S2, Ep. 18 Sex, Bindu, and The Yogic Body as Applied to Women, with Ruth Westoby (Episode 1/2)

Escaping Samsara

This is the first of two episodes expanding the previous topic of Sex, Semen Retention, and Brahmacharya as it may or may not apply to women.

Female practitioners of yoga don't show up in the old texts but there have been many female-specific physical practices through the ages. And who better to explain how to practice with these archaic information than Ruth Westoby.

Ruth Westoby is a yoga practitioner and academic researcher in yoga studies. Ruth Westoby holds a PhD from SOAS University of London on ‘The body in early haṭha yoga’, supervised by James Mallinson and Richard Williams. Ruth is working on two book projects from her doctoral thesis that passed without corrections. Ruth has published early research findings in the peer-reviewed Religions of South Asia and numerous public articles. Ruth is Visiting Lecturer in Indian Religions at Roehampton University, teaching postgraduate theory and method in the study of religion and undergraduate courses on asian religions, cultures and ethics, contemporary issues in global religions, being human and religion, ecology and politics. Ruth collaborated with the Haṭha Yoga Project’s ‘embodied philology’, interpreting postures from an 18th-century text teaching a precursor of modern yoga, the Haṭhābhyāsapaddhati, in 2016 and 2017. In 2010 she received an MA in Indian Religions from SOAS, University of London, with Distinction.

Ruth has practiced yoga for almost 30 years and in 2015 was authorized by Sharat Jois to teach Ashtanga level 2. Ruth has studied closely with and assisted Hamish Hendry and Richard Freeman. Ruth does not practice at studios that display images of Pattabhi Jois on altars in solidarity with those who were sexually abused by him. Ruth founded and chaired the successful environmental campaign for floodplain meadow restoration at Bartonsham Meadows, Hereford.

www.enigmatic.yoga [e-mail] Instagram @ruthwestoby