Featured Editorial: The Phenomenology of Fall & Ayurveda Between The Covers At the Existentialist Café by Sarah Bakewell The Practice Course: Breathing With Fall · guided video · $27 • “Reading The Editorial” An accompanying, in-depth PDF exploration of the Featured Editorial.
Overview: Phenomenology is the philosophical study of the structures of consciousness as they are experienced from the first-person point of view. Ayurveda is an ancient system of medicine rooted in subjective observation of nature’s elements and their effects within us. Here, we let both guide us into fall.
Hi Friend,
Having experienced seasonal change in different parts of the world, it is easy for me to sit on the beach here in Encinitas, where the ocean is still 72 degrees, and remember autumn on the East Coast and throughout Europe. But inside, fall feels different here. Phenomenology and Ayurveda both start with paying attention to how things feel. What I’ve learned over the years, from several leading Ayurveda teachers presenting at The Yoga Mandiram, is that the season is never only outside us. So I try to let fall arrive that way, without the calendar or the postcard maples. The light goes gold an hour earlier. The air dries and moves restlessly. The evenings carry a quiet sense of letting go. Sometimes it can feel as if the Santa Ana Winds are blowing through my own nervous system as much as through the canyon.
In Sarah Bakewell’s At the Existentialist Café, there’s a moment in Paris, 1932, when the philosopher Raymond Aron points at his apricot cocktail and tells Jean-Paul Sartre:
“If you are a phenomenologist, you can talk about this cocktail and make philosophy out of it!” — Raymond Aron to Jean-Paul Sartre, from Sarah Bakewell’s At the Existentialist Café
The same goes for a fall evening. Ayurveda teachers would call it vata, air and space set in motion. Either way, it’s the same observation: the restlessness out there and the restlessness in here are one movement. Once you feel it, the practice will follow: slower breath, longer exhales, warmth, routine, and contact with the ground. Fall will then become something you breathe with and allow to move through you. How does fall make itself known within you?
The Practice Course
-Download this week’s free companion PDF↓, *Ayurveda & Nature. -For a guided experience with Dennis visit the lecture/course on our learning platform, The Academy at Pranayama.com.
• A morning practice to steady. • An evening practice to settle. • An inspirational short discourse. • “Reading The Editorial” An accompanying, in-depth PDF exploration of the Featured Editorial, +4 Instructional PDF’s
At the Existentialist Café: Freedom, Being, and Apricot Cocktails by Sarah Bakewell
Paris, 1932. Three friends share apricot cocktails, and one of them points at his glass and says you can make philosophy out of it. From that moment, Sarah Bakewell tells the story of the thinkers who turned everyday experience into philosophy. She writes about them as real people, in cafés, arguing and falling in love, and makes their big ideas surprisingly easy to follow. It’s a natural companion to this week’s reflection.
Who you’ll meet: Simone de Beauvoir, Jean-Paul Sartre, Albert Camus, Martin Heidegger, and Maurice Merleau-Ponty
Why read it: Phenomenology, told as a story rather than a textbook
Recognition: Named one of the New York Times 10 Best Books of 2016
For those studying with me regularly, our new course, Breathing With Fall, is now available through the Academy at Pranayama.com. Active studio members receive complimentary access to this course for 60 days as part of their monthly membership.
The course extends our in-person work through guided morning and evening breathing practices, four course readings, and a private space where members can discuss the material and continue the conversation with me.
If you are interested in joining our live, in-person classes and receiving access to future courses, you are welcome to submit your information here.
