Knowledge is only power, when it empowers
I think there's something rather special about returning to a place where you've spent so much time learning, questioning and occasionally wondering whether your brain has any room left for another Sanskrit word..!
I recenlty went back at SOAS, University of London, where I completed my Masters in the History and Traditions of Yoga and Meditation in 2021. This time, I was there for a yoga summit entitled;The Energy Body: Yoga Between Evidence and Experience.
What struck me most wasn't simply the depth of knowledge being shared, but the enthusiasm of the people sharing it. There is something incredibly inspiring about being in a room full of people who have dedicated years… possibly almost their entire lifetime, to exploring the many layers of this practice.
The summit brought together historical research, philosophical enquiry, embodied practice and contemporary perspectives. We explored the subtle body, yogic anatomy, pranayama and the many ways different traditions have understood our experience beyond the purely physical. It was fascinating to see how ideas around breath, energy and awareness have
been explored for centuries, and how these conversations continue to evolve.
Knowledge is a living thing
One of my favourite moments was a quotation from Anne Carson's Essay on What I Think About Most, exploring Aristotle's idea that metaphor allows us to encounter something new by making an unexpected connection.
I loved this thought. Perhaps this is also what happens when we study yoga. We bring together ideas that might initially seem unrelated, and suddenly something shifts. A philosophical concept begins to make sense through a physical experience. An ancient teaching offers a new perspective on something we encounter in everyday life. Our understanding deepens, not simply because we've collected more information, but because we've found a new way to see.
It's easy to become preoccupied with the accumulation of knowledge, particularly in a world where qualifications, certificates and expertise can become markers of status. But I think there's a more important question: what are we doing with what we know?
For me, knowledge is only powerful when it empowers people.
My time studying at SOAS was an enormous privilege (and slog). It gave me the opportunity to explore the history of yoga in a way that has fundamentally shaped how I teach, how I practise and how I understand the responsibility that comes with sharing this tradition.
But I don't believe that access to this kind of learning should be reserved for the few. Nor do I believe you need a postgraduate degree to have a meaningful relationship with yoga, or to experience its transformative potential.
Academic study and lived experience have so much to offer one another. We need the researchers, historians, translators and scholars who dedicate their lives to preserving and questioning these traditions. We also need the teachers, practitioners and communities who bring these ideas into everyday life, making them accessible, relevant and meaningful.
Bringing the knowledge back to the mat
I often think about how much of what I've studied finds its way into each yoga class. Not necessarily through Sanskrit terminology or lengthy philosophical explanations, but through the choices we make, the language we use and the space we create for people to experience themselves differently.
When we explore the breath, we're drawing on a tradition of enquiry that stretches back centuries. When we invite someone to notice sensation, we're opening a conversation between awareness and the body. When we adapt a practice for somebody living with chronic pain, Parkinson's or a history of trauma, we're putting our understanding of yoga's wider philosophy into action.
And that, to me, is where the magic happens.
Yoga shouldn't become more exclusive the more we learn about it. If anything, the deeper our understanding becomes, the greater our responsibility to make it accessible.
I left SOAS feeling inspired, grateful and, as usual, with approximately seventeen new things I wanted to go away and read about. Even after decades of practice and years of study, there is still so much to explore.
Perhaps that's the point. We don't study yoga to arrive at a final answer. We study it to become better at asking questions, to challenge what we think we know, and to find ways of sharing what we've discovered.
Knowledge isn't something to sit on, guard or use to create distance between ourselves and others. It's something to pass on, translate, question and bring to life.
The more we learn, the more generous we can become with what we know.
Knowledge really is only power when it empowers people, as it does every Wednesday 7.30- 8.45pm at Hove Methodist Church.
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