You've probably already 'done' the Bhagavad Gītā.

If you're a Yoga teacher, there's a very good chance the Bhagavad Gītā was somewhere in your YTT.

You probably learnt about Karma Yoga and Jñāna Yoga and Bhakti, talked about dharma and non-attachment and maybe the guṇas. You might even use some of those teachings in your classes from time to time.

And that's great.

But there's a difference between being introduced to a text and actually spending time with it.

Have you ever sat down with the Gītā like you would with a really interesting friend and asked it a whole lot of questions?

What do you actually mean by dharma? Why are you telling Arjuna to fight? What does surrender actually mean? Why is Karma Yoga so important? And how do we reconcile all of this with what Patañjali says about ahiṃsā?

That's what I want to do in Gita Chat Club.

Six live conversations about the Bhagavad Gītā, using different translations, commentaries and interpretations as a jumping-off point.

I'll bring the material and the questions. Then we'll see where the conversation takes us.

This isn't a course about getting through the Gītā

We're not going to work our way obediently through all eighteen chapters.

Instead, each session will centre around a big question.

What do you do when there is no good choice?

Can you actually act without being attached to the result?

What does it mean to do your dharma when you don't know what your dharma actually is?

Is desire really the problem?

What does surrender mean and what exactly are we supposed to surrender to?

We'll look at the Gītā's ideas about householder life and why Kṛṣṇa emphasises Karma Yoga. We'll get into the guṇas and what they actually mean in the Gītā rather than just repeating the simplified version many of us learnt in YTT.

And then there are the questions that get a bit more uncomfortable.

How do we reconcile Kṛṣṇa telling Arjuna to go and fight with Patañjali's teaching of ahiṃsā?

How do we read the Gītā without watering it down to whatever we already want it to say?

Who gets to interpret it?

How do we know when we're genuinely interpreting a text and when we're just putting our own ideas into it?

And what happens when you put the same passage in front of two different commentators and they seem to be talking about two completely different things?

That's the stuff I want to talk about.

I have a LOT of books about the Gītā

And I have been reading them.

One of the things I love about these old texts is that you can read the same passage through the eyes of different people and suddenly you're looking at something completely differently.

We'll use Eknath Easwaran as our main text and I'll bring in some of the other books I've been reading, including Ram Dass' Paths to God, Devdutt Pattanaik's My Gītā and Douglas Brooks' Wheels of Grace.

Ram Dass is one of my absolute favourites and his approach is mystical, devotional and deeply experiential.

Pattanaik gives us a very different perspective, particularly around Indian culture and the way the Gītā has been interpreted outside India.

Douglas Brooks brings a philosophical and Tantric lens and is particularly useful when we want to question some of the assumptions we may have picked up through modern Yoga.

There are other books on my shelves too, so I'm sure they'll make an appearance.

And that's one of the things I think will make these conversations interesting.

I'm not going to stand there and tell you what the Gītā means.

I'm going to bring you what other people think it means.

Then we can argue about it.

Because there is a LOT more going on here than the quotes we usually hear.

I've been studying Yoga for a very long time and one of the things that continues to fascinate me is how quickly we can take something complex and turn it into a nice, digestible teaching.

Do your dharma.

Let go of the fruits of your actions.

Surrender.

Don't be attached.

Lovely.

But then you actually read the text and things get considerably more complicated.

And I think that's where it gets interesting.

I'm not looking for six neat spiritual lessons that you can implement on Monday morning. I don't think the Gītā needs to be turned into a self-help book.

I want us to actually sit with it.

We'll look at passages in context. We'll compare translations. We'll look at how different traditions have understood them. We'll talk about the assumptions we're bringing to the text ourselves.

And sometimes we may agree.

Sometimes we absolutely won't.

Sometimes we may finish a conversation with more questions than we started with.

I'm completely happy with that.

This is a ‘chat’, not a ‘book’ club

You do not need to own all these books.

You don't need to buy a Bhagavad Gītā beforehand and you don't need to have read any of the texts I'll be drawing from.

In fact, you don't have to do any reading at all if you don't want to.

I'll be doing the reading. I'll bring the passages and the different perspectives into our sessions and give you whatever context you need to join the conversation.

There may be optional reading if something particularly grabs you, but this isn't six weeks of homework disguised as a spiritual practice.

The books are there to give us things to talk about. The chat is the point.

This is especially for you if you've ever thought...

'I learnt about the Gītā in my YTT, but I don't feel like I really know it.'

Or, 'I've been teaching Yoga for years and I'd actually like to go back and properly explore some of this stuff.'

Or perhaps you've read the Gītā and thought, 'Hang on. Is that really what this means?'

You don't need to have read the whole thing.

You don't need to know Sanskrit.

You don't need a degree in Indian philosophy.

You just need to be interested.

And you need to be willing to let the Gītā be a little bit difficult.

Six conversations. Twelve weeks.

We'll meet fortnightly for six 90-minute sessions.

I'm deliberately making it fortnightly because I don't want this to be one more thing you consume and then forget about. I want you to have time between sessions to think about what we've talked about, notice what comes up and perhaps come back with a completely different question.

I'll do the reading and bring the material.

You don't need to buy a shelf full of Gītā commentaries, although obviously, if you're anything like me, you may find yourself adding a few to your bookshelf afterwards.

Dates

Wednesday 4 November 2026
Wednesday 18 November 2026
Wednesday 2 December 2026
Wednesday 16 December 2026
Wednesday 6 January 2027
Wednesday 20 January 2027

All sessions are live online and run for 90 minutes.

Investment

$120 AUD

That gets you all six live sessions.

Or you can join my Yoga Teacher Circle on Patreon for $20/month and Gita Chat Club is included as part of your membership.

The Yoga Teacher Circle is where I'm creating a space for Yoga teachers to talk about the stuff that doesn't always fit neatly into a standard training: teaching, students, relationships, philosophy, mythology and all the weird and wonderful questions that come up when you're actually doing this work.

So there are two ways in.

[JOIN GITA CHAT CLUB — $120]

[JOIN THE YOGA TEACHER CIRCLE — $20/MONTH]

You choose.

Not quite ready to commit?

Fair enough.

You can come and experience Gita Chat Club before deciding whether you want to join the full series.

Come and try it first

I'm running a free Gita Chat Club taster session on Wednesday 21 October 2026.

This isn't a presentation about the programme.

We'll actually do some Gītā Chatting.

I'll bring a passage from the Gītā in a few different translations or interpretations and we'll start pulling it apart. We'll look at what changes when the words change, what different commentators think is going on and what happens when we start asking some uncomfortable questions.

No homework. No need to know anything beforehand. No obligation to join the full series.

Just come and see whether you enjoy this way of exploring the Gītā.

[REGISTER FOR THE FREE TASTER]

Once you register, I'll send you the Zoom details.

A little bit about me

I've been practising Yoga since I was eight and teaching since 2009. I've spent a ridiculous amount of time studying Yoga philosophy, mythology and the traditions that sit behind the Yoga we practise in the West.

And I love this stuff.

I love finding an old text, reading something that makes me go, 'What the actual hell?' then finding three different commentators who explain it three completely different ways.

I love the mythology. I love the philosophy. I love the arguments and contradictions and the bits that don't resolve themselves into a nice little takeaway.

And I love getting into a good conversation about it.

That's really what Gita Chat Club is.

Six conversations. A stack of Gītā books. A whole lot of questions.