Video of Johann Kotze on his yoga practice
View this post on Instagram
I was interested in self-realisation before I started yoga, or even before I knew the word. When I taught myself yoga, from a book, much of what interested me became an actual practice. Practice as opposed to theory. What appealed to me most about the yoga in the book was its overlap of philosophy with a physical practice and spirituality. Or sacredness. This physicality was focussed on health, not winning, a gymnastics without the sport, and the absurd notion that there can only be one winner. It’s self-knowledge wasn’t the disaster of intellectual existentialism, and was untainted by the dogma of religion.
And yet the physical pleasure of asana and breathing provide profound meditation, to illuminate my Western world of material reality, sport and intellectual pursuits, and anchor that in a holistic background.