Roots Torn, Truth Forgotten
Remembering the Soul of Yoga
A meditation on values, roots, and remembering.
Yoga was never meant to be easy. Not a trend. Not a sale. Not a neatly packaged hour squeezed between meetings.
Yoga has always been a path of return - to essence, to Earth, to the quiet flame of inner knowing.
But as the world shifted, so too did the ways we practise and share it. This is a gentle inquiry - not a judgement - into how our modern systems shape our sacred spaces. And how we, as a community, might remember what lies beneath it all.
🧘🏻♀️From Practice to Product?
Yoga once unfolded slowly. In quiet halls, with simple mats. We gathered not for the burn, but for the stillness. Not for aesthetic, but for awareness.
Classes moved like seasons - 90 minutes long, with time to arrive, breathe, reflect. Teachings included not just poses, but pranayama, myth, philosophy, mantra, and silence.
Now, yoga comes in countless forms: Rocket, Broga, Acro, Power, Beer. 10-minute hits for the algorithm. Retreats that feel more like resorts.
The pace quickens. The scroll deepens. And something ancient risks being forgotten - not gone, but buried beneath the noise.
🎓Training for Depth or Branding?
There was a time when to teach yoga was a sacred vow. Years of practice, mentorship, and spiritual discipline were the threshold.
Now, fast-track trainings offer certifications in weeks. Logos, hashtags, and packages precede lineage or embodied understanding.
Of course, accessibility matters. And yoga should be for everyone. But when depth is traded for speed, and presence for performance - what is being taught? What, truly, are we passing on?
💸The Marketplace of Mindfulness
We live in a world of sales and scarcity. Yoga is not immune.
Studios and teachers offer referral bonuses, flash sales, unlimited bundles. Prices undercut one another in a silent scramble for survival. Even sacred days are co-opted: Black Friday Yoga. Cyber Monday Memberships.
The problem isn’t generosity - it's the why.
Are we inviting access, or playing into a system that values profit over presence? Have we mistaken popularity for purpose?
And still - students click, book, attend. We all participate in the dance of commodification, even as we long to break free.
🌲Rooting in the Yamas
What if we recalibrated? What if our businesses were shaped not by trends, but by Patanjali’s Yamas - the ethical roots of the yogic path?
Ahimsa - non-harming
Satya - truthfulness
Asteya - non-stealing
Aparigraha - non-hoarding
Could our pricing reflect non-violence - to ourselves, our students, our peers? Could we market with truth, not illusion? Set prices that honour experience, rather than steal value through competition? Release the grip of scarcity, and trust in enoughness?
This is not naïveté - it’s radical. It is yoga.
🍄🟫The Mycelium Model
Imagine a yoga economy rooted like a forest.
Each studio a tree. Each teacher a root. Each student a leaf turned toward light. Beneath it all, a mycelial network of shared intention - unseen but essential.
This is not about perfection. It is about practice.
A business rooted in yamas doesn’t reject the world - it nourishes a new one. It swims upstream, slowly, bravely. It becomes a quiet revolution in how we live, share, and sustain.
Tiny shifts. Honest pricing. Mutual care. These small, invisible gestures ripple - butterfly effects in a complex system desperate for meaning.
🔥Reclaiming the Fire
Yoga is not passive. It is not aesthetic. It is practice - fire, courage, commitment, sacrifice.
To walk the yogic path as a teacher, student, or space-holder is to hold a light up against the currents of consumerism.
To choose slowness in a fast world. To remember depth when we are told to perform. To nourish the whole forest, not just our own canopy.
Yoga begins where we live. How we price. How we speak. How we honour each other’s time, labour, lineage.
🕸️Conclusion: Remembering the Invisible
Let our yoga businesses be like woodland roots - interwoven, rich, unseen, alive.
Let us be musk deer - no longer searching for the scent, but remembering it lives within.
Let us walk slowly. Speak honestly. And rebuild this sacred web together - not as brands, but as beings.
✨Let’s Keep the Conversation Going
What does true yoga mean to you in today’s world? How do you balance making a living with practicing and teaching authentically? How do you navigate yoga and capitalism in your practice or business? What does ethical, rooted yoga look like in today’s world?
📩 Message us to continue the conversation
❤️ Reblog to share these thoughts
🪷 Tag someone walking the path with heart
Infrequent in Britain and Ireland, the Magpie Inkcap is found throughout Europe but most commonly in areas with alkaline soil. This attractive species occurs also in parts of North America. Usually solitary, occasionally Magpie Inkcaps occur in small group
This particular group was found in southern california
Peace out 2017 Peace in 2018 I want to do that thing where I thank humans and critters that have helped me exist through this year. This year has been interesting to say the least. THANK YOU BIG WIDE WORLD! You make my heart spin and my eyes fill with tears. I can't do this without you. Mushrooms and Fungi fuel my world. They have made my life in its current state possible and I can't help but feel grateful to have them keep beating and pumping life into me. 2017 you've been full of changes, challenges, new beginnings, & separations. Expect many new expeditions, new collaborations with folks from all over this world and an epic myco-family reunion that is gonna make waves and changes. We will learn and teach ourselves how to survive in this ever growing toxic world. We have to resist and rebuild what has been broken. The #anthropocene is in mid-spiral down the toilet and we must defend what is sacred because corporate greed, capitalism and total evil has other plans for our #water #forests #wildlife #mushrooms #fungi #people and #planet. Let's make it count this year I can't wait to continue to join the effort to heal this broken system. Through fungi, through plants, through the wild. Solidarity with all those beings doing such things. See you around folks #smugtownmushrooms #makemushroomsnotwar #radicalmycology #fungi #mushroomruleeverythingaroundme #mushrooms #mycelium #myceliumnetwork #notsystembutecosystem
Fractals, Fungi, and Flow: Practising Yoga with the Pattern of Life
We Are the Web
Beneath the forest floor,
the mycelium hums.
Beneath our breath,
Spanda pulses.
A silent song. A thread of life.
The spider spins her listening lines.
Our nervous system listens too,
through the vagus nerve,
through the gut’s wild garden
of unseen kin.
In yoga,
we tune to this web,
not just stretch and stillness,
but the spirals of fractals,
the echoes of stars,
the music of string theory
vibrating everything into being.
You are not separate.
You are shaped like the whole.
Move slowly.
Breathe deeply.
You are part of the pattern.
Yoga and the Web of Life: Spanda, Mycelium, String Theory, and the Inner Forest
Yoga is a practice of remembering, of reweaving ourselves into the pulse of life. Beneath every breath, posture, and still point, there is movement, a silent tremor of becoming. Across ancient yogic wisdom, Earth-based cultures and modern science, we find a shared truth: everything is vibration, everything is connected.
From Spanda Yoga to string theory, from the living soil of the mycelium network to the spiralling patterns of fractals, yoga offers us not only a map inward, but a map back to the whole.
Spanda: The Sacred Pulse of the Universe
In Spanda Yoga, Spanda means “the divine vibration”, the original movement of consciousness as it stirs itself into form. Practicing yoga with this awareness is to feel not just our muscles stretch, but the universe expand within us.
Spanda reminds us: even in stillness, there is a pulse. Every cell, every breath, every star, all throb with this primordial rhythm.
Mycelium and the Wisdom Beneath Our Feet
The mycelium network, the underground fungal threads that connect forests, is Earth’s own connective tissue. It passes nutrients and messages, warning of danger, sharing what’s needed. This is cooperation made visible beneath the soil.
In yoga, we practice this same unseen communication: breath and body synchronising; nervous system and mind listening; teacher and student moving in resonance. We become part of the great underground web of support and sensing.
The Spider’s Web: Stillness That Feels Everything
A spider’s web is both delicate and deeply intelligent. It holds tension and stillness simultaneously, a responsive field, tuned to the tiniest vibration.
In yoga, we cultivate a similar structure in ourselves: strong yet yielding, attentive yet calm, able to feel the subtlest messages from within and without. Like a web, our awareness expands in all directions.
The Vagus Nerve and the Breath of Connection
The vagus nerve connects brain to heart, lungs, and gut, our internal thread of calm and restoration. When activated through pranayama, chanting, and slow movement, it supports rest, digestion, emotional safety, and ease.
Yoga awakens the vagus nerve’s quiet intelligence, gently rewiring us from stress to safety, from isolation to intimacy.
The Gut Microbiome and Earth’s Inner Ecosystem
Within our bellies live trillions of microbes, the gut microbiome, shaping our mood, immunity, and digestion. Beneath the earth lies a mirror: the soil microbiome, the planet’s digestive and regenerative system.
What we feed ourselves, we feed the Earth, and vice versa. Yoga encourages awareness of nourishment, guiding us toward balance inside and out.
String Theory: The Universe as Vibration
String theory suggests that all matter is made of tiny, vibrating strings, loops of energy that sing the universe into being. Sound familiar?
Spanda. Nada yoga. Mantra. Breath. Every ancient yogic tradition and Earth-based culture speaks to this: we are vibration, and yoga is the art of tuning.
When we move mindfully or rest in stillness, we are not separate bodies on mats. We are ripples in a cosmic field, resonating across time and space.
Fractals: The Infinite Patterns Within
Fractals are repeating patterns found in nature, from ferns and coastlines to galaxies and lungs. No matter how closely you zoom in or pull back, the same pattern emerges. Nature doesn’t build in straight lines, she spirals and mirrors.
In yoga, we feel these spirals in our spine, in breath cycles, in the rhythm of the seasons and the lunar tides. Fractals teach us that we are never apart from the whole, we are shaped like the whole.
Just as a single leaf contains the shape of the tree, your body contains the echo of the cosmos.
Yoga: Living in the Web of Connection
When you step onto the mat with reverence, you step into a living field of:
Spanda: the pulse of being
Mycelium: the underground wisdom of connection
The Spider’s Web: stillness that listens
The Vagus Nerve: breath as healing thread
The Gut and Earth Microbiome: inner and outer ecology
String Theory: vibrating consciousness
Fractals: patterns that repeat through all layers of life
Yoga doesn’t just connect us to ourselves. It reminds us that we were never separate. It tunes us to the living web that sings beneath our skin, beneath the soil, and across the stars.
Fungi-tastic! Fungal spores sprout underground to form a mycelium network that breaks down dead plants, recycles their nutrients to gather nourishment from the compost. . Mature mycelium produce mushrooms, which can thrive in the dark (not requiring photosynthesis) and do not require much energy. The best equation for mushroom production is warmth + moisture, which makes Houston prime real estate! . . #mushrooms #mushroom #mycelium #myceliumnetwork #decompusers #fungi #houstonlandscaper #landscaping #exteriortexas https://www.instagram.com/p/CiF4RdZABDF/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=
Run to see @fantasticfungi - a wonderful experience- privileged tonight to see a screening tonight with the director at @afisilvertheatre #gardendc #mycology #fungi #mycelium #myceliumnetwork (at AFI Silver Theatre and Cultural Center) https://www.instagram.com/p/B5_qLqLgjGQ/?igshid=1x6cl7v1pivl4
Bio-Sonification/non-human collaborations @mothantler (me) has been short-listed towards a 3 month Bio-art residency at @mocatoronto @ontariosciencecentre this opportunity would allow large scale Myco-remediative sound sculptures (remove toxins from Lake water) to grow as well as Bio-data recording of visitors to the MOCA studio. My fingers remain crossed. #bioart #biosonification #sculpture #myceliumnetwork #mycoremediation #bioremediation #cleanwater #nonhuman #collaboration #anthropocene (at Toronto, Ontario) https://www.instagram.com/p/Bq7fr5jHW6s/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=5mvet57sn0fx
