Paul Bramadat - "Skeptical Scholar, Devoted Practitioner"

J. Brown Yoga Talks

J. Brown

Yoga, Health & Fitness, Yogateacher, Alternative Health, Yogaindustry, Religion & Spirituality, Spirituality

4.4 • 696 Ratings

🗓️ 9 June 2025

⏱️ 93 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Paul Bramadat, Director of the Centre for Studies in Religion and Society at University of Victoria and author of Yogalands: In Search of Practice on the Mat and in the World, talks with J about letting your body settle the score and the anthropology of yoga. They discuss transformation and academic dispassion, experience vs intellectual reasoning, religious studies and small p politics, the response from academic circles to being a yoga teacher, healing properties of practice, coping with the world better, and connection to what animates your curiosity.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	All right. Here we are. This is Jay Brown Yoga Talks podcast. My name is Jay Brown.
0:18.2	For anyone who is listening to the show for the first time today, let me welcome
0:23.0	you. Everyone else. What's up? How's everyone doing? First, let me thank those of you who reached
0:32.4	out to wish me a happy birthday. I do appreciate that. If you weren't here last week, I mentioned it.
0:39.5	I turned 53 years old this week. And for those of you who are yoga teachers who are maybe
0:49.3	getting more on in years as I am, you might appreciate that for some reason this year,
0:59.3	turning 53,
1:02.5	the fact that I was a yoga teacher really did feel like it,
1:09.2	it sets me apart more than at any other time in my life
1:13.8	like I became a yoga teacher in my early 20s
1:17.7	in New York City
1:19.8	in the 90s in the early aughts
1:23.0	and there was nothing
1:24.1	unusual about being a male yoga teacher at that time in my 20s.
1:29.7	In fact, it was a very like kind of rock star counterculture, cool thing to do.
1:35.3	That's why I did it, I think.
1:38.5	And as I got older, even when I, you know, got into my 30s and even my 40s and I got married and I had
1:48.4	a child and I was in Brooklyn and I was like at the elementary school talking with other
1:55.9	parents and told them I was a yoga teacher.
1:59.7	Like the reaction I would get or the kind of subtle
2:02.8	communication, even if it's unspoken that would happen was not that I was like this weird
2:10.0	unusual thing. In fact, there would often be maybe even other male yoga teachers who had
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