Tag Archives: Board of directors

Your New Home Away From Home

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After conducting much research photo%2014and analysis into which local center would best support you during your trainings and retreats, we are very excited to announce your new Svaroopa®  home away from home. The Desmond Hotel in Malvern will be hosting you in 2014. An independent, family-owned hotel with a B&B feel, the Desmond is clean, inviting and cozy. You first step into a warm, open reception area desmond2where you are greeted by the joyful, family-like hotel staff and 2-story floor-to-ceiling views of the spacious outside patio. Bedrooms are fresh and pleasant within-room baths and refrigerators at request. Shared rooms feature two queen beds and singles have a 4-poster or canopy king bed. The building has free wi-fe as well as a computer room, swimming pool, exercise facility, restaurant, photo%2013and outdoor walking trails.   

While this would make it a nice place to stay, what really makes it supportive for you is your retreat & training space. Your retreat & training hall is a real room with real walls (not sliding dividers!). While the space is shared with others participating in conferences on the same floor, it is distant from regular hotel traffic and offers around the clock staff  support. desmond1Just outside your retreat & training hall is a well-stocked lounge area where hot breakfast is served in the morning, afternoonsnacks (including hot hors-d’oeuvres), around the clock coffee (including latte/cappuccino drinks), filtered hot and cold water and Tazo teas, soda, juice, flavored water, etc. are served; there are men & women’s restrooms and a spacious charming outdoor balcony with tables. It’s ideal for a retreat environment as everything you should need (including outside access for fresh air) to support yourself is only steps away from your retreat & training hall.photo%208

A special thank you to Master Yoga Board Member, Marlene Gast, for her in depth research to find the most supportive facility for you.

Resounding Support from Your Yogic Hearts! by Marlene Gast CSYT, MYF Board VP Communications, SVA Board Asana Committee

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Marlene Gast

Marlene Gast

Your yogic hearts have responded to our Thanksgiving fundraising!  We have received many messages of  gratitude for Svaroopa® yoga, accompanying gifts expressing the generosity of the season, as well as photos of your hands and hearts [click to see our slide show].

We are grateful to announce an increase in monthly donations as well as the generous, total dollar amount of $18,401.  Your gifts beautifully support us in the lean months of November/December, when we cannot run any programs, while helping us prepare for the new year: 2014, a pivotal year for us! A consolidated year!!

Clearly each donation received was a holiday gift wrapped in love for your Svaroopa® Sciences practices — and for all of our teachers.  We are blessed by wonderful teachers, beginning with Swami Nirmalananda and spreading out through our Teacher Trainers, through local Svaroopa® yoga teachers and Meditation Group Leaders worldwide. With every donation that you make, you support this whole, wondrous network. In turn, all of us support the expansion of Consciousness through the unswerving avenues of the ancient teachings.  This is cause for great jubilation and heartfelt congratulations!

Thus I write today with gratitude on behalf of the SVA Board and the MYF Board.  A great deal of the Board’s responsibility is fiduciary: A board of directors is responsible for ensuring the availability of adequate financial resources, an essential part of keeping any organization robust and vigorous.  We are grateful to you for helping us fulfill this responsibility.  Your donation and commitment support the organization, which supports Swami Nirmalananda along with our Teacher Trainers as well as administrative staff that bring the teachings into the world.

Yet the organization is simply a part of the whole.  You are the essential element that completes the whole. It is you, centered in your yogic heart; you are precious and indispensable. In the words of SVA Board President Amala Cattafi, you are more precious than gold, whether or not your personal circumstances allow for financial support of the organization.

The personal pronouns of English — you, I — divide us into individual units. “Us” is the closest pronoun to present us together as community — and “we”: We are yogic family.  You are — we are — wondrous, shining threads in the imperisable fabric of essential connection.  Our connection is the relationship in consciousness, the being of consciousness, but the being of consciousness-together while being consciousness individually.  We are individual persons, choosing to be in community, as yogis who can feel the presence of one another in the depths of Consciousness to which our practices open us.  Thank you.

Seeing, Caring and Sharing by Rudrani Nogue, Board Member

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Rudrani

Rudrani in Anjali Mudra
Send us a photo of your hands in Anjali Mudra (prayer position). Please include your name and zip code. We’ll add your heart-full hands to our online gallery – click the picture above to see it as it grows

A Yogic Heart is big and open because it is filled from our inner infinite Source. A Yogic Heart provides us with an opportunity to live our lives with an expanded capacity to see, care and share.  We are able to see people and situations at a deeper level and to understand what is really going on. A Yogic Heart allows us to care about ourselves, and to share with and support others in an easier and bigger way.  A yogic Heart keeps you engaged in your life without becoming caught in the drama of your life.

I learned at a very young age to do whatever was expected of me. For decades I did whatever I felt I “should” do, by going through the motions, but my Heart wasn’t in it. I was pretending and I wasn’t being who I really am. In hindsight, I realize living this way separated me from my Heart, including my inherent joy and my ability to sing. It made life much harder than it needed to be.

Through practicing the Svaroopa® Sciences and through the Grace of the Guru, I have found joy, my singing voice and my Yogic Heart. As this Svaroopa® path and practices have so generously been shared with me, I joyfully and gratefully share them with our Svaroopa® community and beyond.

Some ways I gladly share my Yogic Heart’s growing capacity are by chanting daily, supporting students in and after class, supporting students to become teachers,  co-hosting weekend workshops, leading group meditations as seva, co-editing “Tadaa!”, serving on the SVA Board and supporting the Svaroopa® sciences through monthly donations.

The ways that I am able to see, care and share now would not have been possible without uncovering my Yogic Heart. And, as I recognize and honour my true Heart I also recognize and honour the true Heart of others.

On this path your yogic Heart is ever expanding in its capacity to see, care and share. I invite you to show your caring through a generous donation, supporting our teacher and the Svaroopa® path.