight limbs (*ashtanga*): ethical guidelines (*yamas*), personal observances (*niyamas*), physical postures (*asanas*), breath control (*pranayama*), withdrawal of senses (*pratyahara*), concentration (*dharana*), meditation (*dhyana*), and union (*samadhi*). Western "yoga" typically focuses only on *asanas*.</span> Yoga pants and yoga mats are not yoga. The postures are one small part of a much larger tradition — the part that's easiest to commercialize.
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## Resources
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- [Jnana Yoga](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jnana_yoga)
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- [Bhagavad Gita](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bhagavad_Gita)
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- [Vedas](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vedas)
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- [Upanishads](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Upanishads)
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- [Spiritual Practice & Technology](/themes/spiritual-practice-and-technology) — How this connects to programming as contemplation.
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