www.JoelDiana.com
              or  JoelKramer-DianaAlstad.com

Email Us:   info@JoelDiana.com
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This official website of Diana Alstad & Joel Kramer has YogaTV & podcast links, articles, news, book reviews and schedule.

Welcome - Many new links & downloads are up. (See NEWS)

"Tradition is important just as history is important -- not as a vice to squeeze the present into, but rather as a stepping stone to grow from."  - Joel in "A New Look at Yoga"


"Instead of more detachment, humanity needs better forms of attachment."  - Diana

About Joel Kramer & Diana Alstad

    Joel and Diana began their life partnership in 1974. They write and speak together and separately on many subjects, a major concern being to foster the personal and social evolution that could meet global challenges. They are co-authors of
The Guru Papers: Masks of Authoritarian Power  (North Atlantic Books, 1993), an ever-more timely book on hidden cultural and mental authoritarianism that decodes social and “spiritual” control and predicted the escalating global morality wars. Through Diana’s vision, they developed the Yoga of Relationship and taught relationship seminars until 1986 at centers such as Esalen and Omega. They now give talks and seminars on evolutionary spirituality and values, relationships, yoga, healing the divided self, and social issues. Their book-in-progress Spirituality for Atheists offers an evolutionary foundation for values.
  
    Joel’s major interest in speaking and writing involves showing the values and worldview shifts necessary for people to co-create a viable world. He is currently working on The Passionate Mind Revisited (summer 2009), which updates the original book and expands it to contribute to social as well as personal transformations.
The Passionate Mind (1974) is still in print at northatlanticbooks.com.  
    A yoga pioneer and legend, Joel is regarded by many as the father of modern American yoga for his evolutionary vision of yoga that frees it from its authoritarian roots. He is an adept and innovator of physical and mental yoga whose contributions to the revitalization and re-vision of yoga in the West are foundational for many of today's leading teachers. His seminal Yoga Journal articles “Yoga as Self-Transformation” and “A New Look at Yoga” and widely used principles, such as “playing the edge,” “yoga as self-exploration,”  “creating lines of energy,”
and ways of interpreting feedback continue to have great impact. Erich Schiffmann’s acclaimed book Yoga: The Spirit & Practice of Moving into Stillness (1996) is on Joel’s approach to hatha yoga and Erich’s to meditation.
     Joel did post-graduate work in philosophy and psychology at the University of Florida, NYU and Columbia (1959-63). This included the philosophy of science, ethics, epistemology, metaphysics, the nature of consciousness, comparative religion, Eastern thought and worldviews. In 1966 he began a deep exploration of mental and physical yoga that has continued throughout his life. He first taught his original approach to yoga, consciousness and spirituality at Esalen Institute in Big Sur, California on the resident faculty from 1968-70. His seminars dealt, then as now, with the basic concerns of living and the evolution of awareness. From 1970-82 he taught throughout North America, Europe and Asia until he withdrew from teaching in 1982, beginning again in 2005. Joel is on the Board of Directors of
Transcarbon International fostering global carbon reduction. He believes that the real battle on the planet is for people’s minds and the challenge is to create viable pan-cultural values for a world of global impact.

    Diana is an author, lecturer and seminar leader concerned with giving people tools to help make the world more sane, caring and viable. A Woodrow Wilson Fellow, Diana received a Ph.D. from Yale in 1971 and was on the Duke faculty in the humanities. She initiated and taught the first Women's Studies courses at Yale and Duke, co-founded New Haven Women’s Liberation in 1968, and was on the board of the Veteran Feminists of America from 1998-2004. Her training includes various psychological approaches. Her Yoga Journal article “Exploring Relationships: Interpersonal Yoga” (1979) created a foundation for the Yoga of Relationship by extending Joel’s yogic approach to the social arena. They continue to 
develop and teach it. She has been an escort-interpreter and lecturer in French and Italian and also speaks Spanish.



YOGA TV Interviews at Yogamates.com by Kasey Luber
Joel at Ojai Yoga Crib (5 min)   Watch interview on Yogamates.com
Diana & Joel on Yoga of Relationship & The Guru Papers
  
Click here to watch interview on Yogamates.com   (13 min)

NEW:  Brief overview of our work by author Joseph Dispenza (1 pg)
     "The Yoga of Relationships" (Atencion, San Miguel, MX 2/8/08) 
click here for pdf

PODCASTS:
Darren Main talks with Joel about his evolutionary vision of yoga and the evolution of yoga in the West, and how it can help transform individuals and our world in this time of great challenges.

        Click here to link to podcast


Yoga Peeps
,
Episode 31  -  Yoga Peeps founder Lara Hedin
and Joel talk about hidden authoritarianism in spirituality and ideals, yoga as an anti-entropic and awareness process, and with Diana, about the Yoga of Relationship.     Click here to link to podcast

MP3 download of interview on The Guru Papers  
    New Dimensions Radio - Joel & Diana with Michael Toms
     "Roping the Sacred Cows:  Learning to Question Authority"

       click here to download MP3    1 hr;  #2549    $1.99
           (previous NewD $12 CDs are now $1.99 MP3s)
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Our pioneering '70s & '80s Yoga Journal articles:

A New Look at Yoga: Playing the Edge of Mind & Body
click for .pdf

Yoga as Self-Transformation (foundational) 
click here for .pdf

Exploring Relationships: Interpersonal Yoga  click for .pdf

Mind in Asana --
Interview with Joel by Jeanne Cameron  click for .pdf

The Third Perspective & Yoga: Bringing East & West Together 
(synthesizes
Eastern & Western worldviews)
click for .pdf
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Recent INTERVIEWS & ARTICLES on Joel & Diana

A YOGA LEGEND RETURNS Joel Kramer & the Yoga of Mind
    Ted McDonald’s “Special Guest Interview” with Joel
     — YOGI TIMES  (July/August, 2006)     Click here for.pdf

Joel Kramer & Modern Yoga  Click here for .pdf

MOVING PAST THE KNOTS:  The Yoga of Relationships  by Diana
     --- LA YOGA  (July/Aug 2006)   click here for .pdf

SITTING DOWN WITH RADICAL YOGI JOEL KRAMER — HE’S BACK!
   
Julie Deife's interview on why Joel is teaching again
     --- LA YOGA  (March/April 2006):      click here for .pdf

Yoga Journal's Teacher Spotlight on Joel
     
(short autobiographical essay by Joel - 10/06) 
click here to read
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A Winning Strategy for Progressives by Joel & Diana 
     on protecting democracy & church/state separation click for .pdf

Abortion & the Morality Wars: Taking the Moral Offensive by Diana & Joel
     at www.rit.org in Editorials 
(+
2 more abortion articles)  click here to read

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NEW 2008 ARTICLES are listed on the
"NEWS & Schedule" WEB PAGE






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