1. The Paradigm of Yoga: Rest & Activity (in English).

 

A short treatsie by me on Yoga (2008, 178 p [but it's in a large font], a new edition of 2009 is on it's way), an informal thesis really (very informal).

 

I look upon yoga as a method to balance the extremes of lifes demands, the highs versus the lows, the gains versus the losses, the deeper desires and the need to understand life versus long stretches of mundane day to day encounters at workplace or home, some glad some sad, in the daily sparkles of existance burnished to whatever splendor we manage. A yoga to balance things, a yoga to enjoy, a yoga to render life complete. It ain't magic, yoga is a process over time, it needs continuity. Rest & Activity! Yoga stabilizes lifes pendulum swings 'tween these extremes in the sustaining of an algorythmy, so to say, over said dynamic swings. Yoga is yet another dynamic recursive algorythmy that sweeps superposed over the whole panorama of life and balances it, harnesses the extremes.

 

In the explanation of this recursive methodology of algorythmy as regards yoga I take recourse to an heuristic metaphor I have developed, "The Tree of Life" (graph). This is a functional metaphor to show the interrelationships and interactions of the eight aspects of yoga (as per Patanjali) – from the graphic, visual structure of this metaphor an effortless process is discerned, its dynamic an algorythmy, the application thereof a means for to accomplish the deep inward dive into full-spectrum rest and peace.

 

The title link, of this bullet, hereabove leads to an easily readable (first edition) on-line version at Issuu.com (click the link, great on-line publishing), from there the document is also downloadable as an Acrobat pdf-file.

 

On my SkyDrive (of this blog) the said pdf-file is here, in the 'Metaphor' folder.

 

 

2. Yogans Natur (in Swedish); The Nature of Yoga (in English).

 

An animated Powerpoint slideshow in two languages, Swedish & English.

 

This is a presentation on the nature of yoga, its definition, its perspectives, its background, its reason and purpose, its about the eight aspects that comprise it and its about an approach in method for to make the promise of yoga a reality. I present an heuristic metaphor, a functional metaphor, a schemata, "The Tree of Life" (graph), that I have construed for to anchor all the concepts of yoga in one wholity, so to say, and I also dig into the historical roots of yoga to uncover a prototype (almost) of said metaphor, a proptotype of the structure of yoga on unearthed seals from the Vedic age of ca. 2500 B.C. to 1700 B.C.: the Steatite/Paśupati Seal, and the Mohenjo-daro Seal. (The links here lead to pictures of respectively my metaphor and the seals of yore.)

 

This presentation whereof sections one and two are of abouts half an hours length is intended to be lectured over by me, though I have constructed it so as to be able to be used in a stand alone setting. (I've tried to time the text-boxes with a reasonable reading speed. In lecturing as I speak I quite often point to stuff in the 'slide-show' as the talk goes on, basically I say, in different words, what the text in itself tells, although I use the 'pause' button ever so often to be able to explain the details, thus no-one is required to read in the public setting, in that setting the text merely serves as visual backup of what I've just said).

 

The English version consists of only the two first sections (ca. half an hour) but the Swedish one has an additional two sections, sections three and four (these sections, 3 & 4, also comprise of abouts half an hours length of presentation totalling this Swedish version to almost an hours length). An English version of sections three and four is in the works and should soon (well, as time allows) be available.

 

 

3.The Algorythmies of An Another Albatross (in English).

 

This link refers to another one of mine blogs, at 'Blogspot', one whereon I write in an hariolatory (not too unfounded speculative guesswork) manner on yoga and science. On this blog I focus on an interesting idea in neurophysiology which attributes a sort of basal consciousness to every single biological cell, particularly the neuronal ones, the neurons, the nerve cells of the brain, supposedly capable of receiving 'rich' information, enough to individually, each and every one, to offer up the 'story' of self. In the piezo-electric dynamism of a cells membrane a 'conscious' field (crudely speaking) may be generated, as photonic input (via exchange of biological energy potentials) in reaching a cell via its synapses is transduced into sound, a phononic field emerges, of which all quanta are full, unreducible (as the quality of sound of a bell depends on there being no crack in it, the purity of tone tells the whole 'story' of the bell), and thus a single cell might, hypothetically, be capable of behaving as Leibnizs' 'monads' (each monad is like a little mirror of the universe). This theory, more coherently propounded by Dr's Steven Sevush & Jonathan C.W. Edwards, is named 'The Single Neuron Theory of Consciousness', and talking generally about it one could say that it is a theory on Single Cell Consciousness (this link leads to an external site, one of Professor Edward's, see much more on this topic there).

 

An illustration, a graphic, of this my speculative hariolatory may be seen on another blog 'o mine (next reference):

 

 

4. Albatross Sandrian Wanders and Wonders: Reflections of a Long Distance Navigator (in English).

 

This link thus, as per the last paragraph above, leads to yet another blog of mine and the next one here leads specifically to that particular graphic: "A Gathering of Single Cells!". In an humouristic way I attempt to entertain a bit with this playful incorporation of my 'heuristic' metaphor on yoga, "The Tree of Life" (graph), into the essentials of 'The Single Neuron Theory of Consciousness'.

 

This is the first blog I ever started, but a few years ago, so in addition to my yoga stuff you will there find quite a variegated assortment of my somewhat 'arty' mind-benders and a few fine far flung flights of fancy.

 

 

5. Heaven & Earth (in English).

 

This is my homepage whereon I take my first tentative steps towards giving an expression to the heuristic metaphor "The Tree of Life" (early thinkings of a few years back on this), a metaphor to make visible the structure and dynamic of the yogic paradigm of rest and activity. Out of this metaphor it is, as I see it, possible to derive a recursive process, of both mental and physical nature, to easily avail the psycho-physiological system a deep relaxation and inner peace, through an effortless algorythmy, so to say.

 

On these pages I also attempt a few scientific hariolations (speculative, but not unfounded, guesswork) on the 'Ontology of Word', the 'Game of Life' a toy model of a deterministic universe, there's stuff on the 'Cosmological Microwave Radiation', there's a cosmological 'Timeline of Emergence', et. al., and lot's of odds and ends. (Now, of 'Turing Machines' there's a presentation on this blog, strangely it's in the 'The Single Cell' folder.) All this for the great fun of it, for the sense of wonder it brings (to delve some into science as such – myself I'm a layman in these things but I enjoy the challenge to express myself coherently on subjects such as these).  

 

On this homepage I also do present a few of my Electric Mercury Landscapes (oil paintings) and other diverse playful stuff.

 

And, yes, before I forget – there is a nice scan (in a few different resolutions) of a Tibetan Mandala on this my homepage, possibly painted in 1975 by an artist monk from the encampment of the Dalai Lama in Dharamsaala in northern India. I bought this painting, of 71 x 50.7 cm (painted area), in a shop in New Delhi, India, in 1981 while attending a yoga course there, so I guess that makes it legitimate for me to display it this ways on my homepage, I talk a bit more about it there (it's also availabele from this blog here see the folder 'Mandala' in the 'Metaphor' dito). 

 

 

6. HRIH Yoga-Forum (in English).

 

In this forum, which takes its motifé from the teachings of Master Patanjali, I have endavoured to present my ideas on yoga somewhat. The link leads to a topic I created on the HRIH forum for to present my ideas on the wholity of yoga in terms of a paradigm: rest & activity. See my forum-posts there under the nomé Albatross.

 

 

7. Yoga Journal Blog (in English).

 

This is a blog 'a mine at Yoga Journal. I started it up a short while ago, spring 2009. I haven't written much yet in that space, but I do talk some on the same stuffs as on all my other places in the cyberworld. Other words, same things, same Albatross.

 

 

8. The Brights Forum (in English).

 

In all these thinkings of mine on yoga and other stuffs I do strive to align myself with a naturalistic world view. As The Brights motto goes, "To illuminate and elevate the naturalistic world-view". Well, so I write now and then, and rather freely too, on said forum under the nomé, as said, of Albatross. Have a look.

 

 

9. Lecturing / Föreläsningar (in Swedish).

 

Länken ovan leder till en presentation av mig själv och mina föreläsarambitioner. Jag undervisar i yoga sedan 1971, som jag nämnde i inledningen ovan, och sysslar för närvarande med att utveckla pedagogiska modeller för ett tydliggörande av dess natur, dess filosofi, dess metod, dess paradigm. Jag arbetar oberoende och är ej knuten till någon specifik yogaskola, som sagt.

 

I am based in Sweden so naturally my reach is somewhat restricted to the local turf, and really, most of my lecturing is done in Swedish (would be fun to try this out in English too someday), so, there're no lectures in the pipe-line in English for me at the moment. The Swedish link above leads to a presentation of the work I engage in as lecturer in Swedish in the land of Sweden, so to say. Well, I have been teaching yoga since 1971 and a great joy it has been. Now, although I have my roots, as many do, in the organization of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi teaching Transcendental Meditation I am yet unnaffiliated, free as a bird, since, well, since The Maharishi fired all, yea all, his teachers a few years ago and then restructured his movement. So that left many of us, teachers of Maharishis method of 'transcendence', high an' dry. There were a few re-certification courses after that but, well, my budget didn't cover that sort of expense. The Maharishi passed away peacefully last year, 2008, and, of course, that would be the final formal tie broken ('cept the abstract ones of heart and mind) as concerns the legitimacy of this mine ambition to make yoga (whereof meditation is one aspect) understandable and graspable as a whole, to illuminate, to inluminate, its wholity. And yes, I do it all on my own. Yeah! Anyways, I regard myself today as an unnaffiliated teacher of yoga, bound by no policies of any school of yoga, on a quest to demonstrate, in modern language, the sense and relevance of ancient algorythmy.

 

Around 1975 Maharishi Mahesh started delving into the Yoga-Sutra of Patanjali (a short treatsie on the philosophy of yoga from abouts 2000 years ago) which made me realize the further extent of yoga – all the aspects of yoga have to be taken into account for the wholity of yoga to be graspable, yoga is not only about movements of the body or only about meditation, no, there are eight aspects to the philosophy of yoga: morals, ethics, the body, breath, withdrawal, focusing, meditation and the sense of wonder (my phrasings here are very generalized expressions of the aspects, and they all refer to yogic algorythmy as such and do not, in this context, form the base of any ideology). Taken together they comprise all of what yoga is and all of what it has to offer – deep inner peace and a dynamic stance in activity. So this is what I teach, the wholity of yoga.

 

 

10. An Homage to Maharishi Mahesh Yogi (in English).

 

This link here leads to a song I wrote around the time of The Maharishis passing, "Flower Power". This song presents my gratitude to Maharishi Mahesh Yogi for all the joy and love in life his teachings have granted me over time, this is my homage to a Master Teacher. The link will take you to my My Space, this song is #1 in the songlist there.

 

Many other songs of mine are to be found at Reverb Nation (23 of 'em, all in all, at the moment). Listen to Another Albatross at Reverb Nation. These are songs from a suite of my three most recent albums, True Love Affair (2004), A Poetical Extravaganza (2007) and Flower Power (2009), taken together they are The Wild River Collection, the mp3's whereof you'll find in the 'songs' folder in the 'folders' section hereaboves. (In the albums, per se, I have included a few covers and there are still a few songs I have to get on-line yet, I'll have some 30 songs up there, maybe even more, when time allows, so, more to come.)