Meditation Breakthrough

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By Elena (Lila) Perri

I felt a profound shift as the blockage to my sadhana melted into nothingness.

It happened in Gurudevi’s recent Shaktipat Retreat. I have been meditating every day since, more deeply and with ease and delight.

At the same time, my Ujjay breathing and pose practices have become far more regular as well. Since the beginning of the year, I’ve also taken many of the Ashram’s online studies, which have deepened my meditations even more.

This morning’s meditation delivered another breakthrough. Breathing with the mantra, I was propelled into a deeper state of blissful union. As I floated in this inner realm, I had the realization that I can enjoy this same blissful union while not meditating — as Gurudevi teaches us. As everything is Shiva, it follows that bliss is always there outside of meditation just as I was experiencing it in this meditation. Goodness!

To meditate — what a profound experience! I have experienced gradual progress since my first Shaktipat Retreat with Gurudevi four years ago. Now, staying in my meditative state longer and longer every day, I am calm and peaceful. More and more, I feel that I’m living a heart-centered life.

I’ve experientially learned the truth of the teaching that, as Kundalini climbs my spine, she burns up karmic seeds. She clears out blockages. Old attitudes and resentments melt away.

Since my meditation breakthrough, emotions and distractions don’t control me. I am more easily navigating life. I’m living in my own skin and making decisions from my center.

The practices that I’ve learned from Gurudevi are the best endeavor of my life. They guide you in what to do if you want liberation. Old behaviors simply fall away. My gratitude is boundless and endless. 

Dec 11 Shaktipat Retreat

Worth Six Classes

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By Swami Prajñananda

One therapy session is worth six yoga classes. Svaroopa® Yoga Therapy is that powerful! You get more healing in less time because each session is customized. 

In a group class, your teacher creates a lesson plan that is meant for all students. It works and it is effective. But a private session is tailored just for you. 

Your therapist checks in with you at the beginning of the session. Based on your current condition, she creates your plan. Even if she had an idea of what to do with you before you arrived, it all depends on how you are in the moment. This customized approach meets you exactly where you are at and helps move you to the next level in your healing.

In Svaroopa® Yoga we say, “Support equals release.” It’s so true. When your body is supported in the poses exactly as needed, your tensions melt away. 

You settle and soften into the process when you feel supported, not only physically but mentally, emotionally and more. You allow yourself to accept the support. This is very powerful and moves you easily and deeply in your healing.

Along with this customized support, you have your therapist’s full attention. In a class situation, your teacher is taking care of the whole class. But in your yoga therapy session, you are the sole focus. 

Having your therapist’s full attention is powerful. This works for both On-Site and Online sessions. Your therapist has years of training not only in what to do, but how to be present with you.

Ultimately, it is your own presence in your body that heals. When your attention is “out there” somewhere, focused on other people, things to do, worries and fears, your body suffers. Any tight or painful area of your body is an area that has been missing your presence. You need to get back into your body! 

Your session helps to move your own awareness into those shutdown areas. You learn how to re-inhabit those places. Your therapist’s embodied presence helps you to get embodied. Then, your own awareness makes every pose deeper. 

If you are able to come in person for a session, you get the benefit of Svaroopa® Yoga Therapy’s hands-on approach. The adjustments your therapist can give you are like magic! They are so delicious. And they amplify the benefits you get in each pose.

You get a taste of this in a group class. You’re lying in Half Frog, and your teacher comes over and does her magic. Your body opens up in a whole new way. You didn’t even realize it was possible. You feel the difference.

But you only get that adjustment on one side of the pose in a class. In a yoga therapy session, though, you get it in every pose and on both sides. 

This hands-on approach accelerates your body’s healing in a way you couldn’t even have imagined. You have to experience it for yourself.

Each yoga therapy session is worth six classes. So if you are in need of healing, speed your process along and sign up for some yoga therapy. 

Yoga Therapy

In the Pause

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The sage says:

Tadah drastuh svaroope vastanam — Yoga Sutras 1.3

In the moment your mind becomes still, you abide in svaroopa, your own Divine Essence.

Here you are, revealed in the space between your thoughts. This means your thoughts are usually hiding you from yourself. This is why all the yoga practices are for your mind, to quiet your mind, so you discover who you are. The you that is svaroopa, your own Divine Essence, aka Shiva. In the pause.

— Gurudevi Nirmalananda

From Gurudevi’s full discourse “The Space Between“

Watch Full Discourse Here

Getting Enlightened

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Getting enlightened is a little like watching the sunrise.  It’s amazing how long it takes, from the time the sky starts getting lighter, until the sun is above the horizon line. It’s about forty minutes of gradual lightening, and then the sun comes up quick, in only two minutes.  Getting enlightened works the same way.  It takes longer to get ready than to actually light up.  

— Gurudevi Nirmalananda

From Gurudevi’s full discourse “Getting Free“

Watch Full Discourse Here

Holy Day Celebration — Online & On-Site

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Guru Purnima occurs on the biggest full moon of every year, Wednesday, July 29th this year.

Be assured of a rich spiritual experience when you attend Gurudevi’s meditation program on this holy day.

In India, people take off work to go visit their Guru, bearing gifts that will support him or her as well as the Ashram for the rest of the year. They bow at their Guru’s feet, as Gurudevi always did to Muktananda, to lower their head below their heart.

Thus they align themselves with the concentration of energy that flows out the Guru’s feet.

In honoring and celebrating her Guru on this day, Gurudevi gives us all a way to tap into our own inherent Divinity. 

Her presence as well as her teachings reveal your own Self to you. Besides giving you this profound experience, Gurudevi also guides you in understanding it, especially on this beautiful night.

Guru Purnima

The Miracle of Unwinding

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By Carolyn (Karuna) Beaver

Vicky has been taking Svaroopa® yoga classes for nearly 20 years.

Even though she doesn’t teach, she has taken Foundations and Embodyment® Yoga Therapy training. This spring, she took a bigger leap. At Lokananda, she took Embodyment® Plus; she took the Magic of Ujjayi course online.

Preparation for Embodyment® Plus required her to give a large number of Embodyment® sessions. We happily embarked on an Overlap Healing Series with one another. I also gave Vicky some yoga therapy sessions, targeting specific physical issues.

She says, “I always stand up straighter, feel lighter, and more easily experience joy after a class or a session. This happens every time. That’s why Svaroopa® Yoga is so attractive to me.”

Now Vicky finds that this experience is ongoing, especially after Overlap Healing and yoga therapy as well as Embodyment® Plus training and the Magic of Ujjayi course. She says, “My experiences last longer and are more sustained. It’s pretty profound. Things are going deeper.”

She has noticed subtle, yet profound, changes in her body mechanics as well. In college, she sustained a bad ankle sprain. Although she had a cast, she had no therapy for her injury. That, in combination with some mild scoliosis, has caused 45 years of lower leg, ankle and foot pain. One leg is slightly misaligned and shorter than the other.

In her “do more yoga” mode this spring and summer, things changed. “As my sacrum would relax, my leg would literally unwind. It didn’t feel ‘screwed in’ any more. I felt muscles in my glutes, thigh, hip, calf and foot that wanted to unwind and be on point — just like a ballerina. That release in my spine was releasing the tension in my leg and unwinding all the way down to my foot.”

Because of travels, she has not been doing as much yoga practice or therapy recently. Yet she is still noticing the benefits. “I can tap into it more easily. It’s just waiting to be acknowledged again. I pick up more readily.”

“And, my feet are not hurting. At the end of the day, my feet would be yelling at me. Now they are not.”

Vicky also has a much better understanding of how all the practices work together. “I used to think that Embodyment® or asana or Ujjayi were just replacements for one another. But they’re not. You get so many more benefits when you work with all three together. They don’t merely complement one another. They build upon each other.”

As a student. Vicky has always asked lots of questions. She wants to know how to get precise alignments and how things work. “In the past, when the releases have happened,” she recalls, “I’ve felt the benefits, and I’ve wanted to know why. But now, I don’t have to. I know my body is doing what it needs to do. That’s the biggest take away for me.”

Therapeutic Yoga Series
Therapeutic Yoga Training – A

Heaven on Earth

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By Gurudevi Nirmalananda

As a resident of Svaroopa® Vidya Ashram, I feel that I live in heaven on earth. I felt the same when I went to live with my Baba, that I was moving into heaven.

The environs, especially in Baba’s India Ashram, were heavenly. Three meditation halls opened daily at 3:00 am. I walked past night-blooming jasmine in the gardens to get there, along pathways with sacred statues in every corner.

We had a lotus pond and 100 acres of mango orchards. Our little café served chai, lattes and croissants next to a reflecting pool with a fountain in the middle.

You also have your own setup, perhaps with a meditation room or nook, gardens or plants for you to enjoy as well as delectable coffees and treats in your own kitchen. Does that make it feel like heaven for you? Maybe you would simply call it “comfortable.”

I quickly discovered the heaven I was experiencing wasn’t about nature nor interior décor. Having also stayed in beautiful hotels and retreat centers, I know the difference. It was Baba that made the place heavenly.

I got up for 3 a.m. meditation, followed by chai and chanting. Baba is why we gathered in the central courtyard at 10 a.m. and 3 p.m., to sit with him as he fingered his amber mala, doing japa (mantra repetition) for all of us.

I say he did mantra for us because, while I was sitting with him, I was not repeating mantra. My mind was flowing with mantra-virya, the mantric energy he emanated. Deeper than peace, thicker than bliss, more full-filling than love, I couldn’t jump-start a thought, not even a sense of awe or gratitude.

I was absorbed in ever-deepening inner realms, experiencing an open-eyed meditation simply by focusing on him. Looking outward at Baba was the same as looking inward at my own Self, except Baba made it easier and deeper.

That’s what the Guru does — makes it easier and deeper for you. Everything they do is to help you find you. They make themselves available…

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Celebrating Freedom!

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By Gurudevi Nirmalananda

Happy birthday, America, 250 years and counting! May you live a long and honorable life.

I am grateful to live in a land where I am free to follow a yogic lifestyle. In many ways, this country meets the criteria listed in a yoga text from 1,000 years ago:

The yogi should live in a quiet place, in a prosperous land that is well-governed. The dwelling should be small, level with the ground, with a raised platform and fresh water nearby, and be kept clean and free from insects. Seated there, the yogi should free their mind from all distracting thoughts and practice yoga as instructed by his Guru. — Hatha Yoga Pradipika 1.12-14

I live only an hour’s drive from the birthplace of America. The founding documents are displayed in a Philadelphia museum, treated with the reverence that is usually given to sacred objects. These are very secular papers, yet they were inspired by ancient principles from Greek and Latin texts.

The men declaring our freedom also drew on the European Enlightenment philosophers. However, those great thinkers were similarly tapping into ancient sources, including Socrates, Plato, Aristotle and others. And if you dig a little further, you discover their sources, bumping into the sages of India whose influence was felt in ancient Greece. America’s philosophical roots run deep.

Bringing principles into practicalities is always challenging. This is true not only for an individual but also for a nation. But the principles have inspired me since I was a schoolgirl. Maybe I caught a whiff of India’s incense still wafting through?

This is the USA’s “semiquincentennial.” I love the title! It means we are halfway (semi) to the 500-year mark (quin-centennial). Yet longevity is not the goal.

Happiness, technically the “pursuit of happiness,” is the stated goal, along with life, liberty and equality. If you’re noticing that there are some bumps in the road, they are unfortunately part of the journey.  We’ve still got a ways to go.

Yes, we want happiness, along with life, liberty and equality. Yoga sees these, not as a goal,  but as the starting point for a greater objective. The true goal is yogic freedom — enlightenment. It is not something you attain by comparing yourself to others, not individually and not within groups. Called moksha, it is an inner state, a spacious quality of being that opens your mind and heart along with your breath and body.

Our tantric system focuses on your spiritual development while you live in the world. You go through the process of inner expansion while in the relationships you choose, in the actions and location of your choice.

Yet you get there by letting go, not by stockpiling people and things. I liken it to holding a butterfly on your palm. No squeezing! You must relax and breathe softly if you want it to stay. As a yogi, you do the practices that make you able to live in openness and ease. Yes, the road will still have some bumps in it, but you keep breathing all the way through.

You learn how to do this from those who know how. Like our Founding Fathers drew on time-honored principles, you follow the path laid out by those who succeeded in this visionary quest. Some of these yoga masters lived quiet lives, based in their Divine Essence, which enriched their life and those around them.

Only a few such Siddhas made themselves available by writing and teaching. They are our guides today. They make principles practical, approachable and accessible. They give you access to your own deeper dimensionality. This enriches your life more than any outer circumstances could provide. And you still will choose to live in a quiet place, in a land of plenty. You may even find you want to declutter, so the space in which you live matches the spaciousness inside.

And you step into life with clarity, arising from your inner freedom, seeing where you can make a difference and doing it. Yogis don’t need to withdraw from the world to protect their state. Yogis shine like the sun and find ways to share their light with the world — yes, with their family and friends, as well as standing up for the principles they believe in. That’s called politics, folks…

Are you contributing toward making the world better? It’s part of yoga.

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Shedding Baggage

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Your soul is great and Divine, even if it’s carrying some baggage.  You know how when you’re wearing a heavy backpack, or carrying a suitcase or two, it can throw you off-center? So, you might be trying to live your life while balancing all the baggage, meaning you’re living off-center.  The good news is that you’re shedding the baggage with every yoga practice, with every meditation, with every mantra repetition, with every pose and yogic breath, with every chant.  And even listening to these teachings, you’re shedding baggage and getting more and more centered. More and more based in your own Divine Essence.

— Gurudevi Nirmalananda

From Gurudevi’s full discourse “Centered in Self“

Watch Full Discourse Here