By Swami Nirmalananda Saraswati

Built into your humanness is the innate yearning for transcendence, which is cultivated by the Svaroopa^® yoga practices.  While you are moving your body, taking care of your aches and pains, improving your health and mood, increasing your stamina and vitality, balancing your immune system and resetting your endorphins — you are also cultivating the call of your heart for mystical experiences.  Once you truly realize that you cannot get true satisfaction from outside, you can experience the yearning in its true form.  Kusuma Sachs described it beautifully in her blog:

The yearning is a sense of deliciousness that you know is there, but just beyond your grasp.  It is a tingling vibration deep in your being, promising something more, something that you know is more than you can even imagine.  It is the welling up of tears for no reason; it is the  longing for that which you know – and yet can’t grasp onto.  It is the elation that wells up, just by contemplating yearning itself.  It is the swelling of your heart into an expectation of unknown joy.  This is the yearning.  You know it so well.

To allow yourself to feel the yearning directly, without mundanating it, is both painful and delicious at the same time.  I made up the word, “mundanate,” meaning “to make mundane.” It is the opposite of the word “sublimate,” which means to make sublime. The contemplative traditions (monks and nuns) practice celibacy and prescribe that the initiates sublimate their sexual energy.  You may have thought that sublimating means repressing, denying, avoiding or even expressing sexual energy in abnormal ways, and may even have thought that sublimation refers only to sex.  In fact, sublimation means to make the mundane into something sublime, supreme, or complete. In terms of celibacy, it means you turn that overwhelming desire and energy toward God, who provides you with a deeper, more complete satisfaction than you have ever experienced, even with good sex.

While something mundane can be made sublime, it also goes the other way.  The sublime can be turned into the mundane.  This is what I see when I look at the popular yoga calendars.  The sacred postures that open you up to the experience of your own divinity have become circus posters, showing contortionists wearing almost nothing.  When the yoga poses serve their original purpose, they are a rocket ship to God.

You yearn for this experience.  The yearning is built into you, inherent within you and every human being.  Most of the people you know mundanate the feeling and look for satisfaction in a new job, a new pair of shoes, a new spouse, etc.  You’ve tried doing it yourself; after all, you had such good role models!  But it doesn’t work for you.  Somehow you know you are looking for something more.  And you get no satisfaction from all that efforting, as Mick Jagger says:

I try, and I try, and I try, and I try
I can’t get no, I can’t get no…

The “trying” gets in the way.  You get satisfaction by surrendering to your own core essence, which is the divine all-pervasive, ever-existent One Reality, which yoga calls “Shiva.”  You are Shiva.  This surrender is not a “giving up,” but a “giving in” to your Self. Discover your own core essence. Know your own Self.  Be that which you already are, the source of full and complete satisfaction.  And carry that into your life.

Do more Svaroopa^® yoga.

By Swami Nirmalananda Saraswati

An ancient yogic teaching was rendered into a modern-day sutra (aphorism) by Mick Jagger and the Rolling Stones:

I can’t get no satisfaction…

I try, and I try, and I try, and I try…

Your heart and your whole being yearn for a satisfaction that the world cannot provide.  Whether you’re striving for recognition on the job or in your relationships, a new home or a new car, whiter teeth or a better nose, or anything else – you can get it, but you’re still not satisfied.  That sense of full and complete satisfaction is rare, and it is essential.  Without it, life becomes a treadmill with no end in sight.

You have had experiences of complete satisfaction, perhaps better described as supreme contentment.  One tantric text describes how nature can provide such profound experiences, whether you are looking at a vast view, getting lost in the woods or watching the ocean.  In that timeless moment, you feel complete.  You feel whole.  There is nothing you need or want; there is nothing you need to do.  I have heard people say, “If I died right now, it would be OK.”

The first time I experienced this completeness, and I knew I was having an experience while I was having it, was at the top of a mountain.  Mt. Tamalpais is not your ordinary mountain.  Overlooking the Golden Gate Bridge, San Francisco Bay and Pacific Ocean, it is easily accessible — you can drive to the parking lot at the summit.  My cousin took me there one afternoon.  We wandered along different paths across the grassy field adjacent to the parking lot, so I had no clue what lay in my immediate future.  As I came up over a rise, the whole breathtaking scene of bridge, bay and ocean burst open in front of me.  As I write this, the hairs on my arms are standing on end.  The memory of the event places me there again!

Yet I knew that something else was happening.  Something I didn’t understand.  I looked more closely at the bridge, thinking, “Is it you that is making me feel this way?”  I looked at the sunset washing its colors over the fog bank, asking “Is it you?”  I looked for the source of this ecstasy, but I could not find it in any of the things I saw, nor in the totality of the scene.  I didn’t know that the source of what I had experienced, the sense of bursting open, was and is inside.  A few months later, I found my way to my Guru, who gave me access to that inner source, which is my own Self.  Your Self is in the same place, inside you.

Yoga calls this experience pratyabhij~na (prat-ya-bij-nya), which means recognition, referring to the recognition of your own inherent divinity.  This is the only thing that truly satisfies you.  This is why it is so hard to get satisfaction — you are looking in the wrong place.  You are trying so hard, you try and you try and you try to get satisfaction from things that simply cannot provide it.

Why do you try so hard?  One reason is that your hard works pays off, but only sometimes.  Sometimes, like a runner after a long race, you get satisfaction.  You might be exhausted, but somehow, through the exhaustion, that feeling of full and complete satisfaction bubbles up.  Yoga’s ancient teachings explain how this works:  when you gain something you strenuously wanted, your mind stops; every time your mind stops, the bliss of your own being arises within you.

It’s like me standing there, overlooking the San Francisco Bay, realizing that the incredible feeling didn’t come from the view.  It’s not like the view was emanating little bliss-bits that were soaking through my skin to make me happy from the outside-in.  I knew that I didn’t understand the source of my feeling, but now I know why — I didn’t know where to look.

So when you work hard at something, or you desire it hard enough, and then you get it – you experience pratyabhij~na, what the Stones call “satisfaction.”  This happens every time your mind stops, which is why so many of yoga’s practices are for the express purpose of quieting your mind.  And when your mind settles into quietude, you experience the deeper dimension within, svaroopa — your own Self.

Originally published March 2010

By Swami Nirmalananda Saraswati

When you are fully present in your body, it is fully enlivened, yet your experience is that you are Consciousness while living in your body.  A body with no one home is called a corpse.  As you become more embodied and more enlivened, you come to know who you are.  The deeper level of this experiential knowing is the inner discovery of your own Self, your inherent Divinity.  Then you bring it into the world.

• Fully Embodied — Any area where you have pain or tension is an area where you’re not fully embodied. You vacated the area long ago and it’s “dying on the vine.”  Your body is suffering from your absence.  Pain is how your body gets your attention, so you’ll come back and occupy this part of your territory.  Unfortunately, pain also makes you recoil away from the area that hurts, when the exact opposite is needed.  Simply send a few slow breaths into the painful area and it will begin to feel better.  It might take 8 or 10 breaths if it’s been a long time since you lived in there.  And you’ll have to do it again and again, until you move back in.
• Fully Enlivened — Your presence in your body is what makes it alive. As you become more present, your body becomes more enlivened, thus healthier, stronger and more vital.  As wonderful as this can be, the point is not merely about your physical condition.  It’s wonderful to be well and to feel well, but it is merely a symptom of your being present.  This power of your own presence is yoga’s true goal.
• Fully Enlightened — Knowing and being the Divinity that you already are, you radiate Consciousness. Often called “enlightened,” the term implies that you are shining with light, like a light bulb.  You are not merely full of light, you are the light itself, the knowingness itself.  You are the beingness that is being all.
• Fully Empowered — Not merely experiencing the bliss of Consciousness, you bring it into the world in an active way. Making enlightened decisions, you carry them into action.  Enlightenment is not retirement.  Enlightenment is empowerment.  It motivates you to make a difference in the world, not just for the few people you are related to.  Your mission expands along with your ability to accomplish it.

Together these four phrases mean you are Consciousness, being an individual who lives in a body, which is a form of Consciousness.  To know your own Self is to embrace embodiment along with all it brings, yet knowing that you are more than the circumstances of your life or condition of your body.

I coined this phrase to succinctly describe the goal as well as the pathway toward it.  It helps you understand the purpose of the Svaroopa^® Yoga poses and breathing practice.  Each inner opening makes you better able to be present in your body.  Your body becomes progressively more and more enlivened, while you become more fully aware of who you are, the one that lives in your body.  You bring that fullness of being into your life and into the world.

This is pure tantra.  This phrase says that, as you become more established in the Consciousness that you already are, you also become more embodied and more alive.  You participate in life fully.  This is not an ethereal, other-worldly spirituality.  It’s not about becoming airy, frail, impractical, inept or incompetent.  As the full spectrum of human capacity awakens in you, you become more competent, more productive, more powerful and more compassionate, all at the same time.

by Swami Nirmalananda Saraswati & Vidyadevi Stillman

Recently a student arrived at one of our 10-day trainings wearing a hand brace. Her doctor was planning surgery for her debilitating pain, caused by ulnar nerve entrapment; the band of nerves were compressed at her elbow, set improperly after a break thirty years ago, with arthritis also impinging on the nerves.  She says, “In a few days I didn’t need my hand brace — tangible evidence of the opening I was feeling, first in my tailbone and then into shoulders, neck and down my arm. Now, I experience pain occasionally, but my practice takes care of it.”  She also reports that the doctor now says there is no reason to have the surgery.

All these changes came from the inside-out.  Svaroopa^® yoga provides these types of physical benefits because decompressing your spine helps your bones, muscles, joints, nerves and even your internal organs.  Your internal organs don’t function well when they are being compressed, as if “squeezed in a vise,” even for 20, 30 or 40 years.   Worse, spinal compression impinges on the nerves leading from your spinal cord to your organs, so your organs can’t function properly.  Every chiropractor and osteopath will explain how this can affect your digestion, respiration, glands, your heart, etc.

When your Svaroopa^® yoga teacher talks about core opening, she or he means the poses are decompressing your spine, yet it is your spinal cord and nervous system that are of primary importance, not just your vertebrae. This is completely consistent with yoga’s ancient teachings. Thousands of years ago, the sages mapped it all, but at a deeper level than medical science currently explores.

The atomic energy that becomes the physical matter of your own body moves in predictable patterns, with the primary ones shown in this diagram.  Your body is made up of 720 million naa.dis (energy channels), all of them branching out from the core flow in your spine.  Thus the most important naa.di is the central one: your spine.

Madhya vikaasaac cidaananda laabha.h — Pratyabhijnahrdayam 17

By development of the middle channel (your spine), you attain the bliss of consciousness.

Through core opening, not only will you get amazing healings, but yoga promises more:  the bliss of consciousness.  This bliss arises from its source, which is your own svaroopa — your own Self.  Medicine doesn’t talk about this much, yet acknowledges that your “spiritual beliefs” can affect your body’s ability to heal as well as your mental and emotional state.  (D. Aldridge, “Spirituality, healing and medicine,” British Journal of General Practice)

This is perfectly mapped in your naa.dis and cakras (energy centers, pronounced ‘cha-kras’), which are familiar from so many drawings. To the right, you see the central channel (su”sumnaa naa.di) and two side channels (ida naa.di and pingala naa.di). They crisscross at periodic intervals along their pathway from tail to top, creating major cakras (energy spirals) wherever they cross.  Each level relates to a specific capacity in life:

• Muulaadhaara (root) — below the tip of your tailbone; creates a clear sense of individual identity and freedom from fear; blockages create anxiety and fear.
• Svaadishthaana (genital) — at the juncture of your tailbone and sacrum; creates a capacity for genuine intimacy (sexual and non-sexual); blockages create sexual neediness and codependency.
• Manipuura (navel) — at the top of your sacrum; creates a capacity for decision and action in the world; blockages create a need for power and control.
• Anaahata (heart) — at the level of your heart; creates a capacity to love and serve all; blockages create conditional love and clinging.
• Vishuddha (throat) — at the level of your Adam’s apple; creates a capacity to express the light of consciousness through your words and actions; blockages create manipulative words and actions.
• Aaj~naa (eyebrow)— in the center of your skull; creates a capacity to see the Divine in the mundane; blockages create doubt and mistrust.

Cakras are not as important as the media would make you think. There are many people who would love to balance your cakras for you, but your cakras don’t need the work. A cakra is a swirl of energy that comes from two or more naa.dis meeting at that point. If one of the naa.dis is not flowing properly, the energy doesn’t swirl properly.  Even if someone opens or balances your cakra for you, without a consistent energy supply from the naa.dis, it will simply shut down again.

Every Svaroopa^® yoga class gives you a full naadi treatment, thus balancing all your cakras! From tail-to-top, you open your spine so your life energy is flowing smoothly. Your cakras will stay open and balanced for as long as your naa.dis stay open. Of course, relapse happens – but at least you know the poses to open up your naa.dis and cakras for yourself; you don’t have to rely on someone else to do it for you.

Different yoga styles take different approaches to working with your body, which Swami Nirmalananda honors when she says, “All yoga is good yoga!”  Some are athletic; some are gymnastic; some are aerobic; some are slower paced and self-directed; some have a more methodical approach. Svaroopa^® yoga is “laser beam yoga.”  We use poses to target your spine, specifically su”sumnaa naa.di, and clear the blockages.  Your results come from the inside-out.

Even the bliss comes from the inside-out.  Contrast the bliss you experience after exercise or a fast-paced yoga class; that bliss is the bliss of exhaustion, or maybe the bliss of finally relaxing from all the effort you were putting forth, or it could even be the bliss of endorphins. These are wonderful things, but the bliss you experience at the end of a Svaroopa^® yoga class is the bliss of Consciousness, an entirely different thing.  An extraordinary thing!

We call this “core opening.”  Grace turns it into a process of inner revelation. Svaroopa^® yoga is “revelation yoga:” revealing your own Divinity within yourself.  This has always been the purpose of Svaroopa^® yoga.  Core opening does this for every single person who gives it a try — it provides the experience of the bliss of your own Self.  This makes change come from the inside-out.  Do more Svaroopa^® yoga.

Previously published July 2014

by Vidyadevi Stillman & Swami Nirmalananda Saraswati

It is a profound yogic accomplishment to still your body and your mind.  This is actually the purpose of all the poses and breathing practices — to give you the experience of perfect, ease-full stillness.  How peaceful!  How blissful!

In Shavasana, yoga’s relaxation pose, your body lies completely motionless, yet your mind can still be racing and your emotions churning.  We know that the first Shavasana in class is sometimes 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 Svaroopa^® yoga.

Originally published January 2014

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