Sophia French: SanĀtana Yoga
Born in India, growing up in Dubai, and then returning to India for college, our guest today might have a name that sounds like she’s from Europe, but she deeply connected in mind, body, and spirit to her native roots as a Christian-Muslim Indian.
Some of our questions today are centered around how we can honour the roots and history of yoga while it’s become a global movement being absorbed into many different cultures and contexts. How do we keep yoga authentic, without becoming fanatical?
We look at how different cultures make monuments (or not) to themselves and how as “Westerners” we approach things quite differently from the attitudes found in the East.
Giving up her prestigious position as managing editor of Elle India, Sophia French left the modern city of Mumbai to go live in Mysore. Although she’s made it her mission to elevate and uplift traditional Indian culture, it’s people and voices, she, herself, is throwing off many of the cultural expectations that no longer support her feminist sensibilities, like making a conscious choice not to have children, or to live in common-law, unmarried for the past eleven years. These choices could be considered quite radical from a more orthodox cultural context; but as you’ll discover, Sophia is an embodiment of many divergent parts coming together in perfect harmony.
Sophia is deeply devoted to the philosophy of Sanātana Dharma, translated as “the natural and eternal way to live" referring to universal and axiomatic laws that are beyond our limited, transient sectarian belief systems. It’s no wonder that she was drawn to Ashtanga yoga and Vipassana meditation and is passionate about preserving the authentic yoga teachings, while being inclusive and diverse, so that the practice and philosophy can belong to anyone who has a genuine interest in transformation.
She tells us Dharma is a faith and it’s a way of life. But the deeper question is: Where does spirituality start and religion end?
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The Finding Harmony Podcast is hosted, edited and produced by Harmony Slater and co-hosted by Russell Case.
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Opening and closing music compliments of my dear friend teaching Ashtanga yoga in Eindhoven, Nick Evans, with his band “dawnSong” from the album “for Morgan.” Listen to the entire album on Spotify - Click Here.
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