Yoga

Throughout 2023 at Embodied Philosophy, one of our editorial and research themes will be connected to this question: “What is the future of the yoga teacher”? This is at once a practical, professional and philosophical question.

Nikki Costello is an educator with 30 years of teaching and training experience in the Yoga and Wellness industry. She works at the intersection of social justice and Yoga with a focus on facilitating new models of embodied leadership.

I started attending classes because I had reached a place in my studies where I needed personal feedback about the experiences I was having. I took group classes for about one year before being approached to teach. I was completely ignorant of the culture of yoga building in the West and its historical context in the East. I was only interested in the practice as a psychology… as a way of spotting and shifting patterns of thought and behavior.

Suddenly, I realized that my friend didn’t actually want advice or solutions at that moment. My friend just wanted to feel like someone had their back and was on their side and that I was listening. In other words, my friend wanted me to sit and listen to their experience of discomfort and suffering with compassion.

Nikki Vilella started teaching at Kula Yoga Project in New York City in 2005 and opened Kula Williamsburg (alongside Schuyler Grant) in 2010.

In her research, Anya Foxen focuses on the intersection of South Asian yogic and tantric traditions and Western esotericism and metaphysical spiritualities.

Our primary stress comes from living in shame and fear, often resulting from misidentification with the image/objective world, and often with the past traumas and experiences where we were forced to react to ordinary situations in survival mode.  

In many religious environments around the world, being gay, gender-bending, or otherwise queer is considered a surefire recipe for eternal damnation.