Tag Archives: Svaroopa Vidya Ashram

The Next Steps – by Swami Nirmalananda

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Birth.  Death.  Infinity. 

The Next Steps logoThese compelling words riveted my attention in the prologue to a weekly television show when I was 10 years old. I now realize that they held the promise of my future as a teacher focused on the infinity part of the equation. Yet the Ashram itself goes through the same life cycle it names, having been birthed in 2009 and now in its sixth year of service.

The moment of birth is a compelling moment but then the real work begins. I was trained in the continuing support needed by a growing organism, first by my children, then by my Guru and now by the yogis and teachers that I serve. Svaroopa® Vidya Ashram needs the same kind of support, including a financial lifeline that keeps it alive. You provide that lifeline.

We’re shifting gears just parents who watch their child begin school.  We’re no longer changing diapers, now managing the many tasks needed in a busy day, as the Ashram moves into “Vishnu mode.” Our February yaj~na (fire ceremony) in Ganeshpuri was dedicated to Vishnu the nurturing force and sustaining power of the Divine.

What does it take to keep an Ashram going?  The phones and emails need to be answered, the programs housed and taught, and yogis informed, enrolled and inspired to do more yoga.  There are articles and E-Letters to be written, new courses to be designed and presented, free programs to offer (both in-person and on the phone). Meals must be served and cleaned up from, plus the cleaning that comes from having a lot of traffic moving through every room we occupy. I cannot do all of these things, I confess, along with shoveling the snow or mowing the lawn. Funding this Divine work means you are taking care – not only of the teacher – but also of everyone who comes to study here. Their upliftment uplifts the whole world.

The Next Steps is our focus for our spring fundraising campaign.  We need your support. Yet you are likely to find that the Ashram’s next steps synchronize perfectly with your own.  Especially, your monthly donations provide a steady stream of funding that makes us able to plan for your future.  Please offer a one-time donation or pledge a monthly gift in any of these donation categories;

  • Swami Support – supporting me personally & my work in the world
  • Free Programs – supporting free programs (in-person, telephone & online services)
  • Next Generation – training teachers (for poses as well as meditation)
  • Mother Ship – supporting our home base (buildings, computers & other infrastructure)

It is a profound privilege to share the bhasma (sacred ash) from our Vishnu yaj~na as a thank you gift to yogis who increase their monthly donation or begin a new one. As an alternative, you may choose the japa (mantra repetition) recording I made last year for your thank you.

Donate at www.svaroopa.org/donate or call us at 610.644.7555. Every gift, of any size and frequency, makes a difference. Thank you.

OM svaroopa svasvabhava.h namo nama.h

Comings & Goings

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Marketing Consultant Susan Smith will be teaching marketing calls, free to you as a SATYA Member, throughout 2015. Over the past several years, your marketing course sessions were offered by a marketing panel, giving you a variety of perspectives on using a range of marketing approaches for your yoga business. We have now engaged Susan Smith to serve as your sole marketing teacher. This course is a continuing benefit, provided by your SATYA dues. Susan comes to us with a love of teaching as well as longstanding marketing expertise.

In her corporate marketing position, Susan taught weekly marketing classes for colleagues in other business roles. You can count on her knowing how to meet us, as her new students, “where we are” and to take us “where we need to go” to grow our yoga businesses. Susan knows how to lead enjoyable as well as highly informative group learning experiences, and she enthusiastically looks forward to teaching from her consistent, progressive marketing curriculum. Each phone session will be a complete, standalone unit yet also linked to previous and future sessions for continuity.  Susan will share her far-reaching understanding of the secrets of marketing.

Have you been curious about what marketing approaches really work? Susan not only knows the answers, she will teach us how to identify what really works in our own locales and demographics as well as for Svaroopa® yoga specifically. She is a 20-year veteran of business-to-business and business-to-consumer marketing, with a specialty in developing membership and loyalty programs for major retail companies. So Susan knows how to shape marketing to resonate with the experience of a range of target customers.

Susan’s class plans include practical marketing advice and information — from strategy to application. Among other things, you will learn how to:

  • Identify the “right marketing” for your demographic, e.g., flyers, website, social media
  • Use the social media tools (e.g., Facebook, Linkedin, Twitter, etc.) with the best fit to get the word out about your yoga business
  • Test your marketing tactics — measure results to know works best
  • Calculate your return on investment, to identify the benefits reaped
  • Decide when to cut your losses, if a tactic is not working
  • Revise a “marketing product” (such as a flyer or your website) to work more effectively
  • Communicate via email campaigns with class “drop-outs” to bring them back

In short, Susan says, “I hope participants in this marketing course come away with an understanding of the options available, and how to use them.”

Just as in the past, you attend this distance-learning course via conference calls, for which you enroll via www.svaroopa.org. You may participate in every session of Susan’s comprehensive marketing curriculum, which she will herself teach, or select one or more individual topics at your convenience.  Swami Nirmalananda says, “You’ll soon discover that marketing is another form of yoga – a way to communicate the teachings and experience of the Self.”

ATT DTS: Just Do It! by Ruth Brown, CSYT

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ruthbrown

Ruth Brown, CSYT

Once upon a time, completing an ATT program required that you do homework, and then send that homework to a Teacher Trainer for review and feedback. But now there is DTS.  I just completed the ATT 262 Treating Pain immersion, and I’m finding that the DTS calls have helped me use the “therapist” title with confidence.

For this DTS there are homework assignments followed by phone calls, and my first assignment was to give five pain treatment sessions to a single client. After our second DTS call, Matrika Gast (who serves our Board in the Publications role) heard from one of my DTS partners that I had “pain clients coming out of the woodwork.” So Matrika asked me to share my success story.

To begin to attract pain clients I found that you must become a walking, talking billboard for “what you can do for them.”  You do so gently and with care… sharing how others have benefited from what you do. To make your current yoga students aware of your pain therapy training, you can say “This therapy may be something that you and/or someone you know could use. Feel free to share this with those you know who are in pain.”

I also created a small, purse size flyer that to pass around to those whom I would talk with. The front side includes vital details about pain therapy the Svaroopa® yoga way, and back side includes a couple of testimonials from existing students/clients.

The next thing to do is list people you know … no judgments… just write. Then take that list, beginning with those you think are the least likely to be interested in what you are doing, and contact them, sharing with them what you are doing. Proceed through your list with enthusiasm and sincere caring about what you can do for them or for those they know.

With my first pain client, even though there was that tinge of anxiety, I felt assured and confident in the training I had received a week or so before. Yep — I read and reread my ATT “blue sheets” before each session, and I completed all five sessions with that client as well as my first DTS report before the first DTS call.

I so appreciated that call. While it is good to receive feedback on your sessions, it is just as informative to hear what others are doing.  Invaluable, in fact. Kusuma, our ATT DTS Mentor, gently guides us through evaluations of our sessions, encouraging where appropriate and asking us to re-think our sessions where necessary.

My second assignment was exciting because I was working on a real person with tightness, pain and cramps. The assignment helped me gain confidence in my ability to write a plan and tweak as needed in the moment, especially when my client seized up with a cramp and pain. Our training met reality in this second assignment. I was working with “real folks” who were not loosey-goosey yogis! I laughed at myself several times along the way, noting how many times I was holding my breath!!!

After the second DTS call, there were massive revelations. As slowly as I thought I was proceeding in a session, on this call I realized that I needed to move forward even more slowly…right up there with watching paint dry! With this guidance, I’ve found after several more sessions that my clients feel the difference, the shift from pain to relief.

After a couple of weeks providing pain therapy to clients who are non-yogis, I realized that I could almost repeat the Treating Pain training with a whole new perspective. The partner pairing in training with fellow-yogis can give us a false sense of movement.  On the DTS calls, it helps so much to hear that other budding therapists are working through the same issues.

Through this process, I have personally experienced some significant openings, too. How much fun to realize that the leg you were holding in Alternate Leg was REALLY not softened and released!

Deceptively Easy, Amazingly Successful by Abby Chemers

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When I enrolled in ATT 262 Treating Pain last March, I was daunted by the prerequisite of giving 50 Embodyment® Yoga Therapy sessions in the 6 months before the course. I am a rule follower, and I could see that I needed to give two Embodyment® sessions per week. Figuring that out was my way of keeping on track without getting anxious or worried, but I still didn’t know exactly how I would get my existing students to make appointments for these private sessions.

My first approach was to give Embodyment® sessions to friends and family.  Travel to Hawaii and then to Australia in March gave me that opportunity.  On my way to Australia, I had a few days with my daughter and son-in-law in Hawaii. A busy and active couple, they were more than happy to accommodate my need to give them sessions! And the same was true of Australian friends when I arrived there.

When I returned home, there were real surprises. People just showed up at the right time.  For months I had wanted to be able to give an Embodyment® session to a student who came regularly to class and had been getting spinal opening, but still had some pain. I knew an Embodyment® session would help her move through her partial opening to full release, but I had been unable to persuade her to schedule a private session. Then one day she showed up to class and was the only student as her usual classmates were playing hooky.  So I was able to give her Embodyment®. At another time, a young woman who was getting married and had a lot going in her life showed up as the only student for a class, and she enjoyed a soothing and restorative Embodyment® session with me instead. It was a blessing for me as well as for her!

Then for the next six weeks, clients just arrived on my doorstep. To use an old idiom, it was as though they just came out of the woodwork! I was surprised, because usually it seems my regular class students simply can’t afford more yoga.  Yet they began to schedule Embodyment® sessions to celebrate their birthdays or because, unfortunately, they hurt themselves and came in to help an injury heal.  A couple of these clients came four times.  Other clients were brand new and had found me through my website. Many found me simply by word of mouth, and one week I had 4 brand new clients.

It was curious. It seemed to me that the universe knew I needed students and sent them to me.  Instead of being a daunting task, this ATT prerequisite turned out to be a blessing on many levels. It brought in money, and helped to offset the cost of training.

But giving these Embodyment® sessions regularly, on a range of clients with different needs, was great to do as well. They benefited me as a therapist as well as my clients. I had already been giving Embodyment® sessions for at least 3 years, and I was very comfortable with my body mechanics. But through giving 50 sessions within 6 months, Embodyment® became easier and easier for me.  I became able to stay in stillness. I became more effortlessly able to sink and settle into my own bones and spine. Quite often I would get release in my own body.

Settling in is so important, I found, in Treating Pain as well. With experience and regularity come ease and comfort, and my confidence as a yoga therapist grew into greater and greater ease. Now I am grateful for the required preparation as well as the training itself, in which I, myself, experienced such profound healing as well as learning that will serve my clients with more — and More.

A Heartfelt Thank You by Karuna (Carolyn) Beaver, Board Member

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Click the logo above to make a donation today.

I’d like to express a heartfelt thank you for your donation to our Blossoming Forth fall fundraising campaign. “Unmilana” is Sanskrit for the blossoming forth that occurs on multiple levels. It describes an unfolding and coming forth. It describes the opening of the eyes or the process of making things visible. It describes making explicit what has been implicit or hidden within.  It also describes the blossoming forth of gratitude from the Board of Directors of Svaroopa® Vidya Ashram.

More than a year ago, SVA opened up to expand and include Svaroopa® Yoga under its carolyn_beaverorganizational umbrella, blossoming forth a consolidated organization serving a multiplicity of needs. We all had our eyes opened in the process, watching both the bumps in the road and the clearing of a path. It made explicit what was implicit – the Grace that underlies the practices of asana and meditation is the same Grace that supports us all.

Once again, through your donations, you have shown that the Grace that supports you is the same Grace that supports our organization. Because this organization is yours, you support the organization. As Swami Nirmalananda taught in a recent phone course, this mutual support is an important part of every relationship in your life. When you receive support, you offer support.

Your financial support makes a big difference. It enables SVA to hire and retain teaching and administrative staff whose job it is to serve you. It enables the creation and maintenance of a beautiful new website, both to inspire as well as to inform you. It enables both stabilization and expansion of our course offerings, many at newly-lowered rates for 2015. It enables you to keep doing the yoga and meditation that you love.

That’s why I make donations in both our fall and spring campaigns, as well as send a regular monthly donation. I love my yoga. I love my meditation. I love my yoga buddies. I love my students. I love my honored teacher, my Guru. This organization has given me so much. It has given me my Self. When I receive support, I offer support.

As Swamiji wrote in her first letter about this campaign, organizations are nothing but groups of people committed to a shared goal. She explained that yogic processes happen both to individuals as well as to the organization itself. Your support – financial, volunteer and in other ways too numerous to mention – keeps SVA afloat, as both you and the organization travel down the river of Grace. Thank you for all that you do.

2015 Tuition Changes

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In time for your 2015 budget, we are announcing changes in tuition for SVA programs and Svaroopa® Yoga Teacher Training courses.  While some course tuitions are going up, tuition for YTT is going down, effective immediately. For courses with increased tuition, you may enroll at 2014 rates until December 31.

To set rates for 2015, we conducted market research as well as an internal rate review. Our YTT tuitions, compared to other Teacher Trainings both locally and nationally, are at the top — primarily because we provide 350 hours of training at the first level. Other YTT programs provide only 200 hours. So our Board has decided that tuition for YTT Components A and B will be coming down.  If you have paid (or have payment plans) for a future YTT Level, you will be receiving a refund for the difference within a month.

Tuition is also being reduced for three additional programs: Shaktipat Retreat, Embodyment® Weekend, Yogify Your Life and Option 3 in our Year-Long Programme (with Swamiji’s conference calls).

In the past, Master Yoga Foundation reviewed tuition rates every two years.  In our 2013 Consolidation, we held the tuitions steady for all of 2014, keeping a third year at the same tuitions.  Planned increases are in line with the cost of living increase over the last three years (5.7% according to the USA Consumer Price Index). This includes Foundations of Svaroopa® Yoga and our new MTT Retreat.

Our analysis also showed that four EYTS programs have been significantly undervalued: Experiential Anatomy, EYTS Deceptive Flexibility, EYTS Embodyment® in Poses & EYTS Top-to-Tail. We also discovered that ATT courses were valued at less than Foundations, so tuition for these EYTS and ATT courses is being increased in 2015. However, enrolling before December 31 will let you take advantage of 2014 tuition.

In addition, because The Desmond has raised their rates, costs for 2015 house and meals will rise by $10 per day. In addition, Airport Transportation will be charged @ $45.00 per person per transfer.  Both of these changes are unavoidable, due to the costs of these services.  Yet we’ve found that yogis appreciate being able to stay on-site for the programs, as well as having a yogi or Ashram staff member handle their airport drive, so we continue to offer both services.

Click here to see our calendar

  • Choose the type of program by clicking on the color-coded buttons at the top
  • Click on the program title to see our 2014 rates, clearly detailed for you, with the newly reduced tuitions for YTT already listed there.
  • You can register online by clicking on the “Register” button
  • Or email or call our Enrollment Advisors at (610) 806-2119.

Gratitude by Amala (Lynn) Cattafi Heinlein, President of SVA

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Blossoming Forth logo-verticalWhat are you grateful for? Have you thought about it today?

Here is my short list:

  • I am grateful for my Guru, who with a word, or a glance, or just being within proximity, removes the knotted ropes that my mind binds me with
  • I am grateful for my Guru, who has opened the door to Grace within me, and is taking me (sometimes slowly, sometimes in the super express lane) to the knowing of the Self
  • amala-photoI am grateful for our amazing community, all of you, who time and time again bring me home
  • I am grateful for the opportunity to do seva, to serve on the Board with this most amazing and committed group of yogis, who never lose sight that all we do is all for you. This also includes all of the staff and sevites who are so dedicated and loving
  • I grateful for my family, even when they drive me crazy (which at the moment is most of the time! LOL), because they are the Self also, they are the Guru.
  • I am grateful for this experience of embodiment, even though it is not always perfect on a physical level, it is perfection itself!
  • I am grateful for everyone I meet, everything I can see, touch, taste, hear, or smell
  • I am grateful for what I don’t yet know, even when my mind wants to stress that I don’t yet know it
  • I am grateful for the emotional pain I am currently in the midst of, as I know it is part of the expansion process
  • I am grateful for my mind, even though I still easily become enslaved by it, because it is also Shiva, and it is beautiful
  • I am grateful for fear, because it gives me the opportunity to face and walk through it.. and getting to the other side of it is ecstatic!
  • I am eternally grateful for this path, our lineage, the teachings. How did we all get so lucky to have found this opening, this map, to Self-realization?
  • And finally, I am grateful to you who open your heart time and time again to offer your donations to keep this organization not only afloat, but sailing forward! Don’t stop now, do it again! The organization survives, and thrives, on your donations and your participation, and even if you don’t realize it, so do you….

Click here to support your organization and your practice.

OM svaroopa svasvabhava namo nama.h

Blossoming Forth by Amala Cattafi Heinlein

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amala-photo“Growth is expansive, yet also expensive,” commented Swami Nirmalananda, which resonated deeply with me. Most people think about expense in terms of money, an immediate hot button that lands us in a place of fear and anxiety. Yet, in that place, how perfect it is to consider Blossoming Forth at the same time! Expensive, yet expansive.

I want to share some thoughts with you from the Board perspective and also from a personal perspective. I hope you find it resonates with you.

As Board Chair I have been focused on everything needed to make our new building, Lokananda, a reality: the property search, the contract negotiations, the financing, the inspections, the zoning, and host of details needed before settlement. Thankfully, I had a lot of help. I am also grateful that the whole Board could see that this acquisition is the next step in the blossoming forth for our community.

We are currently working with the architect and contractor on turning the first floor into a bright and airy space for Downingtown Yoga, with space for both meditation classes as and asana classes, and eventually space for more Ashram residents and guests. Lokananda will be your space, your community center, and it will soon vibrate with all the love and Shakti that flows so easily from Swamiji’s presence and teachings. Our expansion is all for you!

This seva project was so amazing because I felt all of you so deeply throughout the process, even though it was also one of the most difficult things I have ever experienced. For me personally, it brought up fear and anxiety — to get everything right. The fear came in overpowering waves that attached to me like leeches with each small task that had to be completed. It would subside for a moment upon completion, but return with a vengeance at the next task. I knew that this mental and emotional pain was a massive karma burn. Expansion is expensive!

I know you all experience moments (or longer periods) of fear, anxiety, despair, anger, stress, even while you also know you are expanding toward the knowing of the Self. It can feel like being stuck in the mud; it’s so hard to see through. Yet every plant that blossoms forth must first rise through the mud. It doesn’t stop. It knows the sun is just a few more inches. This beautiful path has taught me, not only how to keep going, but that the mud is also Shiva.

Please sit for a moment and reflect on what the Ashram means to you, and what we bring to you. Then, please, open your heart, peel off the leeches of fear and anxiety that may attach to you when you hear the word “donate.” Then let your gratitude and generosity flow.

Click here to support the Ashram and support your practice.

OM svaroopa svasvabhava namo namah

The Website That Seva Built by Rama (Ruth) Brooke

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Our new website at www.svaroopa.org is my virtual Ashram and yoga center.  Along with important practicalities, like viewing the calendar, enrolling in courses and accessing on-line course materials, it is a place I can go to connect with my Guru and other Svaroopis.  As a Svaroopa® Vidya Ashramite, I can experience darshana (seeing Divine Presence) just by signing onto the home page.  Through the audio recordings I can participate in satsang (a gathering in the company of the highest Truth) or chant the Guru Gita.  The blog posts and e-zine articles provide easy access to the stories of other Svaroopis, some whom I know well and others I haven’t yet met in person.  Either way, we have important shared experiences and that makes us all like yoga siblings.  Because I live many miles away from Downingtown PA, the website is my yoga home-away-from-home.

The decision to say “yes” was easy

Last Spring, when Matrika (Marlene) Gast asked if I could help with the writing part of the website consolidation project, the decision to say “yes” was easy.  I had been resisting every time I needed to sign onto either of the old websites for practical information or to enroll in a course.  The confusion I was experiencing upon accessing the sites was probably due more to my evolving perception of the two organizations as one, rather than actual website functionalities.  Around the time of the Consolidation, I was losing track of what information belonged to which organization.  I could no longer remember which website to go to for what.  The distinctions were blurring.

I was thrilled to start working on the web project, although when I began looking at what needed consolidation and re-writing, the task looked daunting. So I was very thankful for the preliminary work that had been done by others, including Swamiji, Matrika Gast, Sharada McDonald and Jennifer Bloome, to create a template for the overall look and structure of the new site.

As it turned out, I really only worked on a few preliminary drafts for versions of the About Us and Donate pages, but I found the seva process to be valuable, as always.  To do the work, I needed to simply “put one foot in front of the other,” without getting overly wrapped up in the performance aspects of the job.  It also provided another opportunity to connect with Swamiji and the Ashram, and to contemplate how all has evolved since those early days, which were really not so long ago.

Below are the words of other sevites who worked on our website project over the summer.

I was very happy to be called on

  • Matrika (Marlene) Gast

On the Ashram Board, my Area of Responsibility and Empowerment (ARE) is Communications, so I was thrilled when the new SVA Website project began. I knew that consolidating the sites would help our whole Svaroopa® Sciences community easily get the information we need for courses and programs – and ongoing inspiration and teachings from Swami Nirmalananda.

I was very happy to organize writers to write informational pages as well as reshape existing pages to fit the new consolidated format. We have a talented and dedicated group of sevite writers as well as a splendid writer on our SVA administrative team, Jennifer Bloome, who had already drafted several core pages that had been approved by Swamiji. Our Business Administration Manager Sharada McDonald had already worked with Swamiji and the technical experts to design the outline of the web content, and Sharada gave us great guidance on the content “constellations” that we needed to populate. And, wonderfully, Karuna Beaver and Rama Brooke turned out to be the writers who were available to write over the summer.

I was enthusiastic about the project from the beginning, and I believe we four writers – Jennifer, Karuna, Rama and I – all had a great time collaborating.  Not only did we receive guidance from Sharada and Swamiji, but also from our Techno-Wizard, Prakash Falbaum, who coordinated the entire project. I believe our organization is unique in how we all collaborate. Sevites are as committed to their “volunteer work” as full time professionals on a career ladder, and our highly skilled and dedicated staff serves with joy and passion for the divine mission of the Ashram.

I am grateful for the seva that I can offer to Swamiji and our whole community, because seva continues to open and expand my heart.  Through seva I have gotten to meet and talk with most, if not all, members of our community. Every day I feel myself basking in the deep, warm, scintillating connections among us.

It made perfect sense to me

–Karuna (Carolyn) Beaver

When I learned that the two websites would be consolidated, it made perfect sense to me. Why would we have two websites, when we are a consolidated organization? Less is more!

I’ve been involved in communications for both Master Yoga Foundation and Svaroopa® Vidya Ashram, so I’ve written articles and copy from both perspectives. But now these perspectives come under the same umbrella – the same umbrella we’ve always had, really, but made more clear by combined communications, including the website.  Because I’ve been so involved with writing for the organization, it was a natural for me to help with the website.

Because I wrote only a few pages, it wasn’t challenging from either a time perspective, or really, a content perspective. We used much of the content from both websites, and simply polished and shortened it a bit. Like every other seva I have done, this helped me understand the organization that I am involved with, and to appreciate the breadth and depth of what it offers to me and to the whole Svaroopa® community.

I get way more from the seva than I put into it

–Prakash (David) Falbaum

I had been doing website seva for MYF for a while, so I could see the need for consolidation of the five websites that made up the digital identity of SVA.  After a few false starts with outside web consultants, I became Project Manager, and worked closely with SVA’s graphic artist Kemm Sarver, web designer Jean Kindem and fellow Board member Matrika (Marlene) Gast, who oversaw the content and writing part of the project.

There was a lot of back and forth between Swamiji, Kemm, and Jean to determine exactly how the new site would look and function, so that was a major part of my work.  Swamiji was clear that she wanted the site to be a “virtual portal” to the Self, so we set that as the main focus for the project.  I live in Minnesota and don’t have daily access to the Ashram in Pennsylvania, so having this “virtual portal” was an important goal for me to keep in perspective.

I do seva to serve both Swamiji and the people who want to immerse themselves in the Self.  I get way more from the seva than I put into it.  It is such a powerful practice.  I began doing seva for Master Yoga, and now serve on the Ashram Board.  I still find that the more I put in, the more I get out.  It keeps me out of my head and immersed in my Self.  My mind becomes quiet while I am working to serve the Divine and the Guru.

Other sevites I want to thank are:  Glen Christensen, who has done a lot for the prior SVA website, and posted calendar items and pages in our new site.  Glen is also continuing to move the online library from the prior SVA site to our new consolidated home.  Also, Pam Church and Solveig Corbin have helped with link checking, which has been very helpful; an essential task for making the website user friendly.

A Doorway to the Self

–Swami Nirmalananda

I’ve always loved the truth in the saying, “It takes a village to raise a child.”  I have to add that it takes a whole team to create a new website, if it is going to serve the many that the Ashram serves. When I began the virtual Ashram, before we had any buildings or even offered regular satsangs, we had a website with 5 pages.  As it grew, my rudimentary website skills grew, until the Ashram had administrative sevites who were better at it than me.  Sevites joined the team, ultimately moving and revamping the website about 2 years ago — a huge task that was very well done.

Receiving & Giving Support by Peter Gallagher

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Peter Gallagher

Peter Gallagher

I am often distracted by the contradictions that I experience in being me, a unique form of contracted consciousness. Thankfully, I first found a Svaroopa® yoga teacher and then Swamiji. Physical pain got me in the door. At first the relief that I felt from the beginning encouraged me to continue classes. It was, however, the mental and emotional release and personal spiritual reawakening that kept me coming back for more.

Just as I need the support of Swami and the Ashram in order to blossom into my Divinity, the Ashram needs our support to blossom into its future. Just like you and me, the Ashram is a form of Consciousness, a form that supports our discovery that we are a form of Consciousness. Consider how the Ashram has supported your inner expansion. Could you be who you now are without the enlivened and embodied teachings you have received through Swami Nirmalananda and the teachers she has trained?

Through the efforts of our teachers, staff and sevites and the generosity of our donors, we have truly blossomed as an organization, quickly moving through the Master Yoga Reawakening into the Consolidation of Master Yoga and the Ashram. We are now entering a new phase of expansion into the world. This growth brings new challenges and opportunities, and to be successful the process requires your participation. Your donations and seva are needed by the Ashram as it comes into full bloom, fulfilling its work in the world.

I personally experience the gifts of the Svaroopa® Sciences; they just keep on giving me more and more. Because of the gratitude that I have for Swamiji, the teachings and the Svaroopa® yoga teachers I have studied with, I serve on the Ashram Board of Directors. My gifts to the Ashram are my skills, my time and my donations. I give them to assist Swamiji and the Ashram in their purpose, which is to assist you in realizing your Self. In return for what I give, unlooked-for, I live more in my Self in the world.

Both Swamiji and the Ashram are dedicated to serving us. We need to provide the financial support to allow their work to blossom forth, both in us and into the world beyond. Please support this blossoming forth with your generosity. Consider a one-time gift or a monthly donation to fully nurture this new blossoming.

With love,
Peter