Founder & Scholar
If you would have told me when I was a teenager that I would be a teacher, and an author, I would have laughed. I was a horrible student, disliked most of my teachers, and hated school. I hated reading, and avoided writing if I could.
I managed to get decent grades in my last year of highschool, and majored in philosophy at university and everything changed. I was always on the Dean’s list and I finished with an A+ average in all of my fourth year courses.
I think the main difference for me was that my teachers at university were students.
The worst teachers are people who think they already know all there is to know about any subject they teach in. They are insufferable. They often look upon student questions as a threat to their status. I think the best teachers are people who never stop being students, and a researcher is someone who never stopped being a student, but outgrew all available teachers on a subject. To be a researcher is to be a student when there’s no one to teach. All students should be given the chance to become researchers. .
Research is problem solving, and problems are never solved by focusing on details but by zooming out and thinking about the big picture issues. Philosophy is the ultimate zoom-out subject: here all assumptions and tools for dealing with minutia can be inspected.
While my work has been based in the discipline of philosophy, it addresses questions in and about interdisciplines.
My research began when I started addressing the the myth in Indology and South Asian Studies that Indian philosophers were uninterested in moral and political issues. That took me on a journey through an MA in South Asian Studies, and a PhD in philosophy focused on translating moral discourse. Along the way I decided to translate Patanjai’s Yoga Sutra so I could have a decent translation to teach from (and as part of a learning exercise as I was writing theoretically about translation).
That began my serious study of Yoga, my own practice of the ancient philosophy and what I learned in this ancient text changed how I think about research questions, knowledge and responsibility. Perhaps most surprising to me was discovering that how BIPOC traditions, and the Indian tradition, in particular, is depicted — as religious, spiritual, mystical, otherworldly—is not accurate but a colonial projection on colonized traditions that end up imitating colonized expectations. And, colonial traditions in contrast are irrational but they hide this by an Orwellian switch, where their prejudices are rebranded as “reason.”
The core idea that I learned from the tradition is that research and the autonomous life come about by being organized and proactive about sorting information. Oppression and confusion are a result of buying our experiences as though informative.
This has lead me to see learning, growth and knowledge as part of the anti-oppressive life, and oppression as a matter of imposing experiences and outlooks thereby undermining agency as well as understanding.
As my academic research projects were progressing, I decided to open the Yoga and Philosophy Institute (link to yogaphilosophy.com), to make information about yoga and philosophy publicly available to interested students online.
I’ve spWith expertise in ethics, logic, and epistemology, my work challenges conventional Western interpretations of texts like the Yoga Sūtras, advocating for a historically and philosophically rigorous understanding of Indian thought.
Beyond academia, my work has significant implications for contemporary discussions on philosophy, yoga, and cultural appropriation. My research bridges the gap between classical traditions and modern intellectual discourse, offering critical insights into how knowledge is shaped by colonial histories. Through my publications, lectures, and translations, I encourage a deeper, more authentic engagement with South Asian philosophical systems and psycho-spiritual practices, redefining how these traditions are understood and applied today.