Thanks again for the answer and the link. I have a broadstrokes familiarity with the exchange of methods/modes that created 'modern postural Yoga'. The article fleshed it out for me with some names and events.

Similar things happened in China in the late 19th and early 20th century. There was a movement to use martial arts to build the nation (in Taiwan one term for martial arts is guo shu - national arts), and to rid them of 'superstition'. It’s a movement that continues to this day in various forms.

Broadly I agree that what we see as ‘embodiment’ mostly scratches the surface of where the techniques came from.

In some ways this is fine, because it has to start somewhere. It becomes a problem when people believe or present New age Taiji/yoga etc as the sum of practise, or it’s Western opposite anatomic/physiological explanation.

I also agree that it would be healthy to look at the context and history of how the methods presented reached their current form, including the painful and horrific history.

I saw an opening for this in the TEC. It showed in the number of presenters whose work it is to address such pain, and a willingness to go outside of their cultural frame to learn how.

I don’t want to be an apologist for the TEC. Rather in your original open letter you gave three bullet points. I’d like to read what you would have done differently. A tiny bit as a challenge, but mostly because you may offer names that deserve greater exposure, who I and others might benefit from learning from.

Who would you have liked to lead the conference?

Who would you have liked to staff it?

Who would you have liked to present there?

And some bonus questions: who would you have liked to reach with the conference, and how would you have reached them?

(if you don’t want to continue this conversation, or if you’d like to continue it in a format other than these increasingly buried Medium replies within replies I am fine to adapt).