A Juicy Life

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By Gurudevi Nirmalananda

Juice squirts out of the ripe peach I cut into, dripping down my chin as I bite into a chunk.  Yum!  It’s called rasa — the juice, the nectar or blissful essence.  Similarly, every chef will tell you that it’s the sauce that makes the dish.  In the same way, you want your life to be juicy, vibrant and meaningful.  Yogis get their rasa from the inside.

Meditation is the direct path to the rasa of Self-Knowingness. By delving into your own inner dimensionality, you tap into the source of life, the power of love, the delight of creativity and the peace of timelessness.  These fill you from within.

Yoga poses and breathing practices make this inner exploration easier. Svaroopa® Yoga poses target your spinal tensions, dissolving them to open up interior space in your body.  You breathe easier.  You get taller as you get happier.  You move freely as your joints glide due to the synovial fluid lubricating them more effectively.  It’s called rasa.

Your laugh is deeper and more frequent.  Your eyes shine with light, especially after meditating.  Your heart overflows and you act on your compassionate impulses.  Your synapses fire, making connections that give you…

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The Shavasana Course Is Relaxing – and More…

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By Jessica Soligon

Interviewed by Lori (Priya) Kenney  

I love Shavasana.  My life can get very stressful, and relaxing can be a challenge.  If things are crazy and I have a half hour, I turn to Shavasana.  I play Gurudevi’s Shavasana track on my phone, lie down and relax.

Earlier this year, I took the Shavasana Course.  The first night, Swami Prajñananada asked each of us to say why we were in the class.  I said I hoped to be still and relax.  I thought the course would teach me to slow down, and I’d learn more about relaxation.  What I got wasn’t what I expected.  

Six nights in a row, we did way more than relax.  I was submerged in my true Self.  I felt very calm and connected to something bigger than myself.  Sometimes I went within so deeply that I lost awareness of Swami P’s voice.  Those two hours and a half every night were an amazing and transformative experience.  I’m so glad the course didn’t meet my expectations!  

I loved the course and looked forward to it every day.  On really stressful days, I was especially grateful to go home and let go of the stress.  No matter how I felt during the day, the evening session left me feeling so good.  Since taking the course, I am more confident.  I know what to do to get centered and be in my Self.   

Now I’m more connected with my personal journey.  I have a better understanding of myself as a yogi.  My practice has deepened.  I am more comfortable and can participate freely without overthinking. Before I was always trying to figure things out.  The Shavasana Course helped me trust the process more. 

10/8 Shavasana Course
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This Stuff Works Miracles

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By Marlene (Matrikaa) Gast, Yogaratna

Sherry began weekly Svaroopa® yoga classes with me due to mild, occasional sciatica. During the Covid 19 lockdown, she continued with online yoga classes and wasn’t bothered by sciatica.  

In March 2020, however, Sherry was diagnosed with Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia (CLL).  To complement her medical treatment, she continued online classes and dedicated time to home practice. 

In October 2021, Sherry began in-person yoga therapy to address stiffness and ache in her neck and shoulders.  She believed the tightening of those muscles was a side effect of her medical treatment for CLL.

Though she was asking for help with her neck and shoulders, I planned her sessions for lower spinal opening, following our “it starts at the tailbone” sutra.  And it worked.  Sherry noticed sweet relief in her neck and shoulders.  

At the end of her sessions she reported, “Tension throughout my body is diminished, relaxed … Openings in waist and shoulder area.  Openness through back and shoulders and neck … Zero pain; more relaxed, less tension throughout body.  Neck and shoulders feel normal.” 

With a deep remission in September 2022, Sherry stopped medical treatment for CLL due to side effects.  By October, her pain level was only 1 at her session’s beginning and 0 at the end.

However, six months later, Sherry reported extreme pain from sciatica in an online class.  I hadn’t seen that coming.  She was using a walker when I arrived at her house to give her a session.  At the end, she could put a bit of weight into the affected leg.  Fortunately, she agreed to Embodyment® Overlap Healing (a series of private sessions). 

After the first four sessions, she no longer needed the walker.  As the “overlap” concluded, she was walking without discomfort of any kind.  Her neck and shoulders were pain-free too.

In her last session, I could hear her miracle.  Her voice had a tone of deep peace as she said she felt calm and normal.  “It’s like all the cancer medication is gone from my body.”  Her long-term goal is to stay pain free and in deep remission.

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My Favorite Pose

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By Cayla (Mangala) Allen, Yogaratna

My favorite pose is a seated pose.  Asana means to sit.  I sit for meditation, the practice that gives me my Self.  Of all the seated poses, I am most drawn to Swastikasana, Auspicious Pose.  I feel grounded, and my body and mind come into balance.

I am settling into Swastikasana right now.  I closed my eyes for a moment and experienced the ease with which I become aware of who I am.  My eyes are open now.  In this moment, I know who I am.  I am Me, a unique expression of the One.  I am grateful for the gift my Guru has given me — Me!

Gurudevi has asked me to sit in Sukhasana with three blankets to address some tension (kyphosis) in my spine.  I heed her advice when I am sitting for meditation.  I also do so when seated for longer periods of time.  This is when I’m sitting at my Guru’s feet in retreats and trainings.  Yet I am drawn to Swastikasana. 

In YTT, we learn to have a “Sitting Pose” and a “Working Pose.”  My sitting pose is Sukhasana.  I am working toward Swastikasana.  When I sit in Swastikasana, I make sure to pull in a wedge (the edge of a folded blanket under my sitbones).  

I “level up” through my sitbones and notice my spine relaxing easily upright.  I ask myself, “Is the top of my head over my tailbone?”  It is.  

I widen across my collarbones, soften my shoulders, settle in and enjoy the soothing, calming benefits this pose offers me.  I dive deeper for a moment, or more.  Then I open my eyes, aware of this beautiful life and so much more…

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Yoga for Upper Back Pain

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By Gurudevi Nirmalananda

You’re hiding your heart.  When your upper back rounds over, it crunches your neck and can cause a lot of pain.  It’s all because you’re hiding your heart – not only from others, but also from yourself.  When what you really want is for your heart to be open.  Open and safe, that is.

If you are currently living in circumstances that require you to hide your heart, I support you in necessary self-protection.  But if those circumstances were in the past, it’s time to begin unraveling the spinal tensions that you installed when needed.  Are they needed now?

While yoga poses and breathing practices do help, it is the deeper inner experience that makes the biggest difference.  When you use poses and yogic breathing as the ancient system recommends, they dissolve deep physical tensions as well as mental-emotional reactivity.  As these dissolve, your deeper essence is revealed, called svaroopa in Sanskrit, meaning your own capital-S Self.

Svaroopa is your own Divine Essence, the source of all healing, creativity, love and joy.  As you settle inward, the past dissolves and you become aware of being aware. Your own Self knows your own Self.  In this inner Knowingness, your body begins a cosmic reset, dissolving the old patterns that don’t serve you anymore.

Now your heart is full, filled from the inner source. From that fullness, you have a new level of clarity about your life and your own being.  From that inner fullness, you have something worth sharing.  Now you’re ready for your heart to show, for all you really ever wanted to do was to share from your essence.  Yoga empowers you to live this way.

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Yoga of the Heart with Gurudevi 

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Online Beginning September 14

Gurudevi Nirmalananda walks you through the inner exploration of your own heart to its core.  This experience, plus the wisdom of the sages, empowers your ability to bring it into your life and relationships in the way you always wanted.

This online course gives you both the experience of your heart and the understanding of your experience.  Together, they mature into profound wisdom, in which you can base your life.

Gurudevi’s teachings are like seeds that go deep.  The roots grow, the buds come on, and then the flowers bloom.. — Loretta F.

Yoga of the Heart

Telecourse:  Leaps & Bounds

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Learn and grow in this multi-media course, with substantive articles and teaching videos, all for you to do at your own pace.  Gurudevi has created a sweet, yet powerful inner process that opens you to your Self.

This course helped me learn to embrace life’s inevitable challenges, learn practical skills for handling them and welcome the resulting spiritual growth. – Marlene G.

Her teaching audios in the original “Leaps & Bounds” were profound.  Now with her videos, the Leaps & Bounds teachings will have even more profound impact. – Ellan C.

Be filled up by classical teaching stories as well as verses from Sanskrit texts. As always, Gurudevi brings it alive with her personal sharings, making the process so understandable and accessible.

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Wonderful Am I!

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By Gurudevi Nirmalananda

When you know your own Self, jubilation bursts forth.  Glory and glee.  Gladness arises from within.  You can raise your arms to the sky and shout out loud, as Janaka did:

“Aho aham!  Wonderful am I!  I adore myself!” 

— Ashtavakra Samhita 2.11

He repeats this jubilant cry in verse 12, again in verse 13 and once more in verse 14, each time describing more about his expanded inner state.  It’s almost like the Sanskrit words explode off the page.

This is a significant upgrade from the way you usually feel.  The upgrade is what yoga is all about. First yoga makes you feel better: physically, mentally and emotionally.  Then it opens up a new dimension of inner experience, bliss arising from Source.  The bliss of Consciousness fills you completely, shining into every corner, illumining every shadow.

Freed from your needs, fears and memories, you are set in motion to shine your light into the world in whatever way will best serve others.  Best of all, you see the light shining in them, even when they cannot see it themselves.  This is enlightenment.  It is your destiny — if you so choose.

King Janaka was a seeker.  He yearned for Self-Realization.  He often invited forest sages in for conclaves, listening to them expound through day and night, though he had not yet attained his great desire.  When the young sage Ashtavakra arrived for one of these gatherings, King Janaka was not impressed.  Ashtavakra‘s body was bent (vakra) in eight (ashta) places.  He was a cripple.

Like most people, the king equated beauty and strength with higher Consciousness.  Plus Ashtavakra was only twelve years old.  But once he began expounding with the other sages, Janaka realized that this was the Guru he’d been waiting for.  Ashtavakra gave Janaka what he had been seeking, all at once, in a Divine moment while Janaka was dismounting from his horse.  I call it a giant leap into Consciousness.

The Ashtavakra Samhita is a dialogue between these two great beings.  Ashtavakra gives teachings, then Janaka describes them as his own personal experience, that he is:

Eternal, ever existent reality
Being God, being all
Having a body, not bound by the body
All-pervasive
All-knowing, absolute creative power, source of all
Possessing nothing, yet owning and being all.

When you know your own Self, jubilation bursts forth.  Glory and glee.  Gladness arises from within.  All you need is a Guru who can get you beyond the theory to the experience.  That’s what I got from my Guru – a giant leap into Consciousness.

This is why I call my new Telecourse, “Leaps & Bounds.”  It’s about the light of Consciousness shining forth from within, burning away all your limitations, and showing you the same light shining in all.  It’s a whole new way to see yourself!

Leaps & Bounds

My Shaktipat Awakening

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By Darren Taylor

Interviewed by Lori (Priya) Kenney

I lived in the spiritual mecca of Boulder CO for 10 years.  I thought it would be easy to have a spiritual awakening in a purportedly enlightened place.  But I had to move back to the suburbs of Philadelphia for a true awakening.  

Relocating in Downingtown PA, I regularly drove by Lokananda, the Svaroopa® Vidya Ashram’s retreat and training facility.  The prayer flags and life-sized poster of Gurudevi in the window caught my attention.  I wondered, “What is going on there?”  It looked supportive. Online research revealed it is steeped in traditional yoga.  I started taking yoga classes and saw results immediately — less discomfort and pain along with more flexibility.  

Early on, my teacher, Swami Satrupananda, asked what I wanted to get from the yoga.  I said, “Enlightenment, of course!”  She seemed startled and said I was in the right place! I’d wondered what Shaktipat and Kundalini awakening were all about.  I heard that Shaktipat was available in Downingtown.  I knew I would be a fool not to go to Gurudevi’s Shaktipat Retreat.

I enrolled late and got on the waitlist. It opened and things began happening.  The day before the Shaktipat retreat, Gurudevi appeared in a dream and gave me a shoulder adjustment.  When I arrived at Lokananda, my roommate and I felt like we’d known each other our whole life.  

During the first Shaktipat, Gurudevi put her hands on me.  Something inside was drawn upward toward my brow.  It felt like I was lifted out through my forehead.  My body was moved into various positions.  It felt like a chakra recalibration.  At satsangs now, when I look at Gurudevi, she’s a blinding light.  I have to squint or close my eyes.  

I have explored many traditions, but this one feels like the solution to my spiritual longing. It gives me tools, support and the lineage. When I repeat mantra and meditate, I know I will have depth.

9/29 Shaktipat Retreat

Experiencing Timelessness through Yoga Therapy

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By Rebecca (Jyoti) Yacobi

Interviewed by Marlene (Matrikaa) Gast, Yogaratna

At the end of 2022, I began treating a new client with yoga therapy.  She has a demanding, high intensity career.  Her home life as a wife and mother is very full.  The pressures of daily life have physically manifested as pain in her knees, shoulders and low back.  

Yoga therapy with poses and Embodyment® sessions have been highly effective in reducing her pain levels.  At a session’s end, her pain is down to one or two (on a scale of 0 to 10).  Often, it’s reduced to zero.  She has experienced silence, stillness, timelessness and opening to the deeper dimensions within.

In her first Embodyment® session, her mind stopped.  She exclaimed, “I thought I had to do days of meditation to feel this way.”  Cocooned under a blanket, she felt she could stay in that timeless space forever.  She loves being enfolded in “her own space” under the blanket.

We Svaroopa® Yoga Therapists learn to help clients open inward into the timelessness of their own Beingness.  It’s not solely about the effectiveness of the therapeutic angles and adjustments.  

The client softens and surrenders to Grace flowing through the Svaroopa® Sciences tradition.  The client’s own Divine Essence arises from within.  It is “That” which is the Source of Stillness and profound healing.

With a busy life, packed with responsibilities, my client continues to benefit from yoga therapy.  She is aware of her own healing power arising from within.  Calmer and clearer, she manages her demanding work more effectively. 

When she acknowledges the power of yoga for calming her mind, her eyes light up.  Through her sessions, she is being entrained into her Divine Essence.  This is her yoga miracle.

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