My guest is Revd. Dr. Nicholas Buxton. Nicholas is a priest in the Church of England and runs a meditation centre in Newcastle. We discuss christian contemplative practice, the buddhist notion of emptiness and the personal and impersonal nature of the God.

He is the author of several books including: Tantalus and the Pelican: Exploring Monastic Spirituality Today, The Wilderness Within: Meditation and Modern Life. He has a PhD in Buddhist philosophy from Cambridge. Check out Nicholas’ meditation centre in Newcastle, Just Meditation.

Check out Nicholas’ Wise Studies course on the contemplative practices of the early desert fathers, the beginnings of the monastic christian tradition.

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In this episode my guests are Genny Wilkinson Priest and Sarai Harvey-Smith. We discuss two topics, the allegations about Pattabhi Jois’ sexual misconduct and the ambiguity around the qualifications to become and maintain status as a recognised KPJAYI Ashtanga teacher.

Genny quit full-time hard news journalism to focus on her yoga studies, becoming a Shri K Pattabhi Jois Ashtanga Yoga Institute Authorised Level 1 teacher, as well as British Wheel of Yoga and Yoga Alliance-certified teacher. She is fascinated by yoga philosophy, and is pursuing a Master’s Degree in the Traditions of Yoga and Meditation at SOAS in London. She returns as often as she can to Mysore, India to study with Ashtanga Yoga lineage holder Sharath Jois, who has given her authorisation to teach Ashtanga as set out at the KPJAYI. She is also a BWY-qualified Children’s Yoga teacher. In addition to teaching at triyoga, she is the Yoga Manager at Europe’s biggest group of yoga studios. She continues to write, editing Pushpam — a new, global yoga magazine published by Hamish Hendry that explores the state of the practice of contemporary yoga. Her articles have also appeared in Huffington Post, the Daily Mail, Elephant Journal, Cosmopolitan, and Yogadork. She is also the yoga columnist for Healthista.com. You can find out more about her at www.gennyyoga.com

With over 16 years teaching experience and 20 years of practice under her belt, Sarai is a Senior Yoga Teacher, Teacher Trainer and Yoga Teacher Mentor. She has taken many lengthy trips to Mysore, India between 2003 – 2011 to study ashtanga yoga at KPJAYI. She is Authorised Level 2. Sarai has an MA in Psychodynamic Psychotherapy from the University of Essex. She continues her training at the Tavistock Clinic (BPC) and is an Honorary Psychodynamic Psychotherapist within the NHS. She is BACP registered and has a private practice in South West London. www.saraiharveysmith.com

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In this episode with Professor Bee Scherer, PhD we discuss the foundations of Buddhist philosophy, the four noble truths, Bee’s work in queering paradigms as a trans/non-binary activist and the relationship between buddhist practice and activism.
 
Bee is a long-time practitioner of Buddhism and has been globally teaching as a Buddhist lay teacher. Bee currently serves as the vice-chair of the International Lay Buddhist Forum.
After the study of classics, Indic (Sanskrit, Pāli, Prakrits) and Tibetan philology in Germany and the United States, completed by a PhD (Groningen, The Netherlands 2002), Bee published among others on karma; Nāgārjuna and early Mind-only; and, in recent years, on transnational Tibetan Buddhism; radical, reform and socially engaged Buddhism in Asia; and on Buddhist perspectives on gender and sexuality.
 
Currently, Bee is chair (full professor) in Religious Studies & Gender Studies at Canterbury Christ Church University and directs the INCISE  Intersectional Centre for Inclusion and Social Justice research institute. As a trans/non-binary scholar-cum-activist Bee has established the interdisciplinary, transnational Queering Paradigms Social justice academic network and conference series.
 
Check out more of Bee’s work here.
 

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My guest is Sarah Shaw. Sarah received her Phd in English from Manchester University. After studying Pali and Sanskrit at Oxford, she began teaching and writing on Buddhist subjects. She has written several books on meditation theory and practice, and jātaka literature. She is the author of several books including Introduction to Buddhist Meditation, The Jātakas: Birth Stories of the Bodhisattaand her most recent book, The Spirit of Buddhist Meditation. She is a member of the Faculty of Oriental Studies, University of Oxford, and Wolfson College. She is a fellow of the Oxford Centre for Buddhist Studies.

Check out her 6 hour audio course on the early teachings of the Buddha at wisestudies.com.

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My guest is Karen O’Brien-Kop. In this episode we discuss two foundational concepts found in the Sankya philosphy, Purusha and Prakriti or pure consciousness and nature, which underpin the main ideas in much of yoga practice including the seminal text, the Yoga Sutra of Patanjali. 

Karen has been practising yoga in different forms since 1995. After a decade teaching yoga she began pursuing  the academic study of yoga. Karen completed the MA in Traditions of Yoga and Meditation at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London, in 2014 and is now continuing a PhD in the Department of Religions and Philosophies. Karen is in the third year of her research project, which centres on the Yogasutra of Patanjali as well as other cross-religious textual accounts of yoga in the 4th-5th century CE. Karen has studied Sanskrit with Dr James Mallinson of SOAS, and has been a recipient of the Phiroz Mehta scholarship and the Ouseley Memorial language scholarship.

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