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Pushpam (Yoga) Magazine Issue 3 - Review/Look Inside - Yoga magazine from Hamish Hendry and team, Ashtanga Yoga London

New edition of Pushpam  Magazine is out, Pushpam 3, with a stunning Ganesha cover.



from the website

"Pushpam is a quarterly (or so) yoga magazine. It is published by Hamish Hendry of Astanga Yoga London. Focusing on yoga beyond asana, regular contributors include Sharath Jois, Hamish Hendry and Genny Wilkinson Priest. Interviews with some of the most experienced senior certified Astanga teachers feature in every issue".



Letter from the publisher
Pushpam means flower in Sanskrit. For those who like to be pernickety the “sh” is in retroflex with the tongue curled back.

In India, a flower is used in ceremonies as an offering to God, marking special occasions or even to mourn the dead. A flower, in the full of its life, yields nectar and often turns into fruit and seed. Yet its existence is temporary for at some point it perishes and returns to the ground from whence it came.

It is both the beginning and the end.

In our urban lives a flower popping through a concrete pavement’s crack reminds us that beauty and life are not far away. I hope this magazine will be an offering and sow many seeds".

Hamish Hendry – November 2015

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Below issue 3s contents page




details

Pushpam's third issue centres on that unavoidable human condition of suffering. The word for suffering in Sanskrit – duḥkha – means "bad space" and many of the stories in this issue aim to give us ways to see our suffering more clearly, understand it and even ultimately let it go. As life brings both misery and happiness, this issue includes cartoons, a recipe and a book review. Contributors include Hamish Hendry, Lucia Andrade, Zoë Slatoff, Ruth Westoby and Karen O'Brien Kop.
For bulk orders, please email Hamish. Prices for bulk orders are as follows:
10 – 24     £6.50 per copy plus cost of shipping

24 – 49     £6.00 per copy plus cost of shipping
50+           £5.50 per copy plus cost of shipping

Size 167mm x 232mm x 5mm

68 Pages
3000 copies
Black / Fluorescent Ganesh stone feel cover with secret bookmark
John Kalisz postcard insert
5 golden tickets hidden amongst the first print run of 3000...


shop
http://www.pushpam.co.uk/shop/3-ss-2017


This isn't so much a review as an Amazon style LOOK INSIDE as many will be considering buying the magazine online.

As usual the magazine is beautifully produced. 

The theme this quarter is Duḥkha, commonly translated as suffering, the articles are again of varied length, some long enough to get your teeth in and chew over, others...pithy. 

After an introduction by Hamish Hendry of Ashtanga Yoga London, a long interview, the 'In Conversation -Two certified instructors' feature from the previous two issues.



  This time Hamish Hendry is talking with Lucia Andrade. I enjoyed last quarter's interview and the idea of two long time practitioners chewing the fat together is appealing but, I don't know, perhaps I'm all interviewed out but the format seems tired. Like blogs, podcasts and Instagram, Yoga interviews may well have jumped the shark. 


 Which leads me to the final article from Genny Wilkinson Priest, Pushpam's editor, on the topic of Social Media, a cause of great suffering to me personally, such that I unfollowed all my friends on fb to avoid getting any more handstands in Shinjuku in my feed.


Boonchu Tanti - Piccadilly rather than Shinjuku

Genny may be softening, in an earlier article of hers that she refers to on this subject, she was much more scathing. Here she rather sets out the terrain and is perhaps more forgiving. I've never accepted the '...all to inspire others' defence, if it's not a genuine sharing of our work in progress among friends then it's business or ego or both, how did I see it depressingly put this week, a "marketing Aesthetic".


Below a quick glance through some of the articles, some I've read, others I've only glanced at thus far.


I'm still haunted by the image of suffering as a cracked glass that is never the same again from the article 'On War' by Patrick Nolan,


I was irritated at first by the suggestion that Christian asceticism is based on the denial of the body in 'Asceticism and Yoga' by Valters Negribs and yet relieved that somebody at least remembers the Greeks, Jack Sidnel in 'Getting rid of the I' makes reference to the Greeks and ἄσκησις (áskēsis)  as well as to Foucault. Christianity is surely more Greek perhaps than not, the influence of the Cynics, the Stoics and Neo-platonists run strong within it. Christian Asceticism was...., is, I would argue, more about austerity, training of the will, than hating the body, although some of course lost their way.

At last a magazine we can engage with, articles we can chew over rather than the imperfect enjoyment of a few paragraphs masquerading as an article, hung like christmas lights with Google Adwords,and that ends just as it showed promise of becoming interesting because really, the author just couldn't be bothered and besides it's merely a tool sell advertising, classes, workshops and /or merchandise.


An interesting article from Dr. Andy Field, on Breath and Health, which I will read again as it ties in a lot with Simon Borg-Olivier's focus on long, slow, abdominal breathing.


And if all this talk of suffering is taking away from your post practice high then Chef Tom Norrington Davis is on hand with a comforting Daal Rasam recipe.


None of us are immune from suffering argue Ruthe and Zoe....



 though it may stem from nothing more than 'mislaying the keys to our Porsche'.


Such suffering this quarter!

It will take more perhaps than a comforting bowl of Tom's Daal to get us through to Pushpam 4 (contact Genny and Pushpam if you have ideas for articles) . Karen O'Brian-Kop thankfully reminds us of Patanjali's 'way out', 'Pratisprasva as an antidote to suffering', we so often seemed to forget that there is a goal to all this practice, those six series of Ashtanga are still beginners yoga.


If Patanjali's Kaivalya seems somewhat too ambitious, too far (or too many lifetimes) down the line, then Joan Foster helps us to see, that this 'beginners yoga', this daily practice, if not an antidote to suffering in itself, is perhaps something to hang on to and help us get through one day at a time, practice as a coping strategy.

Thank you to Joan especially for what must have been a particularly painful article to write.


I haven't mentioned the photographs, here are just a few




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Re Sharath's proposed new 'Institute' (land already purchased in Mysore, I hear) see perhaps my old post on turning KPJAYI into a Foundation. In Stockholm last week Sharath is quoted sadly as saying, in frount of hundreds of students, "I gave my life to the institute...". He's not alone of course in the Ashtanga community, what better opportunity to turn towards a 'not for profit' foundation with a board of trustees like the KYM ( Krishnamacharya Yoga Mandiram).




LINKS








Pushpam Magazine

Pushpam is a quarterly (or so) yoga magazine. It is published by Hamish Hendry of Astanga Yoga London. Focusing on yoga beyond asana, regular contributors include Sharath Jois, Hamish Hendry, certified Astanga teachers, academics and practitioners from around the world.

available for order online and in UK, India (KPJAYI), US and Australia 
and Europe ( or at least it was until my countrymen and women shot themselves in the foot and voted to leave the EU)


Pushpam magazine on facebook


AYL Ashtanga Yoga London