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Dr. Christopher Ki Chappell
Are you.
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Dr. Rosh Baltaron
Hello and welcome back to the New Books and Indian Religions Podcast, a podcast channel here on the New Books Network. I'm your host, Dr. Rosh Baltaron. More importantly, it is my pleasure to welcome back to the podcast for, I believe, the sixth time Dr. Christopher Ki Chappell, who's associate professor of Indicative Comparative Theology at Loyola Marymount University. Today we're covering not a book, but a significant development in the field spearheaded by Chris. It is now five years running. I believe we'll hear more about this shortly of the very first accredited Master of Arts in Yoga Studies at lmu. So Chris, welcome to the podcast.
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Dr. Christopher Ki Chappell
Well, thank you. And I'll open with a little bit of a correction. We actually welcomed our first cohort in 2013.
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Dr. Rosh Baltaron
13.
- [02:26]
Dr. Christopher Ki Chappell
And we've just recently welcomed our 13th cohort in 2025. So we've been operative for 13 years, building on an early certification program that was implemented in 2002. So we've been more than A couple of decades into this work. And we're very, very grateful for those who have participated and the good work that they continue to do out in the big world.
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Dr. Rosh Baltaron
Yes, thank you very much for the correction. The wires I was crossing was our very first conversations five years ago in 2020, when we had a conversation about many things and spoke about it. But yes, I mean, it's a really fascinating initiative, and I'm sure listeners of all sorts have all kinds of questions. Maybe one question that comes to mind for those listening is, you know, what sorts of students? Who might this be for?
- [03:22]
Dr. Christopher Ki Chappell
Such an excellent question. And from the beginning, we've had students in their 20s, their 30s, their 40s, their 50s, their 60s, their 70s. And our incoming cohort is not different in many, many ways. We have people who have recently completed their undergraduate degree. We also have two people that came into the program with PhDs, two who had been practicing lawyers, and one who ditched law school in order to come into the study of yoga. And I think in that regard, we can think of dharma and law as not unrelated, but the students come in with so many varied backgrounds and from so many disciplines. And part of the beauty of the content of the curriculum is that it really does speak to truly interdisciplinary needs and desires, not excluding things such as what's the most effective way to help a person move toward wholeness and healing, as well as what is appropriate in terms of yoga and business in this consumerist age. And with this curriculum, I think that we're really able to both directly and indirectly answer and respond to a whole host of questions that stir up within people who eventually land within our program.
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Dr. Rosh Baltaron
Fascinating. Now, just keeping it sort of 30,000 foot view in terms of the curriculum, is it fair to say that this is a scholarly or academic curriculum? Is this some sort of hybrid curriculum? Where is it pitched?
- [05:12]
Dr. Christopher Ki Chappell
Yeah, without doubt, it's an academic, scholarly curriculum. The students are required to complete either two or three semesters of Sanskrit grammar study. And as anyone who's been in the orbit of Sanskrit knows, this requires a very high level of analytic thinking as well as a capacity for memorization. So that's number one. Number two, the historic aspects of yoga are always taken into account. And this means that academically, you have to know the geography of India. You have to know the interface between Hindu texts and Buddhist texts and Jain texts, even Sufi texts. You have to know a little bit about Paramahansa Yogananda's Christian education at Sarampur Bible College in Calcutta, as you will undoubtedly encounter through the Autobiography of a Yogi and his other writings, his deep knowledge and really true affection for yoga in terms of Christian theology. So academic. Yes, absolutely. Most of the students come with a sustained physical practice of yoga and we do not back away from that by any stretch of the imagination. But what we do is build on that embodied knowledge and adumbrate it, sort of build it out. I'm not going to say just decorate it, but enhance it with philosophical, historical, psychological, spiritual understanding.
- [07:06]
Dr. Rosh Baltaron
Yeah, it sounds like a. From what I can glean, it sounds like a wonderful means to either gain an intellectual grounding in yoga, particularly yoga traditions as they've now blossom nonetheless, and or complement an existing practice. You know, it's really interesting when I see programs like these. It really reminds me of many of my own students, the Ochs, but more so than with some school who are super smart and super spiritual. You know, they want all of the secondary literature, but they also want to go off and do solid months. It's a really, really interesting hybrid. And without putting any words in your mouth, I'm really interested to hear from you whether, you know, is practice part of the program? Is it. Do many folks come to sort of complement their practices? How would you characterize that?
- [07:59]
Dr. Christopher Ki Chappell
Yes, that's a really excellent question. As I mentioned, most people come with several years of practice. Not all people, but many. And what we do in our foundations course, which is a residential intensive two week experience in Los Angeles, is we begin the first hour of each of the two weeks with a practice that includes actually lead this practice. And it includes pranayama, it includes asana, it includes recitation, a little bit of singing, it includes personal internal reflection on the yamas and niyamas, it includes practices of dharana, particularly progressively the five elements. So to the extent that sadhana really undergirds the relevance of yoga, it's certainly part of our program, but it's not the exclusive focus because what we were assuming is that, yeah, people have been to a yoga studio or many of our participants actually are either full time teachers or proprietors of yoga at yoga studios. And what we want is to acknowledge that body felt experience that comes with the performance of yoga and to bring it to a different level of understanding through linguistics, through history, through philosophy.
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Dr. Rosh Baltaron
Yeah. Would folks have to be in the Los Angeles area to attend the program?
- [09:55]
Dr. Christopher Ki Chappell
No. This is sort of interesting and many, many years ago I was on the academic computing committee, this is going back almost 30 years and saw coming the dawn of computer facilitated learning. And I served at this committee capacity well placed to understand what was needed. And back in those days, we talked about backward designs. We have to be straight up forward in delivering curriculum over the Internet. And then as the technology evolved and eventually the, you know, the zoom world emerged, I knew that from day one in 2013 that we needed to be simulcast, we needed to be archived. And as we perfected that and the technology was much cruder back in those days, over a decade ago, when 2019, 2020 happened and the whole world went online, we were very well prepared. And we were the very first program at our university to receive full regional accreditation for this form of simultaneous access. 2018, we had to go through a rigorous analysis and defense and demonstration of our competence. And as I said, since day one, we've been live streaming and we've been video archiving every single educational moment. So right now we have 30 states that are willing to grant educational status to our students while they're living in, for instance, Florida, Texas, New Jersey, Illinois, Ohio. The list is long. And we also are able to fully enroll students from every single country of the world. And we've had students in Bahrain, we've had students in India, we've had students in the Philippines, we've had students in Indonesia, we've had students in Germany. And this combination of being together in Los Angeles and then maintaining that connection through small group discussions and through a lot of video conferencing with the faculty as needed, is I think, really provided a robust model for holistic education.
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Dr. Rosh Baltaron
So one of the threads of this conversation that I did not anticipate, which perhaps I should have, but that is very much of interest to this podcast, probably owing to its host, is online education and, you know, sort of pedagogical influences, innovations. You know, I really went from a skeptic to a preacher. You know, I really went like online education. And it just sort of came my way in 2017. I was working for myself, I defended in 2015, and I thought, well, let me earn a living while we figure out this intriguing job market. So, 2017, I was sort of called, but I was sort of called sort of. I was kind of distasteful towards the whole idea because it was such a sort of embodied, old fashioned, you know, in person, person. And really I was gobsmacked at the extent to which individuals can have utterly transformative, immersive experiences through online medium and sort of hybrid medium education. And so I would, I mean, someone needs to write an article on if someone hasn't already. Someone needs to research what you've accomplished. Pedagogically in terms of engaging students all over the world online. And without taking too much of sort of a nerdy nosedive into that, could you say a word about that? I'd love to hear a little bit about that journey of just teaching online and the sort of pedagogical piece and maybe some of what you've had to do even to prove to folks that this is real and this is, this is worth it.
- [14:13]
Dr. Christopher Ki Chappell
Yeah, I had the, the good benefit over a decade ago of being approached. I've been teaching in person for over 20 years at a place called the Hill street center in Santa Monica. And I've been leading studies of the Bhakalad Gita, of the Yoga Sutra. We're going soon. Yoga Vasishta. And it, small but mighty, would attract people that had both a personal and practice intellectual interest in the text based nature of these traditions writ large. And a young man, then young man called Derek Miller came to Los Angeles as a businessman, specifically scouting talent in Santa Monica. And he created Yoga Glow, which is the first online platform for conveying yoga and meditation. And I resisted, but went in and first recorded over the course of a year, an entire 20 hours on the Yoga Sutra. And again, like how I continued to teach. This was both in person and being recorded at that time. It wasn't live broadcast. But what has happened is that some of those videos, which are, well, more than a decade old, still are posted, still people still capture the attention of people. And I've had the experience of being on a trans. Well, it wasn't just transcontinental flight, but you know, an over the ocean flight. And someone comes up to my seat and says, you are Chris Chappell, and then engaging me because they've been studying with me online for really quite some time. So in terms of conveying information, yes, it works. And in terms of something else, in terms of something happening at the meditative level, it can also be quite significant. And for more than 25 years I've been meditating with a Thursday morning group and we used to meet in person and then we of course during the COVID migrated to an online experience. And when you have, even though physically not in the same room, even just on the screen, 20 people with the intention of dwelling with one another in silence and then listening in turn to one of the group leaders and then in small group sharing this experience in fact is quite moving, quite profound. So yeah, both on the intellectual level and on the emotive level, I find quite surprisingly that the online environment proves.
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Dr. Rosh Baltaron
Yeah, it really is surprising. You know, ironically, perhaps fittingly, it's folks who are really comfortable with engaging people in the flesh person and have these skills who are a little more reticent or even skeptical that that can be duplicated. And yet it is those very people like you and I who can bring someone into a story, into a text, into an aura. You know, I've been for, for years now we've been doing this Wisdom Wednesday. Basically it's Satsanga and the Bhagavad. We do worse and, and there are people who have never been in the same room in their life. Sometimes they will because we'll hold a retreat here and there and they would not. They have to sort of pinch themselves because it feels like they sit together in the same living room every Wednesday. Well, we have architect once a month and it's, it's, it's extraordinary. And I often use without getting too nerdy with these ridiculous footnotes. I often use that according to too many traditions. Shruti can be transmitted by by Shabda, by Sparsha and sorry by Darshana. And really all you're missing is this parsha. So the rest is still working somehow. Okay, so back to the main text, the yoga studies. I made lmu. So little Rajan Toronto is excited he can attend. What would it entail? How many years of study? What are the modules? Like, what's required to program.
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Dr. Christopher Ki Chappell
Right. So the first thing is applying. And what we require of folk is to have a bachelor's degree. And if people don't have a bachelor's degree, we have various pathways that we recommend to complete that sort of academic hurdle. Second, they need to tell the story why they're interested. They have to respond with an essay, thinking about an assigned reading as part of the application process. They have to find two people could. Many of our students are returning to study after even decades. So we say, yeah, your friend, rather your teacher down at your yoga studio or just someone who can write about you, give us a sense of who you are. And then the. The applicants also post a video talking in response to some prompts. And that whole package comes together with transcripts from their universities. And if it's an international university, the transcript has to be analyzed and vetted. And then this goes to a review committee. And we have two faculty that look. The director of the program looks, the associate dean looks. And then admittance generally would be granted, not always. And then people prepare, and for two weeks they take up residence in Los Angeles and they have sadhana every morning. They have class this year with Professor Zoe Slaytoff and the Foundations of Yoga Studies. Right now, the textbook that we're using is Tracing the Yoga Path by Dr. Stuart Ray Sarvakar. And it gives history, it gives philosophy. It really speaks to yoga as a mind, body, discipline. And then we also do excursions. And we just wrapped up a Saturday where we started with the Siddhanda Yoga Vedanta Center. We went to the International Society for Krishna Consciousness. From there we went to the Hollywood center, the Self Realization Fellowship established by Paramahansa Yogananda, where he actually taught for many years. From there we went to the Vedanta Society of Southern California, established by Swami Prabhavananda and gave birth to the remarkable co translations with Christopher Isherwood. From there we went to the Walk Good Yard, established through the auspices of the actor Michael B. Jordan to give voice and a home for the black community to bring yoga into the grammar of. Of daily life. And from there we went to Mayura vegetarian restaurant, which is Carolee's food. Just totally remarkable. And then on the Sunday, we made pilgrimage to Ojai California. And we gathered at the tree where Meher Baba had taught in the early 1950s, shortly before his death. From there we went to the home of Krishnamurti, the philosopher whose work had really electrified the world over the course of his 70 years of teaching. And then we gathered at the studio called Breathohai, established by a graduate of our program, where we reflected in the ambiance that she's created in the spirit of Railana Maharshi. And then we went to Crotona Institute, the Crotona School, the esoteric unit of the Theosophical Society established by Eddie Besson more than a hundred years ago. And then we had food at a Tibetan restaurant. And then. So that's sort of the first course. And the first semester we also have people begin their study of Sanskrit grammar and begin their study of the health sciences and yoga. And they actually do learn about not only bones and muscles, but they learn about fascia, which is very, very important in terms of the electric body. And they learn about the energetic body from the chakra nadi mapping of this internal cosmos. The second semester, they and the most compacted version of the program, they will continue their study of the body with the Hatha Yoga text class and Garanda Samhita, Hatha Yoga Pratipika. And it's experimental, it's student participatory, it's a lot of presentation. And yes, even though some of the students are online, we've really mastered this way of physically communicating with movement for both the health science and the Hatha Yoga class. And then they will also have their study of Indian philosophy, reading the Vedas, the Upanishads, the Bhagavad Gita, Sankhyakarika, the works of the Yoga Vasishta. And we also generally include in that course, in addition to primary sources, just reflections on the meaning of the yoga, vision of the Yoga Sutra. How does that translate into everyday life? First summer session, immersive, six week, twice a week course on Buddhism. Second summer session, immersive, two week course on Jaina Yoga. Then the third semester, Sanskrit three Comparative Mysticism, where we do Kabbalah, Christian mysticism, Carl Jung, William James, Sri Aurobindo, contemporary ways of working our way into that mystical vision. And then a course called Yoga, Mindfulness and Social Change, which looks at some of the contemporary connections with not only human improvement, but societal uplift. And we really, in that class look at the enduring influence of Mahatma Gandhi, the enduring influence of the changes brought about by such people as Martin Luther King Jr. Who himself was profoundly shaped by his understanding of the yoga societal movement writ large, championed by Gandhi in India. And then the final semester, students take on a project. We have a YouTube channel where you can see dozens of these, where students follow their own interests. They might go back for India for several weeks, they might do a study, they might translate a text. There's so many ways in which they find culmination. And then additionally, we have an option of either a revised program or a third or fourth year program that focuses on the therapeutic aspects of yoga. And this is sort of an on the ground that has you in the field figuring, who do I want to work with, who do I hope to uplift? And we've had people work yoga vis a vis recovery. We've had people work on fall prevention for insular Chinese only speaking communities in our San Gabriel Valley. We've had people reflecting on undergraduate participation in the yoga experience. We've had people doing just a range of applied yoga studies.
- [29:18]
Dr. Rosh Baltaron
Okay, so the next time you take a tour through these iconic spiritual LA sites and eat your way through Southern California, if you're looking for a pro bono co facilitator, I know a guy in Toronto who'll be there. That sounds fascinating and really fun. And some of the hallmarks of that program, what you describe is embodied experience, right? Experience of food, of culture, of, you know, it's, it's, that's, you know, embodiment shouldn't happen at the expense of the intellectual. Know the other way around. They complement each other. Right. Um, so it's, it's really fascinating to hear the contours of that.
- [30:04]
Dr. Christopher Ki Chappell
And one thing we don't shy away from is open conversation. And some years ago, one of our students who was living in Madison, Wisconsin, actually Milwaukee, and she herself had established a yoga studio. And through her research, informed by that course in the history of modern yoga and its applications, she discovered that this studio had originally been established by Swami Rama and then uncovered that Swami Rama was a little bit in need of correction and then went through a whole phase of, oh, all of this is not immune from the possibility of a darkness. And this was both revelatory and affirming for all of us that, oh, we can go to some of those places that need correction and really know learning from the past how to make things move forward in a way that's better.
- [31:25]
Dr. Rosh Baltaron
Yeah, I feel that what you're saying is crucial and you're doing.
- [31:32]
Dr. Christopher Ki Chappell
Explicitly, I.
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Dr. Rosh Baltaron
Believe, what education implicitly does, which is illumines the path forward and the perils of the Past and how to, you know, how to be more aware. Right. The more we know. Right.
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Dr. Christopher Ki Chappell
Yeah.
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Dr. Rosh Baltaron
So you spoke in passing about some of the changes, impacts that graduates have had. Could you say a bit more about some of the sorts of things that quote unquote, one might be able to do with such an education, whether formally or informally?
- [32:05]
Dr. Christopher Ki Chappell
Yeah. Several of our students are teaching yoga full time, some of them on tenure track at various colleges and universities. And this includes University of Southern California, Stanford University, an array of community colleges as well as small colleges throughout the country. That's fantastic. Another that some have chosen to do is to go and pursue doctoral degrees. So we have a student soon wrapping up at Syracuse University who did sort of a sociological study of women in modern India who are undertaking the practice of yoga. We have another who completed at Berkeley at the Graduate Theological Union, a comprehensive and actually longitudinal study. Comprehensive A text study of yoga and sleep yoga NIDRA and longitudinal study. She implemented at Yoga USC a course for sleep hygiene and gathered data on hundreds of of students and recorded and analyzed how their practice of yoga under her guidance really helped and it did statistically help improve their capacity to develop better sleep habits. We have another student who is at University of California Riverside who's advanced beyond her qualification. She's now a candidate writing her dissertation on a text by Yashuvejaya, a 17th, 18th century Jain philosopher of the religions of India, who wrote a text called the 3232, which is 32 chapters on different philosophies of yoga through the prism of his time and place place. We have some who run rather remarkable studios. I'm thinking of Heaven Meets Earth in Evanston, Illinois and it's just so wonderful to hear the bits and pieces of where people are and what they're doing. And we just had our 10th year reunion of the very first graduating class and there was just so much joy.
- [34:38]
Dr. Rosh Baltaron
That's fantastic. What, is there anything else that you might like folks to know about the program in general? Also maybe share what are some of your most favorite aspects of the program?
- [34:52]
Dr. Christopher Ki Chappell
Yeah, I think I'm always surprised as the lives that enter this community of learners intertwine, unfold and change. And I had this one moment where a graduate after she had completed the program thanked me and said this experience gave her a gift of freedom that she just was not able to find before the program. And by that she'd had a history of just a lot of hospitalizations. And this provided a ladder where she could crawl her way into both self understanding, historical understanding and gain a multivalent philosophical perspective that gave her the courage to go forward. And one person that's been sort of brought to my attention after some many years of studying and in graduate school is Erich Fromm in his book Art of Loving. And one of our students is now pursuing her PhD in Organizational Psychology. And what inspired her most was discovering Erich Fromm's assertion that above all else, the task of being human is simultaneously the task of self discovery and being of service to others. And in his uniquely 20th century idiom, he really sort of captures the zeitgeist of what our educational project is about. And I always celebrate these moments of happy success and and really continue to be heartened by the blessing and the hard work of being an educator.
- [37:06]
Dr. Rosh Baltaron
Fantastic. I don't think we can end on a more inspiring and resonant note, so thank you very much for appearing on the podcast.
- [37:14]
Dr. Christopher Ki Chappell
Thank you very much. Namaste.
- [37:16]
Dr. Rosh Baltaron
For those listening, we've been speaking with Dr. Chris Chapple of LMU about its thriving Masters in Yoga Studies program. All of the relevant links are below. Until next time, keep well, keep listening, keep reading and keep contemplating the applications of yoga Take Care.
- [37:49]
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