Sharon Gannon on the new spiritual radicalism.

Question: What does it mean to travel the yogic path?

Sharon Gannon: It means that you’re political. To travel along the yogic path is another way of describing someone who is committed to political activism. And we shouldn’t be afraid of being political.

I have to tell my students that sometimes, because we’ve been conditioned not to mix religion and politics. And some people feel that yoga is religious, which I don’t feel it is. I feel it’s very spiritual. It’s a spiritual process.

But still there’s this conditioning about mixing spirituality or religion and politics. But once again if you’re a radical, then you delve deep. And you look at that word “politic”. And politic means body. It comes from a Greek root which means “the body”. And it actually refers to the greater body, meaning the body of the community, the larger body that we all share. And so the term “political” originally meant; to be political originally meant that you cared. You were somebody who cared about the greater community and wanted to contribute to the happiness or well being of that greater community. So to travel the yogic path to me is to be a political activist.

Recorded on: October 31, 2007