Category Archives: Ashram News

Nourished by Grace

2 Replies

By Kristine (Dhairyavati) Freeman

Ashram Board Member

Our “Gift of Grace” Ashram fundraiser has begun. Please join me in donating today. 

Gurudevi Nirmalananda’s birthday was November 15th. Of course, you want to celebrate and wish her health and happiness! While she appreciates your well wishes, she needs nothing from outside, for she is filled from within. She is fueled by the light of Consciousness.

What Gurudevi wants is for you to be supremely happy and filled with the light of Consciousness all the time. She offers you this gift. It is the gift of Grace. 

One who knows can give you the knowing. She gives it freely, every time you are in her presence, whether in person, online or even when connected to her in meditation or deep reflection.

But how do you receive this life changing gift? You do the practices she recommends. Thus, you step into the river of Grace she offers. 

I receive this gift when I do yoga poses, or meditate, or watch one of Gurudevi’s videos. Doing seva and offering dakshina (financial gifts) also drops me into the river of Grace.

But nothing is as saturated with Grace as spending time in the physical presence of my Guru. Just walking into Lokananda, I feel so joyful. I am profoundly nourished by the gift of her Grace.

Embrace the gift of Grace and the yogic practices Gurudevi has given you. Don’t forget who you really are, oh Shiva. 

In the midst of your daily life, rely on the clarity and wisdom that arises from within. Seeing with Divine eyes, you can make a difference in this world.

You can start with gifting back to our Ashram, the organization and the teachers who lead you on this path. Grace takes care of you. Surrender to and thus accept the gift of Grace by donating to the Ashram today.

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! 

Donate Today

Process & Purpose of Spinal Decompression

Leave a reply

By Gurudevi Nirmalananda

There are so many different ways of working with your body. They are not all compatible.

The physical conditioning that produces an Olympic gymnast does not produce a good football player. The physical changes that you get when you begin snowboarding, perform as a dancer or do Pilates don’t help with sciatica or with childbirth. A furniture mover is not conditioned for playing tennis.

Similarly, different systems of hatha yoga (physical yoga practices) are not all compatible. One system emphasizes strength and stamina, another emphasizes constant movement, and yet another emphasizes attaining a photo-perfect pose.

All of these activities are based on contraction. You contract certain muscles to accomplish certain types of movements, and along the way (knowingly or unknowingly) you compress your spine. Svaroopa® yoga decompresses your spine. It is a completely different process, for a different purpose.

Process and purpose: exercise uses the process of contraction for the purpose of accomplishing a specific type of activity.

In Svaroopa® yoga, in contrast to exercise or other styles of yoga, we release contraction. Every class is carefully choreographed to release tensions in the muscles connected to your spine, from your tailbone progressively all the way to the top.

The reasons for this are multilayered and exquisitely complex, the most important of which is that your body is made of atoms…

Excerpt from Yoga: Inside & Outside, pages 35–36

Buy from Ashram
Buy from Amazon

In the Flow

Leave a reply

Rosemary (Rudrani) Nogue, Yogaratna

I donate to our Svaroopa® Vidya Ashram out of gratitude.

The rare, priceless gift of Guru’s Grace flows through Gurudevi Nirmalananda, our Spiritual Master.  To receive that gift, you need only to be in her presence, in person or online. Or you can think of her deeply to be in the flow of her Grace.

Please join me in donating to our Ashram’s year end fundraiser, “The Gift of Grace.” Experience how both giving and receiving become sacred acts.

The bliss of your own Beingness fills you from within giving you something worth sharing.

—Gurudevi

This is my truth: Guru’s Grace fills and nourishes me. This fullness moves me to give from my Self in many ways, including offering dakshina (selfless financial giving) to our Ashram.

Grace opens me to a greater ME, clearer, more enthusiastic, more compassionate, more present and more generous. I am ME in a whole new way.

Gurudevi’s online daily Meditation Club, together with Sunday and Wednesday satsangs, are so important to me. Through them, I can be in her presence from my home in Calgary. Amazingly, other online Ashram programs present opportunities for staying in the flow of Grace every day.

After repeating a round of mantra recently, I offered arati (flame circles) to Gurudevi’s picture. I looked deeply into her eyes. The tangible flow of Grace uplifted me. So I give back out of gratitude.  Donating is one of many yogic practices that expands my capacity to receive Grace.

Practically, our financial gifts support the Ashram infrastructure that dispenses the Grace of our Guru.  Our gifts subsidize the maintenance and operational costs of Lokananda (our Bliss Place). It serves as our training and retreat center for in-person and online programs. It is also the home of Gurudevi and our Swamis.

Please give from your heart to our “Gift of Grace” fundraiser.  You could raise your monthly donation, become a monthly donor or give a one-time financial gift. I invite you to be generous within your budget!

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! 

Donate Today

Birthed into Not-Knowingness

6 Replies

I begin my 80th trip around the sun today, having completed 79 years. I know many yogis who are ahead of me and I celebrate their presence in this world.

As I thank so many of you for your birthday greetings and well-wishes, I know it’s not about my birth. When I was born, like all babies, no one knew what I might choose to do with my life or how it would affect others. It is my yogic dedication that makes my decades worth celebrating.

For this, I thank my Guru, Swami Muktananda Paramahansa. His gift of Shaktipat was like a second birth for me, giving me clarity and purpose — a direction for my life. The years before that great event were confusing, even frustrating in their purposelessness. Once he turned on the light inside me, I knew where to go.

One of my favorite verses of Shree Guru Gita explains it perfectly:

Guu.dha-vidyaa jagan-maayaa dehe caaj~naana-sambhavaa,

udayo yat-prakaa”sena guru”sabdena kathyate. — Guru Gita 10

Birth is into not-knowingness, spellbound by Maayaa’s worldly dance.

Giver of the upwelling light of your own Self is called Guru.

I did my best to max out on the not-knowingness, looking for a sense of self-worth in other people’s eyes. Baba gave me my own Self, freeing me from the neediness and fear that consumes most people’s lives.

Now it is my honor and privilege to share his great gift with you. I am deeply touched when you accept the gifts I offer, through our Ashram’s publications and programs. Thank you for letting me serve you.

More About Gurudevi

Trapped in Your Opinions

Leave a reply

When you are based in your own Self, you see all the different things, all the different people like different blossoms on the one shrub. For there is only One, being all. And when you don’t see the One hidden in Her divine disguise, as the person sitting next to you, as the driver of the car turning into your lane, as the neighbor walking their dog…

—  Gurudevi Nirmalananda

From Gurudevi’s full discourse “Beyond Measure“

Watch Full Discourse Here

The Gift of Grace

Leave a reply

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!

Donate Today

Support Equals Release

4 Replies

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

Leave a reply

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