The academic environment is where I feel very comfortable and at home. I thrive in research and come alive through writing!
I am both an artist and academic by nature, I love to focus my mind on study and have an unending thirst for knowledge.
In the past, I even approached Yoga through an academic lens!
My early background nonetheless was in language and literature; I particularly loved the Gothic imagination, which is why my fire has become lit right now as the ‘dark academia’ aesthetic is popular this autumnal season!
If there was a theme that described my sense of style and demeanour back in the days that I was a university student, the dark academic aesthete captures it!! It encompasses a passion for classic literature and the pursuit for self-knowledge, an embrace of the gothic, and an inward and reflective disposition.
…But make it about yoga:
The conversation around decolonising yoga is beginning to awaken western practitioners to the shortcomings of the current body-obsessed culture that distorts the sacred practice. We know that yoga is much more than physical postures and comes with a tradition and history that is attached to an indigenous group of people.
If we’re truly in the pursuit of self-knowledge and value education, then appreciating and embodying the roots of yoga and having some connection to the people from whom it originates, whether this is learning from an indigenous teacher or at least having acquaintances and friendships with those from the original culture and local community shows a deep respect and desire to learn authentically from the tradition.
Racism affects black and brown bodies in wellness spaces — we are marginalised and not offered the same privileges and opportunities as those from the dominant culture. And yet, the irony of Yoga being part of dharma — the upholding of righteousness; the aligning of actions with one’s true nature, and synching with nature’s laws and rhythms. In short, dharma is being in alignment with what is authentic and true.
Yoga comes from a rich oral and textual history, I could even suggest the Rig Veda as a ‘dark academic’ narrative with its classic sanskrit poetry and evocative symbolism of the creation story. Dark academia spaces are in themselves lately becoming less euro-centric, more diverse, conscious and inclusive of different cultures.
In keeping with my intention to align mind, body, heart and spirit I’ve chosen quotes from ten books that live on my shelf from my uni days, that are in the style of macarbe.
Let these words inspire your Gothtober — ha ha — couldn’t help myself — let them spark and support your awakening and transformation!
My Dark Academia Shelf
1. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
“I’ll walk where my own nature would be leading. It vexes me to choose another guide.”
2. Dracula by Bram Stoker
“Enter freely and of your own free will!”
3. The Bloody Chamber by Angela Carter
“She herself is a haunted house. She does not possess herself; her ancestors sometimes come and peer out of the windows of her eyes and that is very frightening.”
4. Shakepeare’s Othello
“There are many events in the womb of time which will be delivered.”
5. The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood
“The night is mine, my own time, to do with it as I will”.
6. The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova
“[S]ometimes history itself reaches inexorably forward for us with its shadowy claws.”
7. Rebecca by Daphne Du Murier
“I believe there is a theory that men and women emerge finer and stronger after suffering, and that to advance in this or any world we must endure ordeal by fire.”
8. Dr Faustus by Christopher Marlowe
“Tis magic, magic that hath ravished me.”
9. Frankenstein by Mary Wollstonecroft Shelley
“Nothing contributes so much to tranquillize the mind as a steady purpose- a point on which the soul can focus its intellectual eye”.
10. Ovid’s Metamorphoses
“Fortune resists half-hearted prayers.”
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Have you read any of these books? What are your favourite literary quotes?
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~ Payal
