Paramahansa Yogananda brought a very different kind of yoga to the West (pre 2nd World War era) than the modern stretch, relax and oversize bendy stretch version of what is not really yoga. In this Instagram post below he beautifully talks about cherishing life, now. Note how he describes a spirituality that is not specifically religious, if read with an open mind, and yet denounces materialism without being anti-materialistic.
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In certain spiritual traditions there are five Trees of Life that loosely corresponds to the five sheaths or koshas (energy bodies) of yoga. These “trees” form a layered part of an energetic eco system, ranging from the physical to the subtle bodies, including the bliss body, the culmination of the Five Trees, or the Zoar…
Seven portals of an incredible energy system The chakras are an interface of vortex-like portals between the body and the Life Force. Seven major chakras are stacked from the root of the spine, along the trunk, to the crown of the head, each chakra connected to a specific anatomical centre i.e. heart or pineal and pituitary. They are an energetic…
There is a certain brutality to great truths. For instance, this quote “If the dead past is not buried, our whole mind begins to stink and makes life impossible for us”. Swami Sivananda was well loved, for many reasons, and my teachers at yoga school, who learned directly from this great yogi, told us he…
Mantra helps us connect to Source, our origin, and our unlimited essence. We use our breath and vocal chords, i.e. body and breath, to produce the mantra phrases. Sanskrit, the language of mantra, is a vibrational language, apart from the literal meaning each letters and phrases has an embedded “wisdom code vibration”. When we intone these…
For me “the divine” is a state of expansion and inclusion, i.e. holistic. It’s not “higher”, rather exalted while also including the “lower realms”. In yoga this may mean “union”, all aspects of the whole. One may think of it as an inner state of consciousness that includes everything. A state reached in meditation, also a state…
I often wonder what it sounds like when persons talk about stuff like “light bodies” to others who are not so accustomed to such things. Sometimes I even wonder myself, as part of an ongoing of enquiry of what reality may be, and how to present the multiple options from my yoga teacher perspective. I recently…