Author Archives: Swami Nirmalananda

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About Swami Nirmalananda

Swami Nirmalananda is a teacher of the highest integrity since 1976. In 2009 she was honored with initiation into the ancient order of Saraswati monks. Now wearing the traditional orange, she has openly dedicated her life to serving others. Usually called Gurudevi, she makes the highest teachings easily accessible, guiding seekers to the knowledge and experience of their own Divine Essence.

Yogic Principles Uplift Your Life

By Gurudevi Nirmalananda

A yogic mind is quiet, peaceful and capable of focus. It applies itself to the task at hand: it doesn’t fritz off in a million directions at the same time.  

When the task at hand is completed, a yogic mind is restful and serene. If this is not your mind’s usual state, it needs help. Yoga’s lifestyle practices help make your mind more yogic.

A yogic lifestyle is a way of living that contributes to a quiet mind. An unyogic life is a way of living that contributes to busy mind. You should not stop working, shopping or gardening. You need not give up all your relationships.  Surprisingly, these are not the things that make your mind busy. 

 Certain internal processes keep your mind spinning. Daily, you do things that churn your mind. Everybody lives this way because everybody has a busy mind: yet everybody has a busy mind because they live this way. Where can you interject into that busy loop? How do you derail that repetitive and painful internal process?

Excerpt from A Yogic Lifestyle, page 39

FREE Q&A Satsang with Gurudevi

You can rely on Gurudevi’s satsangs — community gatherings — for timeless yogic teachings and wisdom applicable to modern circumstances. Your particular, “real-life” questions are the basis of her Q&A satsangs. 

Get online with Gurudevi Nirmalananda in this free call so you can ask your questions.  Gurudevi calls on yogis in the order in which they enrolled online to ask questions. Some questions are quicker and others are longer, so the amount of time devoted to each cannot be predicted. Thus, those who enroll earliest are assured of getting to ask their question.

Everyone benefits from hearing the discussion, which is exactly what it is like when you are able to attend a satsang with Gurudevi.

Learn How to Melt

By Gurudevi Nirmalananda 

Grace is one of the primary principles of yoga.  Grace makes everything easy. It is always flowing. 

If life seems hard to you, you have unknowingly shut yourself off from the flow of grace.  Yoga opens you up to its support in many tangible ways.

The principle of support is a primary element of Svaroopa® Yoga practice. Your teacher may slide a blanket underneath you in a seated position in order for you to get the most benefit. Halfway through the pose, she may remind you, “Lean your full weight into the support of that blanket.”  Most people do not really sit on the blanket or chair underneath them, but hold themselves up by tightening their spinal muscles.

Check in with yourself right now. Are you leaning your full weight into the support underneath you? As you lean more fully into your seat, you may find that you significantly relax and can breathe more easily. Learning to lean into the physical support is a way of practicing how to lean into the support of grace.

Let down your walls. They not only isolate you from others — they separate you from the flow of grace.  Learning how to relax in Shavasana is learning how to melt the walls. The progressive release of Shavasana becomes deeper and more reliable with repetition.

Excerpt from Yoga in Every Moment, page 111

Live This Way

I love to see you shining.   You love to glow.  Your eyes shine, the corners of your mouth turn up, your breath opens, your collarbones widen, and you get taller.  Best of all, your mind is clear.  You can understand the intricacies of the teachings I bring you. You understand your life and…  

— Gurudevi Nirmalananda  

Discovering Your Own Self

By Gurudevi Nirmalananda 

Yoga gives you recipes.

 Just like scientists, for your inner experiment you do what has been proven to work by those who have preceded you.  When you apply proven methodology, you will get reliable, predictable and replicable results.  

What are those results?  A deeper dimension of your own being opens up for you to know and experience within.

It’s not that you sit on the surface level of your being with your mind peering deeper inside.  Instead, you settle inward to a deeper level.  It is like you are leaning into your Self, or opening into your Self, or even like you are backing into your Self.  As you apply your mind in this inward direction, the opening is very easy.  It proves the methodology works.  

As you deepen into Self, your sense of who you are is “Oh, I am me.”  It is not a sense of discovering something new, fantastic and different inside.  You become more yourself.  You experience an inner freedom from all the stuff that you are not.  

You get free from all the limitations and fears, negativities and resistances, all the paranoia, obsessions and compulsions.  You discover an inherent Beingness that yoga calls Shiva, your own Divine Essence.  This is your own capital-S Self.

Excerpt from Embodied Spirituality, pages 26‒27

The Blue Pearl

By Gurudevi Nirmalananda 

 The universe exploded out from a Big Bang, they say. This scientific theory was proposed in 1927. Scientists studied it for decades with a critical piece of evidence provided in 1964. It was enough that a press conference was held. The next-day newspapers announced, in big headlines, “Big Bang Proved.”

Since then, the scientists continue to refine their theory and come up with new terminology. They now say there was something there before the bang. I call it the “something that banged.”

What was there? What banged? It was a single point, a dot. They call it a singularity. In Sanskrit it is “bindu.” It still exists. It was not destroyed in the bang. You find the bindu inside. It is blue.

My Baba called it the “Blue Pearl.” When you see it in meditation, you are assured of liberation in this lifetime. It is the mystical form of your own Self, which is the source of the universe yet containing the whole.

The sages drew this as the mystical syllable OM. A multilayered sound, you may hear it or see the character when in a deep meditative state. It shows what preceded the Big Bang.

The two stacked semi-circles (like a numeral 3) are the vibration of the One, echoing itself within itself. You can replicate this sound by…