By Swami Nirmalananda

Vitally alive!  A body that is breathing and pulsating with aliveness in every cell.  Eyes clear and radiant.  Glowing with a happiness that arises from an inner surety of being.  Yoga makes you alive — fully alive.  You have the capacity to live this way in every moment, and some work to do in order to get there.  Too many people settle for less and walk around half-dead.

Can you really be fully alive in every moment?  There are so many parts of the day that are difficult.  Maybe you have a long commute in traffic every day.  Put on some rousing music and sing along at the top of your lungs.  Perhaps your challenge is at work:  it is simply a dead-end job.  Pour yourself into it and give it your best in every moment.  Even if nothing changes on the outside, you will feel better for having put yourself forth fully.

Is it possible to be fully alive in every moment of your life?  Even when times are difficult?  If you are going through difficult things at home, open your heart even more.  Love the people in your life even more!  Even if you are facing the imminent death of someone you love, you can decide to celebrate their life with them.  Say all the thank yous and remember all the times you have shared.  Allow yourself to feel the joys and the pains all over again.  Walk into grief with your eyes wide open, even when they are full of tears.  Live!  Allow yourself to feel, regardless of what is going on.

In the practice of Svaroopa^® yoga, we use customized poses to open your spine.  This releases the deepest layers of tension for the purpose of freeing your body from what makes it less alive.  As you open up space in your spine, your internal organs are no longer subject to compression and begin to work better.  Your nervous system, immune system, respiration and circulation all improve.  Additionally, your mind and emotions become progressively more clear; you are able to live in the moment and carry less baggage from the past.  The joy and love that is inherent in your being can rise from the Inner Source and spread into your life and the world, while your sense of self continues to deepen.  All this makes you more and more alive — more and more fully alive.  You can participate in every moment of life fully, even if it isn’t what you thought it would be.

Yoga describes the purpose of human life as being two-fold.  If you had a sense that you came here in order to accomplish one overarching purpose, you are actually half right.  There are two things that you are here to accomplish.  The first is to have experiences, a full range of experiences.  This means that life is not merely about happiness and ease.  The experiences of life include sadness and challenge.  You are meant to be as present for grief and loneliness as for the times of celebration and community.  Allow yourself to experience it all — fully.

The second purpose of life is Self-Realization.  Whether you have embraced this as a goal or not, working on this is what makes the other purpose of life happen.  If you don’t look at your own potential for realization, the first purpose of having experiences doesn’t work out for you.  This is because, when you don’t know of your own inner essence, the outer things become the most important things in life.  Your first purpose, to have experiences, becomes your only purpose.

Thus, if things are going badly today — you are having a bad day, or (worse) you are a bad person.  If things are going well — you are a good person, having a good day.  When you don’t look at your own inner essence, your whole sense of self is created by where you are, what you are doing and how it is going, not to mention what other people think or say about you.

When you have painful experiences, you don’t want to feel the pain, so you tune it out.  You shut down on the inside, so that you don’t fully experience what is happening.  This process of shutting down is one of creating physical tension.  Your ability to feel the physical sensations of your body actually diminishes as you try to not feel what you are experiencing in your mind and emotions.  Sometimes this is a valuable decision —especially as a child, your ability to shut out the painful stuff might be what got you through a tough time.  Even if that was what you needed to do sometime in the past — that was the past.  Your ability to look life fully in the face and to move into it with vigor is based on your current stature as an adult, and as a yogi.

A yogi does not shrink from anything.  A yogi does not label anyone or anything as being good or bad — everything and everyone is a form of Shiva, the one Divine Essence manifest in all forms.  As a yogi, you can (and must) choose where you are going to spend your time and with whom, but without having to shut yourself down or tune out your experiences.  This means you can watch the evening news without being upset by it.  You can have an experience of knowing and seeing the pain and injustice in the world, without going into pain yourself.  And, even if it does bring up the feeling of personal pain, you can embrace it.  It is only temporary — all experiences are temporary.  They all change with time.  Just keep tuned in.  The show is ever changing.

As you continue the process of inner opening, you discover a deeper and greater sense of self.  Then the stuff of life doesn’t slay you.  Things come and go while you fit it into a larger perspective.  The ups and downs of life become less all-possessing because you have a larger sense of self.  It is not threatened by the momentary losses and it is not lost in the neon light of success.  If you make a mistake today, you have a sense that there is a tomorrow coming in which you can try to rectify it.  If you enjoy a great success today, you know that there will be something tomorrow that will humble you again, and you enjoy that too.  Your inner sense of self is large enough to accommodate the ever-changing world along with other people’s opinions of you.

When something in your life becomes so overwhelming that you get lost in it, then the problem is not the thing that overwhelmed you — the problem is that you lost your Self.  Your own inner source of resiliency, joy and love is lost.  This is the very source that will make you able to handle all the things that life brings, but you lost track of it.  This loss of Self is the biggest catastrophe of life — and you see it everywhere you look, in the media, the movies and TV shows, and in everyone you know.  As a yogi, you need and want something more.  You must!

In yoga, you work on the two purposes of life simultaneously.  If you tried to leave your life to work on Self-Realization, then you would have lost track of one of the purposes.  The archetype of the yogi, sitting in a cave meditating by himself is an archetype — not reality.  Yogis in India live in community, sharing the process and working together toward that ultimate aim.  Along the way, they have many experiences — of relationship, of a shared goal and the work that needs to be done, of celebrations of joy and love for one another, etc.

In other words, yogis have a life.  So do you.  You must work on both purposes of life simultaneously.  You can begin by fully embracing your life.  Step into it as though you chose to be alive.  Participate fully, while you are living from the inner depths of your essence, or looking for it — inside.

Do More Yoga!

Originally published in March 2004

By Swami Nirmalananda

The texts of yoga define love as the recognition of Self in another.  You know that feeling when you look at someone and see something in them; maybe it’s the light shining through their eyes.  An extraordinary feeling arises inside.  What is happening is that you have seen the infinite within them, and it triggered your experience of the infinite within you.  The inner arising is the infinite filling you from the inside — the infinite meeting the infinite.  It is called Love.  I would wish that it happens to you frequently or that you live in it all the time.

Unfortunately, you limit how often you allow that feeling to be triggered inside.  You even limit how many people you allow yourself to feel this with.  Your list is too short.  Somehow, it is easier when a pet or a beautiful scene in nature triggers it.  It is a little harder with a person because we attach lots of other things onto this feeling.  When you say, “I love you,” it ends up with some baggage:  you have unexpressed expectations that the other person will love you back and that they will prove it by supporting you, protecting you, encouraging you, acknowledging you, always being there for you and basically doing everything you want or need.  But these added-on extras are not Love.  They are very important in life, but they are not Love.

Love transcends all of the mundane; it is the felt-sense of the infinite within.  The problem with love is that you depend on someone or something outside of you to trigger this inner arising.  Yoga specializes in the inner arising, so that you can experience what is already there inside you.  You are the One, infinite, blissful, Self-knowing, Ultimate Reality that is called “That.”  You are That.  You have always been That.  You are already That.  You don’t have to become That; you merely need to stop blocking the inner arising.

You block this inner experience by tightening up and closing off from the inner infinity.  Svaroopa^® yoga opens you up by beginning with your body and going much deeper, until the opening gives you direct access to That.  You come to know the pathway to the infinite within.  The more you open on the inside, the more you allow the experience of Love to arise with others.  Fear drops away.  As it becomes easier to allow the infinite to arise within you, it is also easier to see the infinite in others, even when they are not being pretty or nice.  Even when they are not doing what you want them to do.  You can love unconditionally.

Also, you can allow yourself to feel that you are loved.  Instead of looking to other people to love you, you know and feel that you are loved by that One Infinite Reality.  Instead of having to look good or to be perfect in order to be loveable, you experience that you are loved exactly as you are.  You are loved unconditionally — which is what you have always longed for.  The lifelong yearning for this feeling can never be satisfied by the people around you.  It can only be fulfilled by feeling God’s love for you.

Yoga clearly describes God.  If yoga left God out of the picture, it wouldn’t be a complete science of human experience.  Of course, yoga’s definition of God is different than most peoples’.  God is the One Ultimate Reality that has become everything that exists, pervading it and extending beyond it.  It is called “God” when you find it outside and called “Self” when you find it inside.

There is only the One, but individuals experience it in many ways.  Love, as defined by life, shows you how to find it outside, in other people.  Love, as defined in church, shows you how to find it outside, in God.  Yoga shows you how to find Love inside, in Self.

Plus, there is more.  When you begin yoga, you are exploring the Self from a place of inner unknowing.  Your Svaroopa^® yoga practice melts away tensions and the inner blocks, and the inner veil of unknowing is gradually pierced full of holes.  With each piercing, the light of your own inner radiance shines through and you are filled on the inside.  This experience overflows into your life and your relationships, emanating from the inner source.  You naturally become more committed to your yoga practice and more interested in the inner filling.  As you keep going, you get better at staying in that inner fullness, even when you are not doing yoga.

Then your life becomes an expression of That Love.  This is very different than using your life to try to find Love, trying to get moments of the inner arising.  Your inner experience of the infinite is the source from which That Love arises, and you come to experience this in every encounter, in every action and in every moment.  This is your destiny.  This is your goal.  This is your true identity.  You are not Love — you are the Source of Love.  You are That.

Originally published February 2004

By Swami Nirmalananda

Yoga is not just about how you feel — it is about WHO you feel yourself to be.  When you begin practicing yoga, it makes you feel good.  Some people describe their first yoga experience as making them feel better than ever before!  In this way, yoga is about how you feel, especially in the beginning.

According to yoga’s ancient teachings and texts, asana is a way of working with your body to quiet your mind.  There is no doubt that you need to quiet your mind, but yoga promises more than a reduction of stress.  The purpose of quieting your mind is to discover the inner source and essence of your own being, Beingness-Itself.  In other words, yoga is not about how you feel; it is about who you feel yourself to be.

One man enrolled in a meditation course with me.  One evening, I gave the group an assignment to use a mantra during the week, for the purpose of keeping calm in the midst of life.  Mantra is a way of directing your mind beyond the usual petty stuff, into your own inner essence.  This particular mantra is:

I release my desire for survival (or you can use the word “security”)

I release my desire for esteem (or substitute “affection”)

I release my desire for power (or say, “control”)

He exclaimed, “I can’t repeat that!”  I asked why not, and he said that he needed survival, esteem, power and control, because his employer was downsizing and they were expecting layoff notices any day.  As the father and sole wage earner for his family, he needed to keep his job.   I pointed out that the mantra says, “I release MY DESIRE for…” He asked, “What is the difference?”  I said, “Repeat it and you will find out.”

The following week, he returned with this story.  He repeated this mantra daily, even in the midst of the office activity.  He found that he could step back from the group clustering around the water cooler, copier or coffee pot.  Instead of participating in the constant gossip and speculation that fueled everyone’s insecurities, he would go back to his desk and get back to work.

At the end of the week, the layoff notices came out, and he was delighted to find that he was going to keep his job.  He went to his supervisor to ask why, and the supervisor said, “You were the only one doing your job, so I decided to keep you.”

Mantra is just one of the thousands of techniques that yoga provides for the purpose of shifting your inner sense of self.  This new meditator wasn’t just calmed down at work; he became a person who didn’t need to scheme and gossip in order to keep his job.

He described how this inner shift worked, explaining that he became a person with an inner sense of integrity and purposefulness that put him beyond the office politics.  He became a person who preferred to fulfill his responsibilities (the work to be done) instead of being someone so riddled with insecurities that he couldn’t see the larger picture.  He became fearless.

This is not simply feeling better; this was something much more significant and long lasting.  He didn’t just feel better; he became a new man.  He felt like he could handle anything.  Before yoga, he was a “man with responsibilities, living under a serious threat.” With the mantra, he knew himself as a man with high principles and a high work ethic, who could carry that inner reality with him even though the external landscape was shifting.  It gave him an internal continuity amidst the external change.

This internal continuity deepens with your continuing practice of poses, meditation, mantra or any of yoga’s many other practices.  It becomes a knowing of your own self at a new level, which is profoundly deeper and more intimate.  Yoga doesn’t merely make you feel better; it gives you a deeper internal point of reference.

When you have this internal point of reference, you are not shaken by external circumstances like before — this is because you have grown up.  When you were 2 years old, it was a significant event if you could not have the Popsicle you wanted.  When you were 10 years old, you felt like you were worthless if you missed the ball in a baseball game.  When you were 15, you went into agony if your clothes weren’t just right, or if a certain person ignored you.  Now, you have grown up.

Your sense of WHO you are is not dependent on Popsicles, baseball scores, riding the wave of fashion, or getting attention from a certain person; at least I hope not!   You have a bigger sense of self.  Your world has enlarged, not only on the outside, but also on the inside.  You can take it or leave it — and you can even take the loss of position or the loss of possessions in stride.  Your sense of self is bigger than that.

You can easily check it out in your own experience.  Right now.  Sit up comfortably and check in with yourself quickly.  Where do you find your sense of self?  See how deep in you have to go to find that internal point of reference that says, “I am me.”  Now, slow down your breath and smooth it out.  If you know Ujjayi Pranayama, you can create the breathing sound; if you don’t, then just smooth and slow down your breath —not forcefully, but with a quality of gentleness.  Stay with it for two or three minutes.

When you finish, immediately check inward for where you find your sense of self.  How deep inward do you have to go to find that internal point of reference that says, “I am me.”  Has it changed?  Of course!  This is because the depth of your own existence is more than you currently know it to be — it is even more than you imagine it to be.  You are Consciousness-Itself.  You are the Source and Essence of the Universe, and Beyond.

I invite you to adopt the mantra described above, though it can be hard to lift something like this off of a piece of paper.  When you sit in a room with someone teaching you how to use it, it is significantly easier.  The personal contact will empower it and empower your ability to use it.  Still, it will work.  More importantly, there are more effective mantras available, should you be interested in going further.  They are part of the ancient ever-existing science of yoga.  Poses work too, especially the way we work with the body in Svaroopa^® yoga — opening the internal levels of the body creates an inner opening to the depth of your own Being.

Asana and meditation are only two of yoga’s eight entry points to the inner experience of your own essence.  The science of yoga offers you so many rich and beautiful opportunities — not just to change how you feel, but to change who you feel yourself to be.  Do more yoga!

Excerpted from November 2003 article

By Swami Nirmalananda

Life is constant change.  Yoga’s ancient texts clearly describe this constant change in exquisite detail.  They explain that this world is based on change, a constant progression of events that are sequencing themselves through time.  There are two types of change, regardless of whether you are creating the change or whether it is being thrust upon you.

One change is simply for the sake of novelty or variety, also called entertainment. This is the one that you see most commonly — society’s norm.  A superficial type of change, sometimes you want to change things around just for the novelty of it.  A woman described to me that she drives a different route to work every day.  I asked her why, and she said, “A change is nice.”  Yes, it is.  However, usually you crave variety in order to distract you from what is going on inside.  There are inner blocks preventing your access to the deeper dimension of your own being, so you look for something to create an enjoyable diversion on the outside.

The other type of change is called personal growth. This is a change that clears the inner blocks preventing your experience of your own blissful, eternal, immortal essence.  Of course, if you don’t clear out these inner blocks through yoga, life’s seemingly random events will force you to this change.  Personal growth is actually an opening into consciousness, sometimes in spite of yourself.  It is the clearing away of the inner constrictions that currently block your deep inherent knowing of your own being as Consciousness-Itself.

When you do Svaroopa^® yoga, you are choosing the personal growth type of change.  Whatever gets you started in yoga, when you get the thing you wanted — you were changed.  Maybe you wanted help with your physical aches and pains, healing on more subtle levels (to calm your mind or heal your emotions), or for stress relief and relaxation.  When you get what you have come for, you are changing.  This is personal growth, not just a type of entertainment.  This is an opening into consciousness.

Maybe you even started Svaroopa^® yoga because you wanted to open the inner spiritual dimensions, but when they open — it is still a change from where you were.  Many of you are experiencing all of these changes simultaneously: healings, relaxation and opening into consciousness.  That’s one of the best things about yoga.

Along with change, you also want stability, safety, consistency and security in your life.  You have or you want a home, as well as to work in a fulfilling profession with a satisfying level of personal income and other things as pillars in your life.  You may have pets and you want them to be healthy and live a long time; you want your family members to be healthy and happy, and to live for a long time.  It takes a lot of work to pull this off — you have to do the laundry, get the car serviced, water and weed the garden, and spend time with the people in your life, even when they are cranky and unhappy – or especially when they are cranky and unhappy.  You have to remember their birthdays if you want them to remember yours.

All of this creates an external form of continuity.  You try to create this external continuity because you are hoping for a sense of safety to come from the outside, so the internal levels of panic will subside and your crazy mind will quiet.  The true sense of continuity comes from the innermost essence of your being, the Self.  The Self is consistent, complete, and content — the inner continuity of Consciousness-Itself, Consciousness-Itself being you.

The Supreme Reality of your Own Being is inwardly experienced as unbroken consciousness, the unchanging sense that “I am I.”  It is the unchanging Reality within.  — Shri Shankaracharya, Vivekachudamani

Have you ever been a passenger on a car trip and you nodded off?  You were watching the scenery, and the driver was driving, and you dozed off.  Maybe you were going along through the woods, and then you woke up and you found that you had arrived at the beach.  The outside is completely different and you don’t even know how you got to where you are.  But you still have this sense of inner continuity.  You don’t even have to think of it to make it exist.  You still are who you were, even though you are in a different place.

It’s like this when you go to sleep, even though your mind stops attending to things.  It can rain outside and you don’t know it.  There might be a thunderstorm at night.  The next day, someone says, “Did you hear the thunder?”  “No…  I was asleep.”  You are unaware of the outside, even though things are still going on.  But inside, at a deeper level than sleep, there is the Self.  It never blinks out.  It never goes unconscious — it is Consciousness-Itself.  It is never unaware.  It is always aware — even aware of your sleep.

You may have had the experience that you knew you were sleeping while you were asleep.  The Self is the knower — always aware, knowing all, experiencing all.  The Self is being all.  The one Self has become everything that exists, including you.  So when you wake up, you have this inner feeling of continuity.  Even though your mind was asleep, and the outside was not a continuity of experience, the Self was continuous.  The Self IS continuous.  You exist.

Excerpt from Continuity Amidst Change, published October 2003