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www.JoelDiana.com or JoelKramer-DianaAlstad.com |
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This official website of Diana Alstad & Joel Kramer has YogaTV & podcast links, articles, news, book reviews and schedule. |
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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: Expanding Personal & Social Awareness (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 (Pocket Books, 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. |
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Copyright . Joel Kramer and Diana Alstad. All rights reserved.
