Monthly Archives: November 2025

The Gift of Grace

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By Ellen (Lajja) Mitchell

Ashram Board President

Welcome to our year-end fundraiser — themed “The Gift of Grace.” 

I hope you will join me in yoga’s practice of dakshina (selfless financial giving). When you give back in gratitude for what you have received, you invoke Grace at the same time. 

Gurudevi Nirmalananda Saraswati, our Ashram’s spiritual head, explains that:

Grace is the fifth of God’s divine actions: creation, maintenance, destruction, concealment and revelation (grace).

Consciousness has contracted to become us by concealing our inherent Divinity.  This is our human condition.  Yet we are also given the decoder ring, known as Grace.  Receiving this gift, we can know our own Self. We can uncover the Divinity that has always been within, being us. 

Gurudevi is fueled by the light of Consciousness and she wants us to be as well. She tells us that you can receive Grace through teachings, satsangs, asana, meditation and more!  Grace is always there for us. What a gift.

I remember a time in my life when I was going through the loss of a friendship.  I was hurt deeply.  I worked during the day and chanted or repeated japa all evening.  

The Grace was there with me from the first note or mantra repetition.  It carried me through my tough time. Invoking Grace did not make the problem go away.  It helped me to accept it. It helped me to surrender to what was. What a gift.

Daily, I use the practices to invoke Grace to help clear the path to my own Self.  Gurudevi says, 

You need the Grace-fueled upliftment that shows you the scintillating energy of which you are made.

I am so grateful to have found Gurudevi and to have these tools available to me. I am grateful for her patience in showing me how to tap into Grace. I am grateful for receiving the experience of my Self. Yes — what a gift. So many gifts!

Has Gurudevi shown you how to invoke Grace? Have you had an experience of peace inside? Do you walk differently through life because of it?  Have you felt the upliftment of your own divine essence? 

Because I can gratefully answer “yes,” I donate to Svaroopa® Vidya Ashram. Through our donations, our Ashram can continue to help us uncover our light and shine it into the world.  What a gift! 

Please join me today in making your year-end donation to our Ashram in gratitude for the gifts you have received.

Donate online or call us at (610) 644-7555.  Or send your check to Svaroopa® Vidya Ashram, 116 E. Lancaster Ave., Downingtown PA 19335.  Thank you again and again!

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Support Equals Release

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By Swami Samvidaananda

In almost every yoga class, I say, “Support equals release.” It is a key principle of Svaroopa® yoga. 

The support you receive in class takes many forms. The plaid blankets are the most obvious, and colorful!

We fold and roll and stack and tuck blankets in wherever you need them most.  We give you blocks, a strap, or a chair. Your teacher excels at knowing how and when and why to provide you with a prop. 

The props meet your body where tension is holding it back. When you lean into that support, your deep internal tensions let go. Support = release.

You’ve been carrying those tensions for so long.  Sometimes you are so used to holding them, you don’t even know you have them. Then you do a supported spinal-opening pose, and the tensions let go. It feels so freeing!

In my very first Svaroopa® yoga class, I didn’t understand the purpose of the props. I had done other styles of yoga, where your only prop was a sticky mat. I didn’t think I needed any.  Begrudgingly, I let the teacher give me one blanket roll for Shavasana, yoga’s relaxation pose.

The more poses we did, the more I warmed up to using the props — blocks under my hands in Lunge, blankets under my belly in Half Frog.  I was open to using them because I felt better and better. 

By the end, I felt so amazing that I was on board with whatever props the teacher wanted to give me! I hadn’t actually ever felt that way at the end of a yoga class. It wasn’t just relaxation.  It was bliss.

With Svaroopa® yoga’s core-opening poses, you can experience not merely relaxation, well-being and renewal, but bliss. It’s the bliss of your own Beingness, which yoga calls your own Self.

Your spine is a doorway to the inner depths of your Beingness. When you release the deep tensions in your spine with these precise, supported and deceptively simple poses, you open that doorway inside.  And the experience of your own Self is inherently blissful.

I taught Seated Side Stretch the other day. After one side of the pose, I asked the students to describe the differences between their two sides. One student had a look of utter surprise and joy on her face. All she could say was, “Wow!” Though she didn’t have the words for it yet, she was experiencing her own Self. 

This is the gift of Svaroopa® yoga. And it begins for you by accepting the support of those ubiquitous plaid blankets.

Yoga Therapy

Get Familiar with Bliss

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If you know that doing some yoga or repeating mantra for five minutes will make you happy, and it will, sometimes you simply won’t do it.  It’s like you prefer being unhappy to being happy.  Well, maybe it’s familiar. And I’d like to rescue you…  

—  Gurudevi Nirmalananda

From Gurudevi’s full discourse “Searching for Happiness“

Watch Full Discourse Here

Illumined Action

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By Gurudevi Nirmalananda

Sometimes you just know. In the midst of a real life situation, perhaps unexpected, you simply know exactly what to do, or what it is that you can say that will make a difference. Illumined action — wouldn’t you like to live this way?

Yoga says you can. Tune in to your own inner light. Let your Divine Essence shine through your mind and heart. Your words will have the desired effect. Your actions will serve a greater purpose. To live this way, base yourself in your own Self, drawing from your inner depth and dimensionality in every moment. In every breath.

First, you delve inward to find your own Self. Then you rest in your Essence and Beingness, the source of bliss within. Free from need, greed and fear, your words and actions are divinely inspired.

You are not the only one who benefits from this. Your words and actions are motivated by clarity and compassion, seeing what will bring about the most beneficial results. In other words, you don’t leave the world.

Nartaka atma. — Shiva Sutras 3.9

One who knows their own Self is an actor on the stage of the world.

When you know your own Self, you won’t want to retire to a forest or a cave. You will accept your role in the cosmic drama and participate fully. You still have a body and must take care of it. You still have relationships. You still have things to do, places to go, ways to contribute to the welfare of the world. You still have karma. While it doesn’t define you, it does keep you engaged in life.

Those who want to hide away are wannabes, not yogis. Their inner state is so fragile that they can’t know about world events. They want everyone around them to be peaceful, to be nice, to be kind, to be pretty and to talk softly. They need the outside to help them with their innards. Yoga says you have to do your inner work. It’s an inside job.

Enlightened beings care about the world and the people in it. I have been fortunate to meet many Gurus who were acknowledged as having reached the summit of their tradition. They are the busiest and most effective people I’ve ever met. They care. Yet the events that transpire don’t affect their inner state. Based in Consciousness, they…

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