By Swami Nirmalananda & Vidyadevi Stillman

Yoga’s map of chakras is very well known, a beautiful description of the multidimensional reality within your own body.  Yogis perceived and mapped these energies thousands of years ago.  You may have seen modern drawings of different colored lotuses along a spine, depicting the human energetics system.  Your spine is the main energy channel (nadi) of the 72,000,000 nadis that make up your body.

Three nadis are primary: the central channel through your spine plus one on each side.  Your left and right nadis crisscross several times, creating energy whirlpools that are your primary chakras.  Located along your spine, they are in the center of your torso, both front-to-back and side-to-side.  Each is an energy vortex that can blossom like a lotus, though currently partially closed and probably imbalanced. 

So many books and internet sites offer information though few report yoga’s teachings accurately.  Swami Nirmalananda says, “Artistic misrepresentations don’t help you explore the mystical dimensions within; like a GPS gone awry, they lead you in the wrong direction.”  So, what do you need to know?

Every chakra has multiple colors in it, not the single color usually depicted.  The different colors in the lotus center, on the petals, and in the Sanskrit letters on each petal have deep significance, along with other intricacies to be blissfully explored within.

You have no blue or green chakras.  It is not a rainbow in there!  As you explore, you will find a lot of red in various centers, which is the color of energy, blood and embodiment.

Chakras are grouped along your spine, not evenly spaced.  Check the accuracy of a drawing by seeing if the lower three chakras are all below your waist.  Many modern writers and artists don’t accurately separate your first 2 chakras, at the bottom and top of your tailbone, only 1½ – 2” apart.

You have only 6 main chakras, not 7.  The energy center at the top of your head is not a chakra, because it is not a whirlpool where nadis cross.  And it’s already open.  This is the good news.

The value of this map of Consciousness is that it clearly displays the inner process of spiritual development, uplifting your focus from your lower three chakras, through your upper three and beyond.  Chakras 1, 2 & 3 are about external circumstances and your power of choice; 4, 5 & 6 are about progressive openings into transcendental consciousness.  Beyond chakras, your sahasrar blossoms you into what you have always been, though you didn’t know.

Before Kundalini can arise, She descends — Shakti (cosmic energy) contracting to become the individual and the universe.  This contraction is from top-to-tail, a downward flow through increasing levels of densification and individuality.  Shakti locks Herself down in a coil just below the tip of your tailbone, at which point She is kundala (coiled), therefore called “Kundalini.”

Svaroopa^® yoga pose sequences always start at your tailbone, creating an inner opening from tail-to-top.  This invites your next step: the unlocking of the energy at the tip of your tailbone for the inner arising of Consciousness-Itself (Kundalini).  For this you need shaktipat, the awakening of Kundalini.  This is the job of the Shaktipat Masters.  Swami Nirmalananda says, “This is the great gift I received from my Baba, and share with you today.”

Originally published September 2017

Swami Nirmalananda & Rukmini Abbruzzi

Not even switching from pumping iron to pumping out Sun Salutations will do it.  If working on your body would make you enlightened, all the joggers and weight lifters would be on their way to enlightenment.  You must also engage your mind in your spirituality or your mind will hold you back.

As powerful and reliable as the poses are, your mind is the primary cause of your physical tensions. You tuck your tail under like a frightened puppy with every stress, every worry, and every fearful thought.  Consider how many of these thoughts do you have in a day.  Could you ever do enough asana to counter them?

You take a Svaroopa^® yoga class and the lengthening of your tailbone reliably opens the doorway to your innermost essence.  Your body, mind and heart all open up blissfully as well.  Yet ten minutes later, a driver cuts you off on the road or you indulge in a favorite worry, and your tail tucks under again.  You instantaneously re-install those painful patterns of tension and compression. Rukmini shares:

I’ve experienced my mind’s ability to tighten my body all too many times.  Once at the end of a class, I rolled on to my side after Shavasana feeling so wonderful: relaxed, peaceful, content, at ease.  I stood up to leave, looked at the time and realized that class had run late and I’d be late for the babysitter. Before I knew it, my tailbone tightened and I was practically back to square one – the contentment and ease disappeared.  All it took was a thought.

When class ends, you still have to deal with your mind.  It’s wonderful that yoga offers more practices for your mind than the number of physical poses.  Mantras, chanting, sutra study, seva and vichara (self-examination) free you from old mental and emotional patterns.  This means your mind won’t tuck your tail under again.

While the Sanskrit word “asana” is familiar, usually defined as “pose,” it has very ancient roots.  In the many versions of Sanskrit over five or more millennia, the meaning and use of “asana” has remained the same.  It means “to sit.”  Patanjali says your seated pose must be “sukha” (literally meaning sweet, which is relaxed and comfortable) and “sthira” (steady, motionless).  The physical benefits you gain from your other asanas make you able to relax into your upright seated position without slumping or wiggling.  As you settle in your seat, your body and breath settle into stillness, bringing your mind to stillness as well.  That’s the doorway into meditation, the ultimate yogic practice.

Meditation makes you new again. Your inner immersion dives into more subtle and expanded levels of your Self.  You become the vibrant, peaceful, whole, complete, joyful you that you always wanted to be, because it’s who you really are.  It’s who you have always been, just behind the churning of your mind: svaroopa, your own Self.

Asana is a great start towards discovering what is and has always been there – your own Divine Essence, hidden within you. But it’s just a start.  A baby step. To get the rest of what yoga promises, you have to stop moving.  Think of it as an “adult time-out.”  You also have to get up out of Shavasana and sit.  In fact the seated pose is the king of all yoga poses; it is the supreme physical accomplishment.

Swami Nirmalananda reports on a national yoga conference she attended.

Medical researchers were giving slide shows summarizing their research on yoga, each one having 20 minutes to educate all of us.  My airplane was late, so I sat at the back of the hall, behind 2,000 yoga teachers.  I was horrified to watch them wiggle and squirm through the second presentation.  Before introducing the third presenter, the emcee announced, ‘We’ll have a break soon.  I know you can’t sit.’  Don’t they know that the purpose of all the asanas is to make you able to sit?

Sthira-sukham-aasanam — Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras 2.46

Asana (the seated pose) is motionless and comfortable.[1]

This is why Svaroopa^® yoga teachers emphasize the seated poses.  In Teacher Training, we begin with seated poses in our first immersion, Foundations, returning to them many times in the two or more years of training.  Our final module focuses again on the seated poses, precisely because they are the most important poses.

Pose by pose, Svaroopa^® yoga unravels the deepest layers of tension in your body, tensions that you’ve been accumulating for years, for decades, even for lifetimes.  These tensions and blockages have made you tired and cranky, literally bent out of shape. Each time you dissolve these core tensions, you are gaining more of the healing benefits of the poses:  increased strength and flexibility, improved balance and posture, reduced stress and anxiety, normalized blood pressure, stabilized blood sugar, better bone health, younger spine, improved immune system, better sleep, enhanced focus, uplifted mood, deep sense of well-being, peace of mind, increased happiness.  All of these and more are yours when you make yoga a regular, ongoing part of your life.  The benefits of yoga are truly amazing.  And meditation offers even more.

Originally published April 2016

[1] Rendered by Swami Nirmalananda

By Swami Nirmalananda & Rukmini Abbruzzi

You are so much greater than you could ever imagine!  Yoga’s sages say your inherent essence is the whole of Divine Consciousness.  How great is that?  Yet your Divine Essence is hidden within and must be unveiled. The human condition is that you don’t know your own Self.  The ultimate task of every human life is to discover who you really are.  Yoga’s stated goal and purpose is to unveil your spiritual greatness to you.  The sages gave us the asanas (yoga poses) as a way to start that process.

While recent research studies prove yoga’s value, those studies are not proving that yoga is better than exercise. Sometimes exercise beats out yoga in the studies, though sometimes yoga beats out exercise.  Sometimes they come out the same. Research proves that exercise gives you 90% of yoga’s benefits because they are studying exercise-oriented yoga styles.

But what if your yoga is a spiritual practice?  Researchers haven’t studied Svaroopa^® yoga, so they haven’t compared spinal decompression to exercise.  They haven’t compared the bliss of the Self to the bliss of jogging.  Even if they do begin these comparisons, they’ll probably continue to measure physical and psychological benefits, not spiritual progress.  Yoga’s stated goal and purpose is to unveil your spiritual greatness to you.

The true value of Svaroopa^Ⓡ yoga’s poses is found in the inner opening to your own Divine Essence.  Fortunately, the same poses free you from pain, open up your breath and heart and give you a new lease on life.  But their true value is their spiritual power.

While you can use the blissful baby steps of Svaroopa^® yoga poses as an entry point to meditation as well as work on your mind and heart with yoga’s many powerful techniques, there’s more available. Svaroopa^® yoga is all about your spine because of the meditation energy that arises through your spine.  It is because this uplifting energy flows upward that you have to sit up.  Get your spine vertical.

Your own inner power of revelation, the energy of your own enlightenment is arising within you.  Called Kundalini in Sanskrit, it has been sparked awake by the Grace that underlies and infuses your practices.  This is the gift that Swami Nirmalananda brought from India and passes along to us.  If your goal is a spiritual goal, if what you want is liberation, this energy of upliftment will carry you all the way.

Along the way, this Divine inner arising expands what you get from yoga exponentially.  Amazingly, meditation will fix your body, open your heart and transform your mind, while it gives you your own Divinity.  You can have it all!  The goal is greater than merely the physical and psychological benefits yoga poses offer.  The goal is your own Greatness.  And with the Grace of your Svaroopa^Ⓡ practices, your goal is guaranteed.  Dive inside and discover your Self.

Excerpt from Asana, Mind & Grace, originally published in April 2016

By Swami Nirmalananda & Rukmini Abbruzzi

Musicians, artists and writers base their livelihood, even their life, in their creativity. Yet everyone is creative, even if you don’t think of yourself that way. For example, coming up with a solution to a problem is creative: that moment where you think, “Oh!  I know what to do about that.” That aha moment is an inner arising; it bubbles up just as joy and happiness do. You have an amazing potential hidden inside you.  So how do you tap into that potential and become more creative?

You currently use your creativity in a limited way: to plant a garden, to decorate your home or your body, or even to bring a new life into the world.  Creativity is blissful!  This is why there are so many arts and crafts stores with so many options for you to explore and enjoy.

Rukmini remembers how much her children loved to be creative:  “They’d come home from pre-school with more drawings and paintings and macaroni art than could ever fit on the refrigerator, excited and happy to share each one with me.”  Do you remember the joy and pride of showing your mom, ”Look what I made!”  Being creative feels wonderful, because in your own small way you’re being Brahma.  You’re experiencing the flow of Consciousness, being Shiva and manifesting something from your own being.

Swami Nirmalananda says, “When my Guru was living and teaching in Los Angeles, we held many programs on creativity, which were well attended by actors, screenwriters, producers, cinematographers, musicians, set designers, etc.  The famous and the wannabes came.  They wanted to tap into their creativity and Baba showed them the way to the source of their creativity — inside.”

Your Svaroopa^® yoga and meditation practices progressively dissolve your creative blocks.  Energetic blockages in your spine keep you from your own creativity and worse, keep you from experiencing the source of your creativity — your own Self. Especially once Kundalini is awakened, your yogic openings clear the way for your creative capacity to blossom forth from within, along with the radiance and bliss of your own being.  Meditation is particularly effective because it is the direct route to your own source, plus it clears and reconditions your mind, so the light of creative consciousness can shine into your life and into the world.

Don’t allow yourself to get sidetracked along the way.  It’s easy to lose track of your goal to know your own Self when a solution to a problem, an idea for a song or other creative impulse bubbles up during your meditation.  Your mind has a catcher’s mitt, so you start catching the arising bubbles, which makes your meditation be merely about your life, a way to solve problems or make money.  This is a trap.

Remember the goal — to know your own Self as Consciousness-Itself.  Meditation will take you all the way in, but you have to put down your catcher’s mitt and meditate longer.  Get past the rising bubbles of creativity to find the source they’re coming from – your own Self which is Consciousness-Itself.  You will not only get one answer from there; you’ll find all answers there.  You don’t merely have the capacity to be creative for a few moments.  You are the Source of creativity itself.  When you base your life and being in that inner reality, you live in an endless flow of creativity that never dries up.  You won’t have to wait until you meditate.  You will live in the experiential knowing (svaroopavidya) of your own Divine Essence.

Originally published August 2015

By Swami Nirmalananda Saraswati

Once I received initiation from my Guru, the fire of yoga began to blaze within me.  I wanted to surrender to this inner flame, and learned how under my Guru’s watchful care and guidance.  Kundalini taught me about core opening, through the physical movements (kriyas) she prompted in my meditations.  My gratitude will never end for what my Baba gave me.  He was one who could give the gift of enlightenment!

Yo’vipastho jna-hetushcha — “Siva Sutras 3.29

Only a yogi with mastery over the wheel of energy is capable to enlighten others

Along with this inner awakening, He taught me to trust what Kundalini brought forth within me.  Every time I had a doubt about a new level of inner opening (and I had many doubts), He reaffirmed for me that I could trust the arising of Consciousness within me.  By the time he sent me back to America and I began teaching, I knew that I knew.

Your practice of the discipline named Svaroopa^® yoga, based on the key principles of precision and compassion, allow you to mimic the physical processes I went through in my early years with my Guru.  The awakened Kundalini moved me through the full range of yoga poses, but in a way that opened my spine effortlessly — a radical departure from what I was doing and what I saw others doing in our yoga classes, as we tried to move our bodies into our idea of the picture-perfect pose.  I knew that “imposing” the “pose” on my body was wrong because I experienced the grace and ease of each pose in my meditations, when Kundalini moved me.

As my process advanced, I left the physical kriyas behind and experienced Kundalini clearing my mind and heart.  She unraveled the crazy-bits, of which there were many, by tracking them to their inner-most kernel: again and again I confronted the fear that drove all the crazies.  But I couldn’t unravel the fear.  My Guru did that.  I know what Grace is, for it begins the process (through Shaktipat initiation), supports the process (the ever-present umbrella of Grace) and it completes the process (the inner revealing of who you really are).

Even if you don’t know what Grace is, Svaroopa^® yoga is the yoga of Grace.  Every time you target the core tensions and melt them away, tail to top, you open yourself to Divine Grace again.  Core opening is a process of inner opening, surrendering the way you resist your own Divinity and surrendering to the inner Reality of your own Self.  The practices invoke the blessing of the ages, coming from the sages and masters of yoga, those who are gone and those still alive.  Most students of Svaroopa^® yoga experience Kundalini awakening within their first two years of regular study and practice; many experience this incredible gift in their first class or in their first year.  Or you can simply come to a Shaktipat Retreat and get it in a weekend.

What will Kundalini do for you? How do you know if your Svaroopa^® yoga practices have awakened this Divine Power of Revelation within you?  If you feel the inner heat climbing your spine or radiating from your core, the revelatory power of Consciousness (Kundalini) is awakened and working within you.  If you dive in deeper than deep, losing track of time and place, the doorway to your own Divinity has been opened; Kundalini is opening you from the inside out.  If you find yourself lifted or moved effortlessly into a deeper angle in a pose or even right into a painful spot (to burn it away), the fire of yoga (Kundalini) is moving you light-years in a few breaths.

When you get inner answers, always right even when they don’t make sense, Kundalini is showing you how to live your life by the inner compass.  When you stop craving things that your mind still says it wants, Kundalini is freeing you from your compulsions.   When you find that everything you thought you wanted is just a summer rerun, and you realize that what you want is something more… you’re on the path.  This is yoga.  This is Svaroopa^® yoga.  The Yoga of Grace.

Excerpted from Swami Nirmalananda’s Contemplation Article, June 2012

By Swami Nirmalananda Saraswati

The millennia-old yogic tradition is based on yogis helping yogis.  While Western yoga is focused mainly on entry level practices (poses, breathing practices and chanting), there’s help every step of the way.  Even if you’re doing it yourself by working through a yoga book, DVD or website, you’re getting a boost from the writer of the books and cards and the makers of the DVD and websites.  You don’t have to reinvent the wheel.

As your yoga progresses into the subtleties, into the more powerful realms of inner exploration, the help you get also becomes more subtle and more powerful.  Yoga calls this k.rpa or anugraha, Divine Grace.  Your interiorization moves through stages of contemplation (dharana) and meditation (dhyana), culminating in profound and deep experiences of inner absorption (samadhi).

Practitioners of Svaroopa^® yoga’s core opening poses already know the early levels of samadhi, found so easily in the seated poses and twists, and especially in your many Shavasanas.  To excavate more deeply within, all the way to your inner Divinity, you have to sit up.  All your spinal release has prepared you for an easy seated pose, so the meditative energy (Kundalini) can climb your spine.

Divine Grace is the power of revelation, described in the “Siva Sutras:

Yo’vipastho jna-hetushcha — “Siva Sutras 3.29

Only a yogi with mastery over the wheel of energy is capable to enlighten others

This sutra is saying that there are yogis who are capable of giving enlightenment to others!  What kind of amazing gift is that?  Personally, this is what got me into yoga and kept me so focused for so long.  Having met such a yogi, my own Guru, I knew I was being given a gift beyond comparison — Grace.  I wanted it.  I knew yoga’s promise was true because I tasted it again and again; samadhi is a taste of enlightenment.  I dedicated my life to finding all that yoga promises.

Yoga leaves no stone unturned.  If yoga left stones unturned, the crawly critters in the hidden corners of your mind and emotions would keep you from knowing your own Self.  You must unmask your inner demons, but you don’t have to do it alone.  You will outgrow your fears and obsessions; this is yoga’s promise.  This is due to the power of Grace.

Svaroopa^® yoga is the yoga of Grace.  For me, it is the yoga of Grace because I got it from my Guru.  For you, it is the yoga of Grace because it jump-starts your inner evolution, the discovery of your own svaroopa — your own Divine Beingness, your Self.

Excerpted from Swami Nirmalananda’s Contemplation Article, June 2012

by Swami Nirmalananda Saraswati & Vidyadevi Stillman

The universe is constructed in a spiral.  The energy that becomes the atoms that become matter moves in a spiral.  You see the spirals in the sky: over 100 billion galaxies spiraling into existence.  From the macrocosm to the microcosm, it’s all spirals: consciousness even spirals into matter by becoming your DNA.

First just enjoy the marvel of it! How incredibly beautiful! How incredibly powerful!  How incredibly Divine! Consciousness becomes everything by spiraling into contraction.  You see it outside and inside; your body, mind, emotions and even your spiritual process are based in the spiral.  You can even see the cyclical patterns in your life.

The spiral also shows up in your spine.  Your spine unfortunately has a little curvy twisty spiral, which becomes a side-to-side curvature called scoliosis.  It’s created by the compression and the twist in your spine, which starts at your tailbone.  The core opening of Svaroopa^® yoga lifts and lengthens your spine, unraveling the twist just like you would unravel the twist in a garden hose by lengthening it out.  Any chiropractor or osteopath can explain how this improves the condition of your internal organs, your nervous system, your Immune system, your breathing, your vision, etc.

Along with your internal organs, the twist in your spine even affects your brain.  Everyone has their own little kinks and peculiarities; you might call it a different twist on things. Yet you know that most of these are not beneficial.  You can create self-inflicted pain by twisting your mind, by tying yourself up in knots, whether it is over stuff that happened today, yesterday or years ago, or maybe never happened and never will.  Core opening unravels the knots in your mind and emotions as well as your body, giving you the ability to grow past the stuff that you use to get stuck on.  From yoga’s perspective, this is the transformation of small “s” self.

Everyone knows they have some work to do on themselves. That is why the self-help industry is so huge.  Most people are working on their self (small-s self), the superficial sense of identity that affects how you see the world and (most importantly) affects how you see yourself.  While the changes you get from core opening do help you with your mind and emotions, yoga says there’s a point where you need to address your mind and emotions directly. This is more complicated than simple body-stuff.

Swami Nirmalananda says, “I have recommended to many yogis that they go for marriage counseling, for psychological or psychiatric counseling.  I have seen them get the support they needed to get past stuff that was tying their ‘small s-self’ up into knots.  I consider them to be spiritual warriors when they tackle that toxic waste dump in their mind and emotions.”

When you experience your own Self, it feels so familiar.  This is because you have accessed your own Divinity so many times, by using reliable external triggers, like a beautiful view, a walk in the woods, the sky, the ocean, or the taste of chocolate, freshly brewed coffee or any other favorite food.  You love these things because they stop your mind; when your mind stops, you experience your own Self.  Yoga teaches you, instead of looking for external triggers, how to stop your mind directly, so you can live in the ever-arising bliss of consciousness that is your own Self.

Yoga explains that seeking happiness from outer things works for you, but it works indirectly:

tadaa dra.s.tu.h svaruupe ‘vasthaanam — Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras 1.3

In the moment your mind stops, you experience the bliss of svaroopa.[1]

Let’s say you are visiting someone and when you arrive, you smell baking chocolate.  Mmm!  You ask, “What’s going on in the kitchen?”   They bring out a plate of warm, fresh homemade chocolate chip cookies.   As the cookies come closer to you, you start getting happy.  Does happiness emanate from the cookie, as if “happy-molecules” were traveling through the air?  No, the joy arises within; it’s an inner experience.

Look more closely at how the experience occurs.  Your mind is fixated on the cookie as it comes toward you, “Cookie!  Cookie!  Cookie!”   Then you take hold of a cookie and your mind stops.  When your mind stops, the joy arises from its inner source, which is svaroopa, your own Self.  Your joy does not come from the cookie; joy does not spread through your mouth.  You think it is about the cookie, but it’s not.  Actually what happened is that you just found a way to quiet your mind.

The happiness that you think comes from an external object is actually an inner experience, the experience of capital “S” Self arising within you.  Arising from inside, it blasts your mind and heart open, even if only for a moment.  This is why people love hiking, their pets, certain songs or anything else.  The yogis promise that you can live in the inner arising all the time.

The most powerful way to get there is through the flow of consciousness that is ever vibrating in your spine.  To open up the full flow is the purpose of all the Svaroopa^® sciences, to uncoil the coiled energy that is anchored just below the tip of your tailbone. That energy is Consciousness-Itself, installed within you, in a specific form that uplifts and transforms you completely.

As Consciousness spirals everything in the universe into existence, it spirals down in the human being (from top-to-tail) into a coil of 3½ spirals, rooted at the tip of your tailbone.  This specific energy now is named Kundalini because “kundala” means coiled.  The Grace inherent in the practices of Svaroopa^® Yoga and Svaroopa^® Vidya unravels the contraction, so this energy of Consciousness now arises within you, from tail-to-top.

This is the specialty of the Svaroopa^® sciences.  Some yogis want to go for that inner opening directly, so they get the mantra and learn to meditate, or they come to a Shaktipat retreat.  Other yogis wait until their poses and practices trigger that bolt of illumination to climb their spine.  Do you suppose this could already be happening for you?  If you have experienced heat when you’re in a well-propped, well-aligned pose, especially a seated pose or reclining pose, the answer is yes.  You are not “working out,” so how can you be getting hot?  It is important to know that it is not a hot flash (for females of a certain age).  The inner heat is one of the earliest signs that Kundalini is awakened and is beginning to do your work for you.

This inner energy of upliftment works most powerfully in meditation.  Vidyadevi describes, “In meditation, I feel Kundalini climb from the base up, unraveling my spine and giving me a lift and a lengthening.  She opens an inner doorway for me to settle deeper and deeper into my own Self.”

Everything comes into existence by spirals.  Consciousness ravels into form — your form.  There, Consciousness is coiled, ready for the inner unraveling.  While you may be focusing on your physical tensions, the real problem is that they slow the flow of consciousness through your spine, in the same way a river with lots of curves has a slower current than a straighter river.   Unraveling your spinal compression is very beneficial:  to make your body function more effectively, to make your mind function more powerfully, but also to open up a greater spiritual depth within.

Svaroopa^® yoga opens up access to your own inherent spirituality.  You get all three at once: body, mind and Self.  You find your own wholeness by working in all the dimensions simultaneously; it works no matter what practice you do.  This tantric interweaving is the secret power hidden in the Svaroopa^® sciences.   You do a single practice, but you get benefits in multiple dimensions simultaneously.  Do more Svaroopa^® yoga.

Originally published in October 2014

[1] Svaruupe is a form of svaroopa, meaning your own Self, your Divine Essence.  Sutra rendered by Swami Nirmalananda

By Swami Nirmalananda Saraswati & Rukmini Abbruzzi

I wondered what people got from walking a labyrinth, so I decided to try one.  I didn’t have any kind of special experience at the one in my nearby park, so I thought I’d try a better labyrinth and went to Grace Cathedral in San Francisco.  They had just installed two labyrinths, outside in the garden and inside the cathedral.

From my hotel, I took the cable car up the hill, then stepped down into the street.  I walked across a little strip of grass and a cement sidewalk to place my foot on the first stair step up to the Cathedral’s property.  A bolt of energy shot up through my whole body!

I stopped, very clearly experiencing Kundalini’s message, ‘This is holy ground.’  I wasn’t even in their garden yet, only on the cement steps leading up almost two floors to get to their grounds.  Wow!

I climbed the steps, tried out both labyrinths and still found nothing special there, but that’s because I was already in the center — in the Self.  Yoga gave that to me, not anything outside.  But I did learn about sacred ground.  It’s not just the statue or flame in the temple that is sacred; it’s the whole temple and the ground on which it stands.  The same is true of your body.

If your body were merely a house for your soul, your body would be an inert substance or form, enlivened by your Divine Essence.  Instead, your body itself is Consciousness, every cell formed of Consciousness-concentrate.   One yoga text explains the details by mapping how Consciousness becomes the Universe, including you, even your body and your mind:

Sa chaiko dviroopas trimayash chaturaatmaa sapta panchaka svabhaavah.

 — Pratyabhijnahrdayam sutra #7

Though Consciousness is One, She becomes 2-fold, 3-fold, 4-fold and of the nature

of 7 pentads (7 x 5= 35).[1]

Every sutra is rich and dense with meaning, yet this one gives more than most by naming 4 different maps of creation!  There is the 2-fold map, the 3-fold map, the 4-fold map and the 35-fold map.  While all these maps are true and all of them are occurring simultaneously, right now we’ll focus on the four-fold map.  In the sutra, Shiva is the One Reality, being named as “Consciousness,” also referred to as “She” when manifesting a universe.

In the four-fold map, Consciousness (She) first manifests as the void. When you have a deep and profound meditative experience, you’ve experienced the void, an infinite inner nothingness, except that it is NOT nothing.  It’s Shiva, becoming the void to hide Himself/Herself/Itself from yourself.

Within the void, while being the void, Shiva moves.  That movement is called prana.  This second level of manifestation is the energy that brings life to this universe, called prana.

Prana, the energy of life itself, begins to coalesce into subtle forms, like moisture coalescing into clouds in the sky.  These different forms of prana become individual and separate beings on the subtle levels, pouring themselves into the five senses and the mind — becoming your five senses and your mind.  This is the third level, made of pure energy.

That Divine energy condenses and concentrates into the fourth level of manifestation, your physical body.  This is how your body comes to exist (with your parents getting involved too, of course).  This is how everyone’s body, and every tree and every bunny and every rock comes into existence.  It’s all energy, the “She” in the sutra, manifesting as matter.  The physical form you see is just the outermost level of the Divine levels of manifestation that are all going on at the same time.

Rukmini describes being in a class led by Swamiji:

“At the end of the class, Swamiji invited us to open our eyes.  And when I did, the expansiveness and fullness I had been feeling inside was visible outside too. It felt like I was the ocean, and my body a wave of the ocean, each breath a gentle bob of the wave.  Every other body around me was another wave of the same ocean, bobbing slightly with each breath and small movement.  Even the air around us, the sounds that moved through it, the floor beneath us, was the same ocean.”

Your body is a Divine Temple.  It is Consciousness-Itself that houses the Divinity (you) that is Consciousness-Itself.  Whether you study the teachings or not, the core opening practices of Svaroopa^® yoga will give you the experiential knowing of your own Self, the Divinity that is Consciousness-Itself.body

Yoga’s timeless goal is the continuing experience of your own Divinity and to see that in all others. Do more yoga.

[1] English rendering by Swami Nirmalananda

Originally published March 2014