by Swami Nirmalananda Saraswati & Vidyadevi Stillman

Some yoga poses are called “heart openers,” making people expect that they will become emotional.  Instead, when the pose is aligned and propped effectively, you get an inner opening to your deeper essence, called yoga’s heart.  Similarly, mantra repetition, chanting, sutra study and meditation do this work in you, especially once you have received Shaktipat.

Aasanastha.h sukha.m hrade nimajjati.  — “Siva Sutras 3.16

The yogi established in a steady posture easily becomes immersed in the heart.[1]

“Immersed in the heart” does not mean to be immersed in your physical heart or your emotional heart, but to be immersed in the heart of beingness.  It’s what yoga does for you – immerses you in the heart of your own beingness.  This is the essential part of every human being, that core essence that yoga names “svaroopa.”

Yet this sutra is not talking about heart opener poses.  This sutra promises that you can use your body to get to your own essence, but the pose you need is the seated pose.  This is a very important pose!  Your teacher emphasizes your ability to sit in a steady pose with a comfortably upright spine because, when you simply sit, you settle easily into your heart, svaroopa.  You sit in your own Self deeply.

This sutra says you don’t merely have an experience, like a glimpse of your Self, but that you become immersed in your heart.  It is not like you’ve gotten a little wet while walking in a rainstorm, so you come inside to get dry.  When you get “immersed,” it means you are always wet — saturated with your own essence, svaroopa.

Heart-full experiences are essential to life.  Without them, life has no meaning. You want to have the feeling of your heart being full in two ways, both being filled by others as well as overflowing with what you have to give.  The danger is that emotional fulfillment can become slavery’s ball and chain, or goad and whip — the ways that people try to limit and control others.  You already know what it is like to have others try to limit and control you, and you have returned the favor.  The problem is that you’ve been looking for the “filling up” or the “overflowing out.” Mistakenly, you call that love, when the inner reservoir is where the love is; the infinity of your own svaroopa is made of love – and more.

Vidyadevi tells of a longtime friend who got married, having already decided she did not want to have children.  Within her first year of marriage, she accidentally became pregnant.  She was deeply worried as she could not imagine how she was going to love this child, but of course she found that she had plenty of love.  A couple of years later, she found herself pregnant again.  When they talked, her friend shared that she loved her first child so much she didn’t think she had any more love to give.  Well, she found out that she could love both of her children fully.  A couple more years passed and she became pregnant with her third child.  Again she found that she could love all three with so much love.   Her love was endless for her children.  Consider, what if she had one or three more – could she love all of them?  What is the capacity of the human heart and where does this capacity come from?

“Hrade” in our sutra comes from the Sanskrit word “h.rd” meaning heart.  In this sutra, “heart” refers to the ocean of your own immortality.  Your heart doesn’t need filling.  It is already the ocean:  the ocean of your own immortality.  When you realize what is there in the core of your being you will recognize:

1. That ocean is not yours: it is not yours to own, not yours to keep, not yours to control
2. You are the beneficiary: the one that benefits the most is you, even when you draw from the bottomless depths to overflow onto others
3. It will always be there: the fullness of that ocean will always be there, for you are the ocean of immortality.  You will always be there.  This is your own Self.

Perhaps now you can see that the amount that flows in and out is merely a trickle compared to what is already there.  Most people are measuring the flow and calling it love, but yoga shifts your attention to sitting in the presence and beingness of your own Self, which is the fullness of your own heart.   Your heart is everything you think it is, yet it is so much much more.  To explore the more, do more yoga.

Originally published February 2014

[1] Rendered by Swami Nirmalananda Saraswati

by Swami Nirmalananda Saraswati & Vidyadevi Stillman

Your heart is an essential and amazing part of your body.  It is a hard-working internal organ, pumping blood (containing oxygen, nutrients, hormones, etc.) to every cell of your body, including your skin, your muscles, your other organs and all the way into the cells in your bones. It beats 100,000 times a day, over 35 million times a year.  It began beating before you were born! Even if you’ve had some problems with your heart, it has worked for a long time and is continuing to serve you still.

You could even pause here to say thank you to your own heart.  Take a moment, a few breaths and say thank you to your own heart.  In that moment of gratitude, you might even feel a feeling in your heart, a tangible feeling inside.  Now you’re looking at another meaning of the word, “heart.”

In English, “heart” also refers to your emotional condition.   You talk about your heart when you’re having an emotional experience.  So many English idioms express this:  with all your heart, to take heart, the child won everyone’s heart, to have your heart set on something, to follow your heart… In everyday conversations, when you use the word “heart,” you are usually talking about love and emotions.  This means that heart is a very important part of life!

Yet the word “heart” also has a broader meaning, used when we are talking about:  the heart of the matter, let’s get to the heart of it, to put your heart into it.

Yoga teaches you to put your heart into whatever you are doing.  Even businesses want their employees to put their heart into their work.  They don’t want their employees to become emotional and “wear their heart on their sleeve”, but they want their employees to bring some core, some essence or some meaningful quality to their interactions with customers.   This is because, when you are a customer, you want the person who is helping you to truly care about helping you.   

Yoga’s vocabulary agrees with all these definitions of “heart” and more, describing the heart as a gateway to the essence of a human being.  Swami Nirmalananda describes it this way:

What is the essence that is found in every human heart?

What is it about a human being that, no matter who they are, where they have been and what they have done, that there is still some essence, an essence of vital importance?

Whether we consider convicted criminals on Death Row or a child who is lost in the woods, each one is important.

Each one is a human being.

Each one matters.

There is something in every human.

What do you call that essence, found in every human heart?

Finding this essence is yoga’s goal, clearly described by the sages in the core of yoga’s teachings, in the heart of yoga’s teachings:

Aasanastha.h sukha.m hrade nimajjati.  — “Siva Sutras 3.16

The yogi established in a steady posture easily becomes immersed in the heart.[1]

“Immersed in the heart” does not mean to be immersed in your physical heart or your emotional heart, but to be immersed in the heart of beingness.  It’s what yoga does for you – immerses you in the heart of your own beingness.  This is the essential part of every human being, that core essence that yoga names “svaroopa.”

Originally published February 2014

[1] Rendered by Swami Nirmalananda Saraswati

by Vidyadevi Stillman &
Swami Nirmalananda Saraswati

It is quite an accomplishment when you still your body and your mind!  In every Svaroopa^® yoga class, we begin with Shavasana and the Guided Awareness.  You can make your body lie completely motionless, yet your mind is racing and your emotions churning.  We know that sometimes the first Shavasana is the hardest pose of your whole class.

You could be lying physically still because you don’t want to disturb your neighbors, but inside there is no stillness.  You have brought your body to a halt yet your inner speed continues.   From time to time this happens for anyone. Yet yoga says that if you just keep your body in stillness, your mind is going to slow down.

Sthira sukham aasanam — Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras 2.46

The (yoga) pose is motionless and easy.

While this sutra is really about the seated poses that lay the foundation for meditation, it applies to every yoga pose.  In every pose, you are looking for that point of sthira (absolute motionlessness) and sukha (complete ease).  When that happens, something more happens.  It is the “something more” of yoga that happens.  What this means is, just like the researcher said, “…your mind completely switches off.”  That is the beginning of everything!

Even when your first Shavasana is hard for you, your second Shavasana is quite different —  a little slice of heaven!  This is because all the other poses got you ready for Shavasana.  The ultimate purpose of all those other poses is to get you ready for the stillness and for what happens in that profound inner stillness.

While you may not always hear the words being said, our Guided Awareness in the final Shavasana ends with words that point you inward:

Being aware of your whole body…

or being aware of awareness itself…

or follow awareness into its source…

Rest in That.

That stillness and ease, which began with your body, gives you more, beginning with your mind becoming still.  This is not merely a deep relaxation of your body.  It’s not merely a respite from your thoughts and emotions. This is a tangible opening to something more, something greater, something more core to your being, something more essential — an opening to the something that is called your Essence.  It’s called svaroopa, your own Self.

Medical literature has been validating the health benefits of relaxation for 30 years or more.  All this research has helped to give yoga’s practices a respectable name in the scientific community, for which the yogis are grateful.  But consider this:  yoga was doing those practices long before science thought they were respectable.  Yoga has other practices that haven’t yet been documented by science. What might those practices do for you?

While science can tell us a little bit about the health benefits of deep relaxation, it hasn’t even begun to catch up with a yogi.  Every yogi who begins the science of yoga is doing a scientific exploration within the multidimensionality of her or his own being, using proven methodologies, every time they do their own yoga practice.  Do more yoga.

Published January 2014

by Vidyadevi Stillman &
Swami Nirmalananda Saraswati

The Guided Awareness in Shavasana is not a “Guided Relaxation.” You’ll never hear your teacher say, “Relax your feet and ankles,” or, “Let your legs soften.” In a Guided Relaxation you are relaxing, which is a type of doing, trying to relax the areas of your body that feel tense.  How can that ever be successful?

Try it this way:  right now, relax your shoulders.  You can even speak directly to your shoulders.  Say, “Shoulders, Relax!”  Does it work?

Not really.  Bottom line:  thinking is not relaxing, in case you haven’t noticed.  When you think of your toes, your toes are not going to relax.  But when you become aware of your toes, something amazing happens.  Of course, it may take a little bit longer to become aware of your toes, but that’s merely because you are not well practiced at awareness. Swami Nirmalananda says, “You have had a lot of practice with thinking, but you are not yet that good at awareness.”

When you cultivate awareness of your shoulders, they relax! From this you can conclude that awareness is relaxing.  Fortunately, the medical community is now validating your personal findings through their studies of “the relaxation response.”

Under Dr. Herbert Benson, researchers at Harvard Medical School discovered long-term practitioners of relaxation methods (such as yoga and meditation) have far more “disease-fighting genes” active compared to those who practice no form of relaxation[1]. Other medical researchers have found that yoga, meditation, and even repetitive prayer and mantras all induced the “relaxation effect,” a phenomenon that could be just as powerful as any medical drug but without the side effects.

One researcher explained it this way, “What you’re looking for is a state of deep relaxation where tension is released from the body on a physical level and your mind completely switches off.  The effects won’t be achieved if you are lounging round in an everyday way, nor can you force yourself to relax.  You can only really achieve it by learning specific techniques.”

Those techniques are not new.  They are the ancient science of yoga.

Published January 2014

[1] http://www.smh.com.au/lifestyle/relax–its-good-for-you-20090819-eqlo.html

by Vidyadevi Stillman & Swami Nirmalananda Saraswati

“Become aware of your toes, all ten toes, all at the same time…”

Your Svaroopa^® yoga class begins with these words, while you are reclining in Shavasana.  Your teacher guides you progressively through each area of your body in turn. Yet this is not a body inventory.  We are not doing this so that you will count your toes and fingers, checking that you have every body part.  Also, it is not an analysis of how you look to yourself or others.  It is not even about labeling parts of your body as good/bad, painful/not painful, want/don’t want, etc.   Usually when you look at your body you have some of these types of thoughts:  “How do I look?  How am I doing?”

The Guided Awareness is a consciousness practice.  This means it is a training in consciousness, a training in pure awareness.  Unfortunately when you do a body inventory or analysis, you’re mixing thoughts into your awareness.  Such thoughts are like a stream of pollutants, actually making the inherent power of your own awareness less powerful. In addition, most thoughts are toxic.  Think about it. In fact, I dare you to think a non-toxic thought!

Of course there are many non-toxic thoughts you could think, but the point is that you rarely use your mind this way.  Of course, you may have already mastered this and habitually think non-toxic thoughts, almost of the time.  Unfortunately, non-toxic thoughts are more prevalent. Yet, to be “aware” (without thought) is a whole different thing.  The power of pure awareness.

Vidyadevi shares, “Early on, I discovered that if I was watching TV or my mind was busy, the poses didn’t make my body feel better.  I had to be ‘in it’ for it to work.  Being present makes a difference.”

In fact, this is what yoga is all about — about you being present.  Swami Nirmalananda describes it this way, “The practices make you present in your body and breath; they make you present in your life; they make you present within yourself.  And when you’re present, you’ve got you.”

Published in January 2014

by Swami Nirmalananda Saraswati & Rukmini Abbruzzi

Yoga’s practices provide you the experience of your Self as the whole ocean of Consciousness.  Especially with the spinal decompression effects of Svaroopa^® yoga poses, these experiences are easier to access and they last for longer periods of time.  To attain the permanent state, your most important practice is meditation.  Yet it is mantra that gives you meditation, so you must repeat mantra.

If you’re interested in improving your body, your most important practice is Ujjayi Pranayama.  If you’re interested in improving your life, seva (volunteering) is the most important practice.  Swamiji says, “So many practices, so little time.”  You must choose which practices to do with your available time.

Of course you can do all of them, but don’t think that the goal is to be doing yoga all the time.  This is not about increasing your yoga time so that you can crowd out the other parts of your life, especially the parts that are painful or uncomfortable.  This is not about using yoga to withdraw from life and relationships.  It’s not even about becoming established in a steady state of all-knowing, ever-blissful Beingness.  If that were the goal, this wouldn’t be a tantric path.  This path embraces the whole of life, the whole of Consciousness, recognizing the Divine in the mundane and the mundane as the Divine.

Svaroopa^® yoga practices are tools to open up your inner experience.  They are doorways to finding the whole universe that is within your body.  The promise is that, when you open your eyes, you’ll remain in that profound inner state.  You won’t lose your Self when you go back to your life.  You’ll recognize everything you see and every person you meet as another form of embodied Consciousness, the One Reality in a multiplicity of wonderfully different packages.

Every interaction, whether it’s with a friend or a stranger, becomes a dance of the Divine meeting the Divine, Consciousness playing with Consciousness.  Life will still bring you tough stuff.  You’ll still experience pain.  This is because you’ve got karma.  But you’ll no longer suffer in the midst of painful experiences, nor suffer when you cannot attain pleasurable experiences.  Both pleasure and pain are Consciousness; neither one is more desirable than the other.  Pleasure won’t make you any fuller because you’re already full.  Pain won’t diminish you because nothing can take you away from your Self, because there’s nothing that’s not you.

Swamiji remembers her Guru explaining it so beautifully, that you will find only your own home everywhere you go.  You will see that there is no reason to worry. You will meet only yourself everywhere you go, because there is no one else and nothing else in the universe.  You are the One who has become all that exists.  When you see the world, you are looking into the mirror of your Divinity all the time.

Living from the depth of your own embodied Beingness, fully present and engaged in the world that you recognize and celebrate as the same embodied Reality.  This is your future.  Do more yoga (and meditation).

Originally published in May 2014

by Swami Nirmalananda Saraswati & Rukmini Abbruzzi

If we could be there with you, we could ask you a simple question in a very personal way, “Who are you?”  What’s the first thing that pops into your mind?  Would you say, “I’m a yogi,” or “I’m a wife/husband,” or “I’m a parent?”  Instead, what if your very first thought was, “I am Consciousness.”

The goal is to abide in svaroopa-vidya, the experiential knowing of yourself as Consciousness-itself.  Once you know, you will never not know.  What’s more, you will recognize everyone and everything as an embodiment of the same Divine Reality.  This description of your future comes from a yogic text:

Chidaananda laabhe dehaadi.su chetya-maane.svapi.  Chidaikaatmya pratipatti daardhya.m jiivamukti.h.  — Pratyabhijnahrdayam 16

When the bliss of Consciousness is attained, you are established in the permanent identity of Consciousness, while you experience your body and all objects as forms of Consciousness.  This is liberation while alive.

You don’t yet live in that knowingness all the time.  Instead, you get your sense of identity and personal meaning from your body, your relationships, your job, your age, your gender, your skills, etc.  Think of it all in a new way:  you have a body, an age, a job, but these are things you have — not things you are!

All these outer realities are important to you, yet they will inevitably change.  You are the unchangeable capital-R Reality that is hidden at a deeper level within.  Each of your identities is limited compared to who you really are at the deepest level.  The sages describe it like the ocean.  You are the whole ocean, with each identity being a current in the ocean.  When you’re caught up in the stuff of life, you’re caught in a current, buffeted by the waves.  You must dive deeper into your Self, so you know that you are the whole ocean, including the currents and the waves.

Svaroopa^® yoga gives you powerful tastes of this deep, calm, peaceful, blissful, expanded state, because your innermost essence opens up when you decompress your spine.  Plus the Shavasana at the beginning and end of your classes settle you deeper within.  In addition, you are used to the halo effect of your practices, the way your yogic state affects how you show up for life:  you are nicer to your family; you take difficult things in stride; your internal pressures lessen or dissolve.  Unfortunately, they come back.  This happens because your state is not yet steady; you are not yet established in svaroopavidya, the experiential knowing of your own Self.

Svaroopa^® yoga poses give you a temporary experience of peace and bliss.  When you have this experience, you have stepped into in the beginning stages of enlightenment.  Then you lose it.  So you need to do more yoga, to experience the peace and bliss of your own Self again.  And again.  And again, every time you do core opening poses.

Instead of experiencing peace and bliss, what if you experience yourself as the source of peace and bliss?  This sutra says you can experience this, and that it will be all of the time.  How?  By doing more yoga.  All of yoga’s practices teach you to be a scuba diver, to dive beneath the waves and swim in the vast inner space of consciousness — your own Self.  Swamiji describes the process in an informal sutra:

Again, again and again turns into always.

Originally published May 2014

By Swami Nirmalananda & Vidyadevi Stillman

When you are becoming embodied in your own body, grounding and rooting into individuality (small-s self), you expand into your Self (capital-S Self).  People think grounding and rooting are limiting, but being spacey is what is limiting.  Being out of your body is completely limiting.

When you get present in your body, you get expanded when Guru’s Grace is part of the equation.  Without Grace, grounding into your self (small-s self) makes you feel small, lonely, needy, anxious and inadequate.  It’s Grace that turns the inward way into an expansive way.  In meditation, you invoke Grace when you repeat mantra and meditate on your own Self.  In poses, you invoke Grace when you lengthen your tailbone and open your spine.

This means that, as you become more embodied, you discover that Self (capital-S Self) is found in your own self (small-s self).  You come to know, “Oh, I am I!”  Most people think enlightenment is going to be, “Oh! I am something other than what I always was.”  In fact, the moment of recognition is, “I am I.”

Look at it from the other way around:  you won’t realize your Self (capital-S Self) by running away from your self (small-s self).  When you lengthen your tailbone, it is like lightning striking the earth from the sky, coming all the way down and grounding into being you.  This is the Self (capital-S Self) grounded in the self (small-s self).

Try explaining it to yourself it this way:

• When I get present in my self (small-s self), I am
• When I am present, I am
• When I am aware, I am awareness — I am Self (capital-S Self).

Vidyadevi shares a recent meditation that showed her this.  “I was repeating mantra and easing back into my Self.  Then I felt a thin sheet of almost-liquid come down.  It was clearly Nityananda’s[1] presence.  At that point my awareness deepened even more.  I was behind my mind; I experienced bliss.  When my meditation period ended and I opened my eyes, I was still in bliss and behind my mind.  From a deeper place inside I was looking through my mind into the world.  I was still self (small-s self) but grounded in Self (capital-S Self).”

This means that Self (capital “S” Self) is found in self, revealed through Grace, as Nityananda did for her.  Yoga defines grace as one of the five Divine powers, specifically the power of revelation, meaning — Grace Reveals.  Svaroopa^® yoga is the yoga of Grace.  Swami Nirmalananda explains, “It all comes from the initiation Nityananda gave to Muktananda, who gave it to me, and now I make that available to you. The blessing flows from one generation to the next, including straight to you.”  The lineage is like a riverbed, which concentrates the flow of water to make it accessible to all.  By doing any Svaroopa^® yoga or Svaroopa^® meditation practices, you step into the river, so you get wet.  You position yourself to get drenched with Grace.

The flow of Grace is concentrated in a person.  That’s the Guru, the one who carries it to the next generation.  A river without a riverbed is a flood; you need a riverbed to concentrate the water and make it safe and usable.  The Guru is the person who serves as the riverbed, so that the Grace can flow through.  Technically, it is the flow of Grace that is honored by the Sanskrit word “guru.”  The Guru is not a body make of flesh and blood.  The Guru is not a man or a woman.  The Guru is not an individual being or personality.  “Guru” is a function:  the bestowal of Grace.  That job is given to a person, who is acknowledged by the title denoting what they do, “Guru.”

Swami Nityananda (note 1) was asked by a member of the local legislature to define “Guru’s Grace” (guru-k.rpa).  He responded with the following questions: “Where is your hometown?  How long does it take to get there by road?  By sea? By rail?”  After the man replied, Nityananda asked how long it would take by air.  The legislator said that it would take less than 30 minutes.  “Guru’s Grace is like air travel,” Nityananda said, “providing the shortest and fastest way to the place of our origin — in the Infinite.”

How many lifetimes do you want to do, before you discover that the Self (capital-S Self) is found in your own self (small-s self)?  People go round and round in circles for lifetimes, focusing on distractions and mistaken goals.  Yoga’s ultimate goal is to give you your own Self.  Life’s ultimate goal is the discovery and ongoing experience of the bliss of your own Self, in your own self.

When you use Svaroopa^® yoga to align your spine, you place yourself in that flow of Grace. Nirmalananda’s studies and dedication to Muktananda guarantees it. This is why Svaroopa^® yoga works so quickly, deeply and profoundly — this is a path of Grace.  Get drenched and hop on the airplane!  Do More Yoga!

[1] Swami Nityananda was the Guru of Swami Nirmalananda’s Guru, Swami Muktananda