What happens after 30 years of training and practice of yoga and meditation? And over 20 years of teaching it? Combined with over 10 years of Buddhism? Combined with my training and experience of energy cultivation using knowledge of internal energy pathways, my personal practice has evolved into something with a ‘life of its own’.

I call it Buddhist Integral Yoga.

It is Buddhist because it resonates with the ethics, meditation and insight practices of Buddhism, especially the foundations of the Four Noble Truths and the Noble Eightfold Path. My training as a Buddhist has been predominantly in Triratna and I am now an Order Member in this tradition.

It is Integral, because it facilitates a process of integration. Not integration in the sense of becoming a separate, individualistic entity; integration in the sense of discovering the wholeness of being, integrated and interconnected with all beings, seen and unseen.

It is Yoga, because it calls upon the eightfold path of practice outlined in Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras and draws parallels with the Noble Eightfold Path, Tantric Buddhist and the energy centres of the psychophysical body.

More than being Buddhist, integrating and yogic, it is a practice that is individualised to your energy pattern and practices. It is an offering to all human beings to facilitate a personalised path to wellbeing and liberation from suffering.

This is not in the sense of that everything will be ‘hunky dory’ and that the body will never feel pain or get ill or die. This is more in the sense of deepening a connection to the reality of being, that we are impermanent, that Unsatisfactoriness and uncomfortableness are part of our experiences. And are experiences are more than the interpretations that we have of them.

The unfolding of this practice does enable a deepening of appreciation, gratitude and compassion – and ultimately a renunciation of some habits and freedom from some reactions that can enable the choices that we have to become more apparent. And the consequences of those choices. And the clarity that this brings leads to a deeper level of understanding that gives us the freedom to be, to live, for the benefit of all beings.

That is one possible potential of Buddhist Integral Yoga.

Another is that if you have aches and pains and joints problems, back ache and headaches, then a personalised practice of movement, stillness and breathing practices may reduce or even eliminate the suffering this causes. It may bring benefit to you, as one of the ‘all beings’.