Hari-kirtana das

Yoga teacher, spiritual mentor, and author Hari-kirtana das has practiced devotional and other yogic disciplines for over 40 years.

His work illuminates the ways in which the yoga wisdom tradition can guide us toward transformative spiritual experiences.

07/30/2026

Conventional wisdom holds that negative thinking stems from evolutionary survival mechanisms, ingrained cognitive distortions, and early environmental modeling.⁠
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Yoga wisdom looks at the origins of negative thinking in a different way.⁠
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According to yoga philosophy, we don’t come into the world as blank slates responding to who and what is around us. And the mental tendencies we’re born with aren’t just a product of evolution.⁠
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They’re arise from impressions on the mind called saṁskāras: subconscious grooves in the mind-stuff (citta) created by past thoughts and actions, in this and many previous lifetimes.⁠
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These impressions reside in the subconscious until something triggers them. Then they start whispering thoughts into our mind’s ears.⁠
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And if those impressions are negative, the story those impressions tell us will be negative, too.⁠
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But are these thoughts true?⁠
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Yoga wisdom gives us a way to find out. And tools to change those impressions and rewire our thinking if they’re not.⁠
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That’s what we’ll explore in my workshop Overcoming Negative Thoughts: Practical Yoga Psychology for Teachers and Students. ⁠
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This workshop is by donation.⁠
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Comment “OVERCOMING” and I’ll send you the details.

07/24/2026

Some of the thoughts that cause us the greatest suffering feel like facts, but they're not. ⁠
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They're interpretations.⁠
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Conclusions.⁠
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Stories we tell ourselves that feel true because we've repeated them so many times.⁠
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Yoga doesn't ask us to pretend those thoughts don't exist.⁠
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Nor does it ask us to replace them with affirmations we don't actually believe.⁠
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Instead, the Yoga Sutras offer a practical method for examining those thoughts, uncovering the assumptions behind them, and replacing them with perspectives that are both truthful and uplifting.⁠
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That practice is called pratipakṣa-bhāvanam, and it's one of the most practical psychological tools found in the yoga tradition.⁠
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Whether you're looking for a healthier relationship with your own mind or ways to help your yoga students work with theirs, I think you'll find this teaching remarkably useful.⁠
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Comment OVERCOMING below, and I'll send you the link to learn more about my by-donation workshop.

07/22/2026

I don't mind being a contrarian.

Not because I enjoy disagreeing with people, but because some of the most widely accepted ideas in yoga deserve a closer look.

Sometimes what we hear most often is also what we examine least.

Over the years, I've found that many popular statements about yoga are only partially true—they stop short of a deeper, more nuanced conversation.

That's where yoga philosophy gets interesting.

So here are three ideas you'll never hear me repeat without some
qualification.

Which one do you find most surprising?

07/01/2026

Comment YAMAS and I'll send you details on a workshop that goes much deeper into the Yamas and Niyamas.⁠
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The heat of tapas isn't something you feel in a difficult pose — that's just your body temperature rising.⁠
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According to the Yoga Sutras, tapas is self-discipline: the heat generated by the friction between the desire to gratify the senses and the willpower to resist those urges for the sake of personal development.⁠
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That's a much wider — and more transformative — scope than most of us were taught.

06/29/2026

When I first started exploring yoga philosophy seriously, I bought into some ideas that turned out to be misconceptions.⁠
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And I didn’t know there was an established way to read spiritual wisdom literature that would help me get the most out of my reading.⁠
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It took a while, but, eventually, I learned the three things in this carousel that changed how I practice svadhyaya, the study of yoga wisdom texts. ⁠
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I wish someone had told me about them sooner.⁠
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Save this for the next time you pick up a wisdom text. And if any of this resonates, share it with someone who's on their own path of searching.

06/28/2026

Happy birthday to the love of my life, Elizabeth. ⁠
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Twenty-five years in and you still make everything possible and everything fun. ⁠
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I'm the lucky one. May all of your birthday wishes come true.

06/27/2026

Most of us were taught that ahimsa begins with how we treat ourselves. But in the yoga tradition, it begins with how we treat others — and that's a much more demanding place to start.⁠
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If you want to explore what the yamas and niyamas actually teach — beyond the modern interpretations — I have a course that goes much deeper.⁠
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Comment YAMAS and I'll send you the details.

06/26/2026

Comment YAMAS below and I'll send you the details.⁠
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Modern culture asks: how can I optimize myself? Yoga asks a different question entirely — and the answer leads somewhere most self-improvement programs never go.⁠
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If that resonates, I have a course that goes much deeper.⁠
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06/20/2026

As the great sage Marc Bolan once sang, “Get it on, bang a gong, get it on.”

In this case, I’m banging a gong to draw attention to the fact that D.C. residents are still fighting taxation without representation 250 years after the Declaration of Independence was signed.

Those of us who live in Washington, D.C. don’t have the same autonomy and Congressional representation as other United States citizens. The President and his cronies often have more say over our local affairs than our own Mayor.

On this particular evening, our neighborhood Free DC contingent took over a pedestrian island at a major intersection to bang pots and pans (and gongs) and blow whistles and wave flags to let folks know that we’re mad as hell and we’re not going to take it anymore.

I know: I don’t really look all that mad. What can I say? Registering your displeasure by banging a gong is fun!

And that’s more important than it may sound; joyfulness is the first and foremost feature of successful resistance movements... which makes sense to me because joyfulness is the natural condition of the true self:

“Ignorance is the notion that takes the self, which is joyful, pure, and eternal, to be the non-self, which is painful, impure, and temporary.” – Yoga Sutra II.5

To the extent that we can stay true to our joyful nature when someoneis doing everything they can to make us miserable, to that extent the oppressor is losing.

Sometimes the oppressor is political: the mundane powers that be. Sometimes the oppressor is metaphysical: the power of illusion that makes us forget our true and joyful nature.

The Bhagavad-gita tells us that bhakti-yoga is “the everlasting and supremely joyful perfection of dharma—universal principles of spiritual life.” Political activism performed with the a devotional mindset is a sure-fire force-multiplier that imbues every action with joyfulness and elevates gong-banging to an act of spiritual resistance.

So go ahead: go outside, bang a gong, and tell the world that you’re mad as hell—at all the oppressors—and you’re not going to take it anymore. It’ll be fun.

06/12/2026

Most people encounter yoga through poses.

What kept me interested for decades was the philosophy.

Not because it told me what to think.

Because it taught me how to question assumptions I didn't even know I had.

That's one of the reasons I still find these teachings endlessly fascinating.

Share with a fellow philosophy nerd.

Address

Washington D.C., DC
20016

Website

https://hari-kirtana.com/

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