Andrey Safronov
Teacher
Dr. Safronov has practiced yoga since 1985 and has been teaching since 1989.
Since 1992, he has conducted research in the psychology of religion, spiritual practices, and collective consciousness. For fieldwork and academic purposes, he has visited numerous ashrams, spiritual centers, and sacred cities across India, Tibet, and Southeast Asia, engaging directly with representatives of major contemporary spiritual traditions.
He currently serves as President of the Ukrainian Federation of Yoga, oversees training programs, and leads advanced seminars and workshops on yoga, meditation, and esoteric philosophy. Since 2015, he has taught Sanskrit and founded the “Sanskrit in Ukraine” school with his students.
Conference and Teaching Activity
He regularly presents his research at International academic conferences and delivers public lectures on yoga philosophy, psychotechnics, and comparative mysticism.
Workshop
Language
English
Yoga and Western psychotherapy: from philosophical views to self-improvement practices.
Despite the gulf of millennia and the profound differences in their cultural foundations, yoga and modern psychotherapy share numerous points of convergence — ranging from their common focus on the human psyche to their analogous roles within the domain of therapeutic practice. Furthermore, many schools of contemporary psychotherapy emerged under the direct influence of ideas borrowed from Eastern philosophy, some of which were, however, misinterpreted or adapted in a distorted form.
In this course, I intend to examine and compare the theoretical perspectives and practical methods of yoga and major psychotherapeutic schools; to juxtapose the meditative techniques of classical yoga with contemporary psychopractices; to identify and reconcile the principal tensions between classical and modern approaches; and to propose a possible metalanguage for mutual understanding and integration.
