By Lloyd (Dharma) Apirian

Interviewed by Lori (Priya) Kenney

My Swami Sunday experience is not just an hour and a half.  It’s a full day.  Almost every Sunday, I drive about two-and-a-half hours from home to Downingtown.  In my car, I have a puja with a Ganesha and photo of Gurudevi.  It’s right in front of the cupholders, so I see it while driving.  Sometimes I listen to Gurudevi’s chants, and sometimes it’s just quiet.

Arriving at 9:30-ish, I first set up my seat.  I like to bow to the Guru’s seat and my seat, and then sit and wait quietly. Soon Gurudevi is in her seat, and we’re chanting with her.  That always brings me inside and softens me.  Because her words are sacred, Gurudevi’s discourse engages my mind with sacred thoughts.  She’s expressing what I call great statements such as “I am Consciousness.”  Everything she says is blessed and is a blessing.  

Darshan with Gurudevi has changed for me.  I used to want to tell her things during darshan, but I don’t feel the need for that anymore.  I bow to honor her, and when I come up, I only want to voice our mantra.  I unwrap the prasad right away and let it melt in my mouth instead of my bag!  It honors the gift and Gurudevi.  

The time after the formal program is sweet.  We gather in the café area adjacent to the Meditation Hall.  We chat and enjoy more treats, which have been prepared by a sevite.  The whole experience reliably puts me in a lovely place within my own being.  And that lasts.  

By Gurudevi Nirmalananda

What’s up with all the names?

Bottom line, all yoga is good yoga — even when they are all different. It’s like lunch. No matter what you eat midday, it’s still called lunch.

Hot Yoga is done in a hot room (98°), making it easier for your muscles to lengthen. It is also called Bikram Yoga, honoring the yogi who brought it to America from India.

Yin Yoga is about cooling down and slowing down. You lean into cushions and blocks to make your muscles able to lengthen more easily.

Why this emphasis on muscle lengthening? When your muscles lengthen, your nervous system tells your brain to stand down from red alert. This helps your mind become more peaceful. When your mind is peaceful, you can see deeper within. Yoga is all about looking inward to discover your own essence and beingness.

Ashtanga Vinyasa gets you moving fast and breathing fast, like aerobics. The dance-like sequences are repeated again and again. Power Yoga and Jivanmukti Yoga are variations on this theme. Viniyoga slows it down, still keeping you moving with a methodology focused on the healing sequencing of the poses.

Kundalini Yoga gives you lots of fast breathing, coordinated with repetitive physical movements. You might experience inner heat from the energy moving through your spine, which is its purpose.

Moving and breathing are good for your body. They are good for your mind as well as for your emotions.

Yet beyond mere exercise, yoga is about your discovery of the deeper dimensionality within you. In these fast-moving yoga systems, what matters most is the inner stillness that you experience when you stop pumping your breath and body.

The classical yoga systems focus more on the inner stillness. While you do poses and yogic breathing, there is usually a pause between the poses, specifically for the refinement of your awareness.

Hatha Yoga is the classical system, meaning a yoga that you “hatha,” you apply yourself to — using will power, time and effort. The Sanskrit texts clearly describe that you are working on getting enlightened by beginning with your body and breath. The focus is on awakening Kundalini, the energy of the cosmos which lies hidden in your spine.

Variations on the classical system include Sivananda Yoga, Integral Yoga and Indra Devi Yoga, which was the first Yoga Teacher Training that I took. Their emphasis on yogic relaxation has expanded to a modern system of its own, Yoga Nidra. Kripalu Yoga is also related, emphasizing that you simply do what you can and don’t worry about perfecting the pose.

Iyengar Yoga comes from hatha yoga, an eponymous approach featuring many innovations by its founder. You move into a position and stay there while finessing your technique, a sophisticated form of isometrics. Then you do another pose, followed by another. Anusara Yoga and Restorative Yoga are variations on this approach.

These systems have their roots in a classical methodology that spans millennia. While the modern focus is on limber, lithe and lean, yoga’s poses come from the tantric yogis in the Himalayas. Tantra means loom, where the interweaving of warp and woof threads happens. Among the tantrics’ many secrets were poses, yogic breathing, mantra and the inner awakening by a great master.

I was graced by this inner awakening almost 50 years ago, which fired up my transformational process. The fuel propelling my rocket ship through the inner stratosphere was Cosmic Consciousness climbing my spine — Kundalini. She taught me how the poses are supposed to work, from the inside out. This is why I teach:

Svaroopa^® yoga is a spine-centric yoga. It is a slower-paced yoga. Every pose targets your spine, to decompress it and restore it to full health and resiliency. “You are as young as your spine,” the saying goes. It is true.

Yet there is more going on in your spine, a mystical center for the blossoming forth of Consciousness from within. We use alignments, yoga props and careful pose adjustments by your teacher to dissolve your deepest spinal tensions. Not only does it keep you young, it opens up the flow of life energy within.

With time and practice, this opening leads to the inner awakening, as described in the classical hatha yoga texts. Easier still, the inner awakening is available in a weekend workshop, the Shaktipat Retreat.

While Svaroopa^® yoga is based in Consciousness, it utilizes many of the tools you find in other yogic systems. Our yogic breathing is a slower type than you find in a Kundalini Yoga class, but deeply effective for energizing and enlivening your whole body-mind-soul system.

When we have you reach your arm up in the air, it’s not about how far you can go. Instead, we use the angle of your arm as a way to access your spine, like a laser beam shining from your hand, through your arm, through your shoulder and into your spine.

We repeat certain pose sequences, similar to Viniyoga, for their ease and effectiveness. We enjoy a slower paced class, similar to Yin Yoga, and we use yoga props like in Iyengar Yoga.

You get hot in Svaroopa^® yoga, but it is inner heat, the most delicious and powerful kind. It dissolves muscular tensions while it untangles your limiting thoughts and beliefs. It’s all for the purpose of setting you free. Yoga is about liberation!

In the fourth century BCE, Alexander the Great arrived in Phrygia, a kingdom in what is now Turkey. There, outside the castle, an oxcart was parked tied to a post with a complex knot called the Gordion knot.  An oracle had declared that any man who could unravel the knot was destined to become the ruler of all of Asia.  Alexander the Great took a look at that. And he reasoned his way through it, thinking that it…  

—  Gurudevi Nirmalananda

From Gurudevi’s full discourse “Mind, Heart and Soul“

By Barbara (Girijananda) Hess

Gurudevi is a modern-day mystic who comes from a long line of Self-Realized mystics.  She walks the walk she talks. Gurudevi says there are three criteria that must be met in order to teach:

• • First, it is learned from the living Guru, so it is enlivened knowledge. 

• • Second, it is documented in the texts. It is traceable back to yoga’s ancient roots. 

• • Third, the teacher must have experienced it in order to teach it.

Everything that Gurudevi teaches or writes meets these criteria. This was very important to me when I heard it.  I knew there was validity in what was being taught or written.  Gurudevi makes these ancient teachings so accessible.  She gives us so many opportunities on our road to Self-discovery. 

The Living Mysticism 2025 Calendar Journal is a golden opportunity for us.  Gurudevi’s introduction reads: “Day-by-day, let these teachings support your inner experience of your own Divine Essence. Each quote is like a sutra, with profound meanings in a few words… Weave Divine Grace through your life.”

The year begins: “Yoga is choice-full living. You choose where to put your time and your energies.” And the Teachings Article containing this quote is listed: “Just Do It, October 2023.”  You can contemplate the sutra and deepen your understanding by reading the article.  You find each article in our online Freebies.  

Below the quote, the journal page is blank. You have lots of space to write down your own experiential understanding. Or to draw it out.

Such an amazing way to start my day! I read the sutra. I listen to Gurudevi read the sutra in her morning Meditation Club. Something stirs deep inside me — an understanding, a knowing or a yearning. In gratitude I am sitting at my Guru’s feet learning from her, knowing she learned this same deep teaching from her Guru. 

I am imbibing a Truth teaching passed down through the ages from one Guru to the next.  I am so fortunate to receive Gurudevi’s deep teachings day by day. 

Join me in utilizing the 2025 Calendar Journal. Day by day weave Grace through your life. 

The splendor of Shiva-Consciousness is imprisoned within you.  The prison cell bars are made of words.  You lock Shiva down and hide him away by the words you use.  You are so powerful.  You can imprison Divine Consciousness.  You can hide God.  You can dim…  

—  Gurudevi Nirmalananda

From Gurudevi’s full discourse “Your Words Create Your Reality“

Words create realities. What you say comes into being. It’s as simple as saying, “I’m going to wash the car.” And then the car is clean. But if you said, “I probably should wash the car,” is it going to get clean?

Nope. Not unless someone else contributes their words, “Come on, let’s do it. I’ll help you.” A few simple words change the quality of your day and, for days afterward, the quality of your driving experience.

Words lead to action. That’s because words are an action in themselves.  When you speak words, you are speaking, which is an action.  Even thinking is an action, so every one of your thoughts is an action you are carrying out. Words are powerful, whether they are spoken or not.

Words are described in the Shiva Sutras:

Words have a tremendous influence in shaping our ideas which do not allow us to realize the splendor of Shiva-Consciousness, imprisoned within ourselves.

Wow! This says you use words to imprison Shiva within you. You lock Divine Consciousness up, out of sight, out of mind — by your words.  Your words and ideas shape your whole sense of self…

The splendor of Shiva-Consciousness is imprisoned within you. The prison cell bars are made of words. You lock Shiva down and hide him away by using the words you use.

You are so powerful! You can imprison Divine Consciousness. You can hide God. You can dim your own inner light.  You are able to make the all-pervasive seem to be absent. You can turn this Divine universe into a desolate landscape, all with your choice of words.

Does this incredible power have another outlet? Is there another way to use it?

Excerpt from Gurudevi’s Satsang Discourse, November 10 2024

By Kristine (Dhairyavati) Freeman

Interviewed by Lori (Priya) Kenney

Attending Swami Sunday online gives me an infusion of Grace each week.  Sometimes there’s a satsang that especially speaks to me, and I need to hear it again.  Sometimes, again and again!  

With Gurudevi’s Deep Teachings videos online, I can easily watch them.  The subscriber discount makes it cost less than a latte at Dunkin’^® Donuts.  It’s so powerful to see Gurudevi in these videos.  More of my senses are engaged.  Grace is just pouring out of the screen.

I visit my son in California every few months.  Before flying, I rent and download several videos to watch during the flight.  It’s like having Gurudevi with me.  Each video is available for three days, and I can watch as many times as I want in those three days.  The three-day clock doesn’t start ticking until I start watching.

Another way I use them is on a long drive. I drive from Massachusetts to New Hampshire regularly to see my 85-year-old dad, who needs lots of support.  I load the videos onto my phone, put it in my cupholder and listen.  It puts me in a great state for whatever I encounter with my dad that day.  These videos are a game-changer. 

Gurudevi’s satsangs are grounding me in a deeper understanding of the teachings. That’s especially so when I watch the videos multiple times. Last week, I taught a “Troubleshooting Your Meditation” class.  I noticed I was teaching from a greater depth.  Both I and my students benefitted from that.