joan ruvinsky
interview with joan ruvinsky
This interview with Joan was conducted in Montreal by Jean-Claude Leblond for Yoga Mondo, a French Quebec yoga magazine.
YM: Where did you study yoga and how did you come to teach ?
JR : Ultimately, there is only one place to study yoga, and that is in oneself.
The notion of “studying” yoga risks leading us in a false direction. Yoga is not fundamentally something one can know. One can know the history of yoga. One can know the texts of yoga. One can know the philosophies of yoga. One can know the practices of yoga. But yoga ultimately is not something one knows, but rather something that one is.
Certainly one of the three pillars of Kriya Yoga, according to Patañjali is study, svadyaya, the study of oneself, the study of the scriptures. But the knowledge gained from study does not culminate in the knowledge of an object, of an entity in space/time, or of a set of principles, but rather culminates in the knowledge of the knower itself. In all the ancient venerable traditions, some form of study is basic, but the ultimate the recommendation obtains: “Know thyself.”