Few among today’s practitioners of yoga or Buddhist meditation may know that the earliest, most essential teachings of each evolved from and with each other, sharing common roots and goals. Like twins separated at birth and raised by different families, both were born of the same intention – to locate the end of suffering – and began their search along the same fundamental path. Though yoga and Buddhism eventually complexified into elaborate and distinct systems of thought, branching apart to the point where their kinship is hardly recognized today, each is the poorer for it. As with other kinds of familial relationships, their ties are not only historical or theoretical but practical: each regards itself as a ‘direct’ path, thus involving the same energies, dispositions and attachments of body, heart, and mind. Each tradition offers resonant instructions for the cultivation of both samadhi and insight, with much to enrich or remind the other. In particular, the early, purely meditative yoga takes the body and its energies to be the primary ground of contemplation, and is particularly helpful in showing the way karmic formations give rise to physical and mental actions that perpetuate suffering. This program explores the deep kinship, as well as striking differences, between the yogas of Patañjali and the Buddha in origin, theory and practice, as well as their relationship to modern hatha yoga: through a dynamic illuminated exploration of the key insights of the Yoga-Sutra – a text that includes essential pre- as well as post-Buddhist teachings – alongside selected Pali & Sanskrit sutras, and as embodied in yogic movement and stillness. Suggested reading: The Yoga-Sutra of Patañjali: A New Translation With Commentary by Chip Hartranft. Yoga mats will be provided.