Stepping into Teaching Meditation – by Louise Davis CSYT

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louiseWhen I first encountered Svaroopa® yoga and attended yogimmersions as well as yoga teacher training, Swami Nirmalananda (then known as Rama) would say, “Get a guru, get a mantra.”  So I found a meditation group with a guru in the same lineage as our Svaroopa® Sciences. Since then I have meditated. Now, as a Certified Svaroopa® Yoga Teacher as well as a Svaroopa® Vidya Meditation Teacher in the Florida Panhandle, I love teaching meditation to my asana students.

Over the years, my asana students have had deep internal experiences in Shavasana as well as seated poses. They know through experience that when you get the junk out of the way, meditation is natural. By the time they take meditation with me, they’ve already heard the quotes — much of the “knowing” is already there for them. My students know that meditation is NOT lying on the floor. They know that sitting in meditation is the next step forward on their path.  It totally deepens their experience. So I give them a special deal on asana classes during their series of meditation classes: they can come to asana classes as often as they like, and that gives me a chance to talk with them about meditation when I see them in between the Learn to Meditation classes.

I teach that series quarterly, with one already planned for the fall. So the next step on my path is the Meditation Group Leader (MGL) course in February, since I have been wanting to lead a group for years. Having a weekly group meditation — satsang — is the next step for my students as well as. But they can’t go forward until I go forward.

If you are interested in Meditation Teacher Training, you need the preparation of a weekend Shaktipat Retreat with Swamiji within 18 months prior to January 25, 2016. The next one is next week, September 18-20, at The Desmond in Malvern PA, and there is one more – in Boston MA October 23-25.

My experiences of receiving Shaktipat from Swamiji in her retreats have been life changing. The magnitude of receiving the Grace of the Guru is beyond the capacity of words to express. Going so deep inward to Self is profoundly healing and illuminating. Receiving Swamiji’s clearly conveyed teachings lets you know the dimensions of inner transformation that you are experiencing.

If any of your “stuff” arises, you find that being in a group meditation gets you through it more quickly and easier. And then you experience meditation at an even deeper level. You are supported in going through the cycle, peeling the onion. And that makes you ready to help your students and share with them in a supportive way. You know, and you can tell them, that “this too shall pass.” Everyone has their own individual path, but the stations on the path are very much the same for everyone. Your personal experiences can be a source of support for your students and keep them moving forward.

Your immersion in the a Shaktipat Retreat as well as one or more MTT programs will give you a deep dive within yourself, to access your Self. These programs make it so easy to get into your own body and mind, and then go beyond them into the deeper dimensions of Self. Swamiji is such a great teacher at so many levels — deeply inspiring and at the same time completely practical. She’s is genius. She’s totally human, too. Our teacher training, including MTT, is far superior to any mind-body techniques training today, in my experience. We receive immense support including comprehensive handouts, experiential learning and wonderful supervised practicum pieces, all integrated.

I fondly remember my “empowered mantra”  MTT training in 2010, the first Swamiji taught upon returning from India where she took sannyasa (swami) vows. All of us MTT students experienced profound changes from the beginning. it was challenging but I really enjoyed it. In our classes, I wore out three pens as I filled two notebooks with Swamiji’s “download” of teachings about the Self. At night in our rooms, we digested and condensed these teachings while they were still percolating. It felt like a college dorm experience. Practicing the talks with colleagues in class the following day was wonderful. I was so ready to teach at home.

If you are a Certified Svaroopa® Yoga Teacher, or if you are a Meditation Teacher trained to teach the syllabus course before 2010, taking the whole MTT package is a unique opportunity not to be missed. You will dive deep. Svaroopa® Vidya Meditation Teacher Training will build on all you have already learned and experienced in the Svaroopa®  Sciences. And it serves as the foundation for Leading Short Meditations as well as Meditation Group Leader Training. You will be prepared to enable your students to expand exponentially in their experience of Self. And you will empower yourself at the deepest levels in the knowing of your own Self.

Taking the Step to Teach Meditation by Medhira (Trine) Larsen

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medhiraFor 13 years I practiced Svaroopa® yoga poses daily. Yet I still felt something was missing. I knew there was something more to discover. Even having so much love in my life, including my wonderful kids and my husband, still I was in pain, physically and emotionally. Then my yearning for Self-discovery drew me forward to Meditation Teacher Training (MTT).

Since then my journey has been intense. To dissolve the veil and free my Self from being hidden within has sometimes been tough. I have experienced lots of tapas (inner fire).  But as Swamiji has told me, “Tiny openings equal tiny progress. Whereas deep openings give you fast progress.” So I decided to go for fast progress. Now that I have completed MTT and teach meditation, I am unfolding my Self more and more rapidly. To be able to be who I am, to live from that deeper knowing and to show the people I love who I really am (and always have been) — that is one of the greatest benefits to me of being a Meditation Teacher.

I began preparation for MTT in 2014. It included Embodyment® Yoga Therapy Training, and then a seven-day Ashram stay ending with a Shaktipat retreat with Swamiji. That gave me a lot of openings. Being in the presence of Swami Nirmalananda for 10 days, and receiving Swamiji’s teachings was profound and amazing. My meditations became deeper, and I was able to sit without kriyas moving me too much. I did at times have a headache, but when I came out of meditation, it was gone.

Every evening during MTT, we students were writing our talks on sutras for the next day. Even though I did not have as much sleep as usual, the most amazing thing was, I stayed open through the whole training. Working with the other students, getting the support and feedback in our groups when we did our talks and having the support from the other teachers—Vidyadevi, Rukmini and Devi—made it a very deep and beautiful training.

When I returned home to Denmark, I had a lot of writing and translation to do, in order to get ready for my first meditation course. At first I felt it was very challenging to understand the sutras and put them into my own words in a way that would make sense to my students. Teaching the meditation classes, however, was joyful. I continue to find an ease as I teach meditation. Grace makes it flow smoothly.

After MTT I find that my yoga classes are deeper; my students go deeper and have more openings because I am more open. I feel calmer, more present in the midst of life. When I bike through my city, walk my dog, clean my house, cook, I am in the now. Before, I had to do my spinal opening at least once a day to feel okay. I still do poses, of course, but I might just take a long Shavasana, do some japa, listen to a chant, chant a few verses of Shree Guru Gita, meditate, practice Ujjayi pranayama or listen to one of Swamiji´s talks. I have so many options, and they all support me in accessing my Self with ease. Even as I write this blog, it is also a practice that makes me aware of what a long way I have come.

When I began my journey inward to Self, I was so far away. MTT and teaching meditation to my students has brought me so much closer to my Self. And what joy to see how my new students as well as my experienced students receive the benefits of meditation, and to hear them all as they enjoy saying the mantra!

The Wonderful, Personal Benefits of Teaching Meditation

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By Bindu (Maureen) Shortt

binduIn Meditation Teacher Training, I remember Swamiji saying, “You have to KNOW more than you TEACH.” Our lineage is one of knowing through experience. As I speak the words that describe my knowing, the knowing that reaches back through the ages, I draw myself deeper into that knowing. In our amazing lineage, teaching meditation opens me to another experience of “the more.”

As the students move from meditation neophytes to experienced meditators, sitting more solidly and consciously in their own Self, I take that ride with them. Yet because I started deeper already, I end up deeper. Their journey carries me deeper. I ride the powerful current of them awakening to their own knowing, then I know more. As they become more clear, I become more clear.  With their classes week by week, I dive deeper into my inner absorption through appreciation of their process and admiration for their courage. They reflect back to me my own process of becoming a competent, confident meditator, and I mark how far I’ve come, which then becomes my jumping off point to dive even deeper.

I have moments in life of knowing that I am fully enlightened already. The catch is how to weave that inner knowing into the outside, into more and ultimately all of my life. Being a meditation teacher offers this to me as a wonderful personal benefit. As a result I now do more frequent trainings, but with a maximum of 6 students. This way the students have more time to say whatever they need to about their experiences, as well as their home efforts and challenges. More people can take the trainings because I vary the days and times. These smaller, more frequent courses are precious to me as part of my sadhana, and I look forward to riding the waves of Grace deeper within as I invite more people into the ocean of Consciousness.

As a meditation teacher, I go deeper into my own Self by leading students in the grace-infused mantra and by teaching them about the five steps to making meditation a daily routine.  By serving as the conduit of these practices and teachings for my students, that flow of Grace affects me also. In the tantra of being a meditation teacher, when I speak the words of the state of the Self, I become able to BE more of my own Self. As I am speaking the sacred words, I am imprinting them further on my own mind. As I am facilitating the students going beyond their mind, I am also facilitated in going beyond mine and into my Divinity.  What a way to serve!

Sharing My Yoga – By Vicharinee (Su Lee) Chafin

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vicharblog4I recently learned an important yogic lesson when I taught a graduate counseling course. I was poised to teach potential school guidance counselors about the role of ethics and multiculturalism in their counseling sessions. I usually use this topic as a platform to give a political dissertation on all things being equal with humanity. I have always loved the sense of standing on a soapbox to deliver that lecture. However, I have been led to deeper understandings through my Meditation Teacher Training, as well as Swami Nirmalananda’s Satsangs, including her online audio recordings.

So this day, with my deeper understanding, I was moved to deliver a deeper teaching to my class. In this very conventional environment of a college classroom, I followed the format of Swami’s talk, “The Religion of Man,” and I wanted to credit her Baba as well as Swamiji herself. I wanted the Grace to have the credit. I didn’t want what I was saying to be confused with me, the professor. I wanted the counseling students to think bigger than that.

They are used to me showing videos, as I constantly use TED Talks to make points. So I brought up a video of Baba teaching in America, to show where the information on my talk originated. Initially, I had some fear and reservation about “religion” and spirituality talks in this environment, as everyone in my class is employed in public schools where the separation of church and state can be a big issue. But I tried to just settle into that fear and to move ahead with my plan. Swamiji and Baba talk of something beyond church and state, and I felt this was the perfect way to address the issue I was to teach. How better to assist these budding counselors in seeing equality and non-difference, in order to help those who walk into their offices?

After all, I know what it has done for me. Swamiji’s teachings, passed to us from her Baba, have done much more for me than has my academic and professional training. Those trainings did not open my heart.

Although I had some concerns, I felt completely supported by Grace and I knew where to go. I was just so moved, and I did what I felt called to do. Before I began my talk I did japa. Then I introduced Baba as a swami, describing what yoga is, and explaining why I chose to talk about him. I talked a little about the lineage and Kashmiri Shaivism and mentioned our modern Swami, who is near where I teach counseling. I also said if anyone had an interest in learning more about these teachings, I would be able to provide more information and direction.

In my talk, I used much of what Swami talked in her “Religion of Man,” including her examples from genetics, archeology, religion and the ancient sages of India as well as Baba to discuss the common ancestry of humans.

Grace, of course, did what Grace does. Faces opened, hearts opened. The comments of the counseling students were so sweet. They said they really liked looking at religion and humankind that way. Most of them said it really resonated with them. Of course it did! Why wouldn’t it? It is the truth.

They said the talk should be a TED Talk. I had joked before that it was my goal to do a TED Talk this year.  TED does university versions of their talks; the organization comes to my university.  I said, however, “This isn’t my talk, but I am thinking the world may be ready for a Swami Nirmalananda TED Talk!”

I think I was surprised there wasn’t more resistance or less understanding. Perhaps all of that is really just my small “s” self bubbling up and my fear about teaching yoga philosophy. But I felt I needed to test the waters of the conventional public or something. I know if I had been in a class of people gathered at an institute for studies about Consciousness I would have felt differently. But I was talking about yoga philosophy in a normal old graduate school offering coursework toward certification for guidance counselors in Delaware public schools.

It’s true that many of these students are there to change the world, but some want a master’s degree for the pay raise. So I was just amazed at their openness. I felt a different level of openness in this younger generation than I have in the past. I was excited by that and excited by the thought that the world may be more ready for the Guru than I expected. I am grateful to Swami Nirmalananda for being in service to the world as well as for guiding me.

OM svaroopa svasvabhavah namo namah

Today! International Yoga Day!

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EXCERPT from Swami Nirmalananda’s discourse 

USA, Australia, Canada, Great Britain, Germany, Italy, France, Russia, Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, India, Kenya, Cameroon, South Africa, Phillipines, Argentina, Brazil, Peru, Chile, Belize, Ecuador, Costa Rica, Mexico, and more…

The International Yoga Federation says there are 300 million yoga practitioners worldwide.  So of course there is an International Yoga Day, as declared by the UN.

I was at a recent yoga conference and an Indian yogi spoke of the value that American has added to yoga, saying that in India, yoga has been made a mainstream practice, instead of something that the naked guys with the matted locks do.

So the world needs yoga.  I claim that, if every driver in PA did yoga once a week, we’d have safer roads – maybe even kinder roads.  What if everyone in the world went to one yoga class a week?  Could war continue to exist?  What about rape and murder?  What about poverty and discrimination?

Yes, it’s good to have an international yoga day.  Even though the western idea of yoga is quite a variation on what the ancients offered – the benefits are undeniable.

Let’s look at why yoga gives these benefits.  How does it work?  The scientific studies have compared yoga to other forms of exercise, as well as how it helps people with various conditions, like stress, depression, blood pressure problems, insomnia, diabetes, HIV, arthritis, MS, PTSD and stopping smoking.

But they haven’t studied how yoga provides peace, or happiness, or better relationships, or how it gives you inner strength.  They haven’t studied the spiritual state of yoga practitioners, or of meditation practitioners – they don’t even know how to study these things!

When you look at yoga as purely a physical process, your studies will give you results similar to other physical processes.  But when you include some “yoga” in your yoga:

  • You include the purpose of yoga: to quiet your mind,
  • the potential of yoga: enlightenment,
  • the process of yoga: turning inward,
  • the practice of yoga: cultivating awareness,
  • the effects of yoga: to make you more whole,
  • the promise of yoga: that you will live in the experiential knowing of your own Divine Essence, svaroopa.

What if you want to follow yoga’s path to realization?  What if your goal includes health and happiness, but it’s greater — you want to know God.  You want to know your own Self.  What you seek is technically called mystical.  The mysticism of the sages, the mysticism of the ages.  The mystery, revealed by the mystical sciences – which are not religion but are the science of the Divine.

Yoga doesn’t hold a patent on mysticism.  While yoga’s roots are Hindu, it’s not Hinduism.  Yoga has more in common with other mystical traditions than it does with Hinduism.  Sufism is the mystical tradition that comes from Islamic roots.  Hasidim is the mystical branch of Judaism.  There is a mystical Christianity, practiced in monasteries and convents through the centuries, documented by Saint Theresa of Avila, Hildegard of Bingen and others.  Native cultures use various substances as well as drumming and dancing to attain mystical states.  One neurologist has become well known for her mystical experiences as a result of having a stroke.  And Ram Dass started with LSD.

But yoga has a certain way of doing it, substance free, healthy living, respect for all that exists, heart opening, mind expanding, inward deepening processes – all for cosmic consciousness.  For cosmic consciousness that you don’t fall down from.  For the experiential knowing of your own svaroopa.

Happy International Day of Yoga!  [click here to listen to the whole discourse]

OM svaroopa svasvabhava namo nama.h

Graduation! by Swami Nirmalananda

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IMG_9779My heart is deeply touched – again – yesterday, by the amazing and committed yogis who completed YTT Level 4, now trained in 12 teaching themes, 108 poses and over 350 adjustments for their students. We held their Completion Ceremony in the afternoon, after they shared the teaching in a grand finale yoga class, with each of them teaching part of the class.

While they still have DTS (DTS (Develop your Teaching Skills)) to complete before they become certified, they have completed a grand undertaking, a milestone, a great accomplishment in their life. And they will serve the world, offering others what they have themselves received through their studies: healing, transformation and illumination.

Thank you to our new grads!

International Yoga Day

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A9R558D_redThe first International Yoga Day is happening June 21 — are you in?  This great day was approved just last December by the United Nations General Assembly, only three months after India’s Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, made an address, saying:

Yoga is an invaluable gift of India’s ancient tradition. It embodies unity of mind and body; thought and action; restraint and fulfilment; harmony between man and nature; a holistic approach to health and well-being. It is not about exercise but to discover the sense of oneness with yourself, the world and the nature. By changing our lifestyle and creating consciousness, it can help us deal with climate change. Let us work towards adopting an International Yoga Day.

While this international recognition of yoga’s footprint worldwide is important for us, for Shree Modi it’s also a personal statement.  His political success in India comes from his spiritual depth as much as his political acumen.  Having spent some of his young adulthood as a wandering sadhu (holy man) in India, he chose to serve in the political arena and worked his way up from the grassroots level.  His leadership draws on India’s deep spirituality, contributing to his popularity as well as his political agenda.  I was personally in Varanasi last winter when he and spent several days on a project to clean the Ganga (Ganges) River, doing some of the shoveling and scraping himself.

The yogic basis of his leadership has been recognized by “Hinduism Today,” an international magazine, who just named him the Hindu of the Year for 2015.  Every prior recipient of this prestigious honor has been a Guru, not a Prime Minister!

Shree Modi recommended June 21, the summer solstice (in the Northern Hemisphere), as the day of the year with the most light.  It’s also an important time for yogis in India, coming near the beginning of the monsoon season, when hunker down for three months of deep sadhana (practices).

The FIRST International Yoga Day, June 21.  Can we make a big bang, one that will reverberate until the Fourth of July?  Click here to tell Swamiji of your plans or ideas.

Your Gifts Make a Difference

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Join Saguna is supporting the Ashram's Next Steps. Click the image above to donate today.

Thank you for supporting the Ashram’s Next Steps. There’s still time to donate – click the image above to donate today.

Thank you for your generous donations of $34,498.26 during our spring fundraiser, The Next Steps.  Your donations are helping us make the next steps in our service to you – by improving our online presence, expanding our physical facilities, investing in staff training, and more.  Our Board members were deeply touched in their personal phone calls with our monthly donors, as everyone spoke of how much they cherish their relationship with Swamiji and the Svaroopa® sciences.

“I am so grateful for you who reached into your heart and your pocket and gave to support the Ashram. Thank you so much!” — Amala Lynn Cattafi, Board President

“You have brought yoga into your life in yet another way. Your giving is a grateful and practical acknowledgment for the flow of Grace that is supporting you right now. Please accept my heartfelt thanks for responding so beautifully to our fundraising campaign.”  — Rudrani Nogue, Board member

“For your contribution to the our Next Steps campaign, thank you. If you still intend to donate, thank you. Even if you were unable to donate this time, thank you. Whether you make donations, do seva, take teacher training or Ashram programs, or ‘simply’ follow Swami Nirmalananda, thank you. You are why we do what we do.”  — Karuna Beaver, Board member

“Thank you for joining me in supporting SVA in our most recent fundraising campaign. It gives me great joy to financially support an organization that continues to give me and our community so much spiritual support.”  — Kristine Freeman, Board member

“Your donation is the sustaining, nurturing and caring force that supports Swamiji and Svaroopa® Vidya Ashram in bringing the amazing gift of the Self to the world. Thank you, thank you, thank you!”  — Saguna Goss, Board Treasurer

“It fills my heart with gratitude, knowing that we have such generous support for Swamiji and Svaroopa® Vidya Ashram. Your continued support makes it possible for upliftment to expand into our wider world.” — Prakash Falbaum, Board member

Donor gifts will be going out soon to everyone who began or increased their monthly donation.  We’ll first be asking you if you want the audio of Swami Nirmalananda doing mantra-japa, or if you prefer sacred ash from our February yaj~na (sacred fire ceremony).  If you already know, please email lydia@svaroopayoga.org; your gift will be sent out in early June.

If you would still like to add to our ability to serve you, please click here to donate.  Every gift makes a difference.

OM svaroopa svasvabhava namo nama.h

Sustaining Our Ashram by Saguna Goss

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Join Saguna is supporting the Ashram's Next Steps. Click the image above to donate today.

Join Saguna is supporting the Ashram’s Next Steps. Click the image above to donate today.

During my last few years as a Board member for Master Yoga Foundation, I was aware that the organization was being challenged; it was facing the chaos of dissolution and destruction. Then came a stage of creation, with the huge transformation of working closely with our Ashram, which led to the Consolidation of the two sister organizations, which is now complete. A lot was going on; it was very interesting and exciting. In hindsight I can see how my mind was really entertained with details, looking at problems, coming up with unique solutions. But now, in the stability of completed consolidation, our Svaroopa® Vidya Ashram stands in the space of beautiful sustenance. It’s time to keep on keeping on. This is the stage of Vishnu, the cosmic force that sustains the world.

Last February, in our yatra to Ganeshpuri, India, I came to

Saguna Goss

Saguna Goss

know and appreciate Vishnu through Swamiji’s daily satsangs. In the past I’ve been drawn to Shiva, with no interests in the other forms of the Divine. But now it’s Vishnu. I am in the Vishnu stage of my life: sustaining a job, a home, relationships, and my various connections to the Ashram. Vishnu’s role of sustaining the universe is not as glamorous as Brahma’s creating or as Shiva’s destruction of forms that can no longer contain the “Sakti. Those forms of the Divine used to capture my mind. But now it is Vishnu who, in all his incarnations through eons, undertook the sustenance tasks that maintained the world. It’s not particularly sexy to do the tasks that sustain life. Yet this aspect of Vishnu is so beautiful and so precious. Nourishing and sustaining the earth flows from Vishnu’s open heart.

I have the beautiful gift of Shaktipat from my Guru and I need to sustain it. I am grateful now for the Vishnu support in my practice, to sustain my practices of the Svaroopa® Sciences. I now see all strands of my life woven together into a sustaining tapestry. And this is because it is the Ashram, also in the Vishnu stage of life, that sustains me in my life.

So I no longer give seva and financial support to the Ashram from fear and urgency. I give to the Ashram because it’s continuing existence is important. Please join me in setting up a monthly donation— or increasing your monthly donation, and know that your one-time gift in an amount that works for you is also very welcome. This is the time to give, to ensure that our fully created, stable Ashram flourishes. Then you know you are sustaining its life it every day, just as you would water any garden.  In supporting our Ashram in this way, you can count on being able to harvest your own sustenance.

Be an instrument of Vishnu through such continued support. This is a great time to support the Ashram as you would nurture any relationship that you cherish.

Why I Give by Matrika (Marlene) Gast

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Join Peter is supporting the Ashram's Next Steps. Click the image above to donate today.

Join Matrika is supporting the Ashram’s Next Steps. Click the image above to donate today.

We Board members make phone calls to other donors in our spring and fall fundraising campaigns. Anticipation of a fundraising call can agitate the mind. Board members of any organization will confess to an aversion to asking for money. Yet in reality, every Ashram campaign brings me a gloriously different experience.

First, it’s my joy to call previous and current donors just to say thank you. I am truly and deeply grateful to each and every donor — past, present and future. Each of us who gives financially, at the level allowed by our circumstances, sustains the Ashram. This infrastructure, in turn, supports Swami Nirmalananda in passing on the sacred teachings by which she lives and serves.

Matrika (Marlene) Gast

Matrika (Marlene) Gast

We community members benefit. Everyone we touch benefits from our growing basis in Self. We more and more make our choices and take action from that deeply open, divine place. Thus healing, transformation and even illumination ripples outward to our families, to our own students (if we teach) and into our local communities. In this context, a phone call to express gratitude is delicious.

Inevitably, my conversation with the yogi turns to what she or he is grateful for. In the last few weeks everyone spoke of how much they cherish their relationship with Swamiji and the Svaroopa® sciences, how much they value her teachings:

“Swamiji is such a conduit of Grace. Teaching yoga in the context of Swamiji’s teachings, I find that my students make such quick progress in healing. I just want to see the Next Steps be ample finances so that Swamiji is freed up from having to manage any administration tasks, so she can turn all of her attention to teaching and writing. She can just be a Guru. I believe that’s the most important next step in attracting more people out there to the Svaroopa® sciences.”

“Because of Swamiji’s teachings I am compassionate in my relationship with members of my local community. I am more accepting of what is, not fighting to get things to be different. I accept that, as a yogi, I am different from my local community — and perhaps especially because I am a Svaroopa® yogi. Yet within the Ashram community I feel that I am a good fit.”

“I love sharing Svaroopa® yoga and I love seeing what Svaroopa® yoga therapy does for my clients. This yoga is so powerful. One of my students works in an accounting firm, and even in tax season she came to class, even on April 16th this year. She tells me, I’m coming to you because I want what you have.’ Swamiji and her teachings are part of my daily life. She has done so much for me in helping me find my Self. I listen to NPR every day, and I donate to NPR. Why wouldn’t I give money to support Swamiji and the Ashram?”

Another Svaroopa® yoga teacher and yoga therapist related a miracle story about one of her clients who had been in constant pain for 15 years. The client cried during her first session. The tears came because, for the first time in that whole span of time, she felt no pain. When I asked this Svaroopi whether she had any questions or concerns about the Ashram, she just wanted to know the mechanics of increasing her monthly donation.

I thought yoga was all about the poses when I first started practicing. Now I know it’s so much more. It feels to me that the “More” arises because we are all in relationship to our Guru. It’s a relationship that fosters — or uncovers — unconditional love. That’s the basis of connection within our community. So all interactions are infused with pure joy and Grace, which reveals The Truth, that at the core of each of us is the One Self.

Please contribute, with a one-time gift in any amount, or by becoming a monthly donor, if you have not already done so. Support the structure that enables Swami Nirmalananda to spread the teachings ever more widely.

Click here to donate.  New monthly donors receive a thank you gift from Swami Nirmalananda, as do those who increase their monthly donation.