By Sadguru Swami Nirmalananda &
Vidyadevi Stillman

Avail yourself of yoga’s full range of technology, which goes beyond mere physical development to incorporate mental, devotional and meditative practices.  The poses are meant to prepare you for the study of sutras, along with chanting and meditation.  Each of these disciplines offers you significantly more than yoga poses can ever provide.

Your mind is more powerful than your body. This means that using yogic tools to develop your mental capacity gives you more benefits than poses could ever do.  These tools are called j~nana yoga, the study of the texts.  In addition, in the Svaroopa^® Sciences, we work proactively on unraveling the way you use your mind.  Instead of tying yourself up in knots, you can begin unraveling it with vichara (Svaroopa^® yoga’s guided self-inquiry).

As you understand yoga’s teachings, you better understand life, as well as yourself and others around you.  This changes everything.  This is why we include contemplations, like mini-sutras,  at the end of every Svaroopa^® yoga class.

Your heart is more powerful than your mind.  You develop your heart’s capacity through yoga’s devotional practices.  When your heart meets God, or even turns toward God, who is going to be changed — God or you?  You don’t even have to believe in God for it to work, just like you don’t have to believe in gravity for it to work.  The yoga of your heart, bhakti yoga, is included in Svaroopa^® yoga through the background music of sutras and chants, as well as in the final pose, Yoga Mudra.  In this yogic seal, you place your head below your heart, bowing to your teacher and her/his whole lineage of teachers.

Meditation is the most powerful and most beneficial of yoga’s technologies.  How amazing that you get so much when you are doing nothing!  Modern research is beginning to prove what the sages always emphasized, that this is the cream of the practices, called raja yoga (king’s yoga).  As wonderful as each of the other practices is, their purpose is to give you easy and deep meditation.

This is the point at which Gurus come into the picture.  In earlier stages, the busy-ness of your body, mind and heart kept you focused on the practices instead of where they came from.  The doing-ness seemed most important.  Yet you got those practices from someone who had already done them.  That teacher is called “guru,” even if she/he lives in your home town and isn’t yet enlightened.  Even your local piano teacher is called a “piano guru.”  In the West, we use a capital letter on the title Guru only when we’re referring to an authorized spiritual teacher, one who can take you all the way.

For true and fast spiritual development, you must pick a path and follow it to its end.  Every genuine path has a living Guru.  Mindfulness meditation, Zen, Tibetan, Christian contemplation, the power of now, kabbalah and Svaroopa^® Vidya Meditation — all have living Gurus.  If there’s no Guru, the path is not true.  Someone must have attained the promise or it is another false promise.  The one who attains and shares is called Guru.

Do you want to climb with a guide who has only seen satellite photos of the trail?  Vidyadevi says, “I have climbed in the Himalayas.  I always had a guide.  I was protected and took the safest and most direct route to the top.  In the same way, I have a spiritual guide — Swami Nirmalananda.”

The texts emphasize you must test the Guru.  The test is two-fold:  inside and outside.

First you check inside to see if you are getting uplifted in the Guru’s presence or by their teachings.  It’s obviously working if you’re experiencing the bliss of consciousness, your own svaroopa.  But it is also working if you are churning inside, with all your “stuff” coming up in order to be expelled from your system.  To test the Guru further, follow their teachings for six months and then reevaluate how this is working for you.

Secondly, you look at those who have been studying with the Guru for the longest.  See if they are more peaceful and more blissful, but also if they are becoming more effective in the world.  Or are they using their spirituality to escape?  Another thing to look for is that they are unique individuals, not all clones of each other and of the Guru.

When the Guru passes these tests, you can apply yourself to their practices for another six months.  Swami Nirmalananda says, “After doing several six month periods, I realized one day that I’d forgotten to check in with myself.  I was surprised to see that I’d been studying with my Baba for over six years.  It was then that I knew that this path was working for me.  It made me able to apply myself more fully.”

Svaroopa^® yoga offers all the above yogic technologies because it is a maha yoga, one that interweaves all the yogas together.  While your Svaroopa^® yoga class emphasizes the physical practices, every class introduces mental, devotional and meditative processes.

Most importantly, Svaroopa^® yoga is a Shaktipat yoga.  Whether you begin at your tailbone, or with the sutras, devotional practices or meditations, studying with Swamiji guarantees you will receive this inner awakening.  This is the beauty of a Kundalini master.  Nirmalanandaji received Shaktipat from her Guru more than 40 years ago.  She knows the path and what it will give.  This is why she continues to say, “Do more yoga.”

Originally published March 2016

By Sadguru Swami Nirmalananda Saraswati

In 1969 Swami Satchidananda opened the Woodstock Music Festival, ending with teaching everyone to chant Hari OM.  A modern-day Guru and cultural icon, he was famously quoted as saying, “All paths lead to the same goal.”  This is not the whole quote.  Unfortunately, this partial quote is often used to justify spiritual dabbling.  What he said was, “All paths lead to the same goal, but you have to pick one and follow it to the end.”

Just like a mountain with many paths, you must pick one in order to get to the mountain peak.  If you keep switching trails, you will wander around the mountain forever.  You will certainly have wonderful experiences but you’ll never make it to the top.

In yoga, the goal is the experience of your own Self, the Ultimate Reality within.  Even more, it is about living in that Reality all the time, “Self-Realization.”

You may be motivated by a simpler goal: you do yoga so you will feel better.  This is a great reason to do yoga.  In Svaroopa^® yoga you get what you want because this practice excels at healing what ails you.  Pain and stress melt away as you lengthen your tail.  Illness and injury heal more quickly.  Yoga even improves conditions that modern medicine doesn’t know how to treat.

Many different styles of yoga poses are available in the West.  They all provide dramatic physical benefits as well as stress reduction.  However research shows that exercise also provides the same benefits, sometimes even more effectively.  If exercise gives you the same results as yoga, then what’s so special about yoga?

Swami Nirmalananda describes, “When I returned from my Guru’s Ashram, I discovered that yoga was changing in America.  A teacher of another style told me proudly, ‘We’re taking the mysticism out of yoga.’   I was shocked!  I’d given years of my life to learn the mysticism of yoga.  They were doing everything they could to make it merely physical.  It’s no wonder I had to create a new yoga style.”

This means is that it matters what “brand” of yoga you do.  While one will give you beauty and gracefulness, does it free you from anxiety?  Other styles make you sweat or jump in and out of poses, but you may still have back pain.  You can do yoga poses on a trapeze but still get upset when life brings you back down to earth.

Svaroopa^® yoga is a mystical science, not merely an athletic endeavor.  This means it gives you mystical experiences, fulfilling the promise made by the ancient sages of India.  Svaroopa^® yoga is spiritual yoga.

By Swami Nirmalananda Saraswati

When you are touched by the raw power of a lightning storm, the quietude of a forest glen or the softness of a deer’s eyes, you are using something in nature to effect an internal change.  It’s like a switch is flicked inside.  You are suddenly stilled.  You are deeply still and profoundly aware.

Yoga says you don’t need an external trigger to experience this deep inner beingness-awareness-bliss — it is your own Self.  Every time you have an experience of the Divine Within, you are irrevocably changed.  It’s not just a change; it’s upliftment.  One Sanskrit text describes it this way,

Tajjah samskaaro’nya-samskaara-prati-bandhee. — Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras 1.50

After an experience of The Self, your mind bears an impression of consciousness within it, which prevents other impressions from taking hold.

You must imprint your mind with more experiences of consciousness!  It already has too many imprints that lead you in other directions.  Your mind has the accumulated imprints of all the things you’ve experienced in this life as well as powerful impressions from your previous lifetimes, all impelling you toward repeating the same things again.  To get off the karmic merry-go-round, you must actively intervene in the process or it becomes a “Willy Wonka” tunnel with no escape:

There’s no earthly way of knowing

Which direction we are going

There’s no knowing where we’re rowing

Or which way the river’s flowing…[1]

Upliftment is the key.  Yoga is the science of upliftment.  But you are not being lifted up into another realm; you become more present in this realm, on this earth, in your own body, in your own life.  You become radiant with your own Divine Essence.  The way upward is inward.

This is a different direction than most systems, even most religions, teach you.  There are even meditation systems that say you must transcend this earthly plane, you must be lifted up into the light and that you will only arrive once you leave your body.  Years ago I flew into my then-home in San Diego, arriving to the news that 31 people had killed themselves so they could ascend to a higher level.  This is not yoga.

The yoga poses come from the Tantric Sages who practiced in the Himalayan caves, far away from the mainstream spirituality of the time, partly because mainstream spirituality said you had to reject the body in order to find God.  The tantrics said, “Your own teachings say that Shiva has brought forth all that exists out of His own Divine Beingness.  Thus, everything is holy, even my own body.”

Their spiritual endeavors began with Grace, through a transmission of energy from the Guru, which awakened the yogi’s inner power of upliftment, Kundalini.  As this sacred energy unfurled from tail to top, different yogis had different experiences depending on their personal readiness and individualistic nature.

Those who were more kinesthetic, rather than visual or auditory, experienced physical movements.  Others copied their spontaneous movements, which are today’s yoga poses.  Some yogis believe the forest sages made up the poses, having their disciples stand like a tree or move like a cobra, but the origin of these sacred body movements is in the sacred — not in the mind.

Doing the poses invokes the experience that those initiates were having, the inner experience of your own Divinity.  Svaroopa^® yoga excels at this because it is the yoga of Grace.  I have devoted my life to the force of Grace, as did my Guru and his Guru before him.  We focus on core opening so that your spine becomes open and breathing and your spinal energy moves freely.  In other words, while you get the physical benefits that Svaroopa^® yoga promises, you are getting more.

Yoga guarantees the upliftment of your own consciousness while you live in your body, a body that is being purified and made sacred through your breathing and your poses.  These changes in your body makes you able to see and to be the Divine Reality.  You also see, and even revel in, a Divine World made of out one thing:  Shiva.

Originally published July 2012

[1] Excerpt from “Wondrous Boat Ride,” song from the 2005 movie “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory”

By Swami Nirmalananda

Life makes sure you continue to grow and change whether you want to or not.  Life pushes you through so many lessons you try to avoid.  It’s a karmic truth.  But yogis do it differently.  Yogis are proactive about change, a specific type of change called upliftment.

Many people actively seek out self-improvement through the arts, travel, continuing their education, therapy or introspection, or an ever-expanding circle of people and experiences.  As wonderful as these growth experiences are, they are not the same as upliftment.  The upliftment of your own consciousness is yoga’s promise, even when you are simply doing a few poses to improve your physical condition.  Yoga sneaks up on you.

The physical changes provided by Svaroopa^® yoga’s core opening have a profound effect on your body, but also on your mind and psyche.

• While increased flexibility protects you from injury, even making your tissues healthier and younger, it also makes your mind more flexible, more adaptable and resilient.
• As your muscles lengthen and become less dense, your mind and heart are becoming more open.
• Your breathing capacity expands as your core opens up. This physical change makes you feel less contracted as a person, more expansive, even generous and compassionate.
• As your spine lifts and lengthens, you stand taller in the world, more willing to be authentically you, as well as to speak up for yourself and others.
• As your rib cage opens, your heart opens. You become more understanding of others and more compassionate, even to those who have hurt you in the past, whether you are in communication with them or not.
• As your tailbone lengthens, you become free from fear. Anxiety cannot take over your mind anymore, so you have lots of extra energy and enthusiasm for life.  What is there that you cannot do?

When I meet someone new, which often happens on an airplane, they usually ask what I do.  I give them an easy answer, “I teach yoga.”  Thirty years ago they answered me, “Yogurt?”  Now they say, “I should do that.”  They all know they should be doing yoga.  They all know that yoga would be good for their body.  They even know that yoga offers something more, which they prove to me by saying, “Yoga is good for stress, right?  I need to learn how to relax.”

What they don’t know is that yoga is doing more to you, with every yoga-breath and every yoga pose.  It’s a sneaky system:  it will make you spiritual even if you didn’t want to be.  It’s deeply fulfilling.  It makes life worthwhile.

Your religion may be important to you, so you don’t need the spirituality that yoga provides.  How fortunate you are!  Yet yoga will still offer you spiritual benefits, deepening what you get from your church or temple.  Many yogis find their religious background to be unsatisfying, yet they still have the innate human hunger for the experience of the Divine.  Our modern world reinforces nature as a place to go to be touched by God.  Maybe music does it, or maybe for you it’s art that does it, or you get it through visiting ancient sites or monuments.  Yoga does it too.  Yoga specializes in Divinity — yours.  Yoga opens your inner experience of your own Divine Essence, called svaroopa, your own Self.

First published July 2012

By Swami Nirmalananda Saraswati

Birth is an extraordinary moment of creation — a new life beginning.  Death is an ending. Everything in-between is called “maintenance,” taking care of yourself, your life, your loved ones and your possessions.  These are three of the five cosmic powers, functioning in your life, even flowing through your own actions.

The fourth of Shiva’s cosmic powers is concealment, hiding your Divine Essence from you.  Revelation is the fifth of these powers, also called Grace.  You may have thought that “grace” meant something graceful, beautiful, flowing and elegant.

More expansively, you may know that you want Divine Grace to make your life easier: finding a new job, a new spouse or a better situation.  Yoga says, as important as these all are, they fall within the third power of God, maintenance — not Grace.  As important as these things are, they are not what Grace is about. Grace is the fifth cosmic power:  the revelation of your own Divinity.

Knowing your own Divinity does, of course, make all the maintenance easier!  That happens because you are coming from a deeper place within.  Being based in your own innermost essence, you are not as reactive.  You are not as superficial. You are not as needy.  You are more compassionate.  You are more able to go with the flow.  Life gets easier, even when it is hard.

Einstein understood revelation.  He would sit in a chair, set a spoon across his knee and stare at it until it fell.  In the time between it leaving his knee and landing on the floor, he saw the structure of the universe.  Yoga calls this pratibha, inner visions or insights.  Consider the length of time between the spoon leaving his knee and landing on the floor.  In that instant, he saw the structure of creation.

His problem was that he didn’t know how to meditate.  He needed a spoon!  In the time between his knee and the floor, he got insights about how the universe worked, then he would write mathematical formulas to try to explain it.  He wasn’t figuring out a formula that would get him to an unknown result. He knew what was there because he had seen it, so he was trying to use mathematics to explain it.  He got it from the same place the ancient sages got it from, in-sight.  Revelation.

His insights were profound and have had a significant effect on our world, but yoga says this is a limited use of your inner vision.  There is so much more to discover inside:  the Divinity of your own Being.  How do you get there?  By quieting your mind, only you don’t need a spoon.

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

In the moment that your mind becomes still, you are established in your own Divine Self.

This is why Svaroopa^® yogis love Shavasana.  Just as Einstein discovered, that the instant your mind settles, your own Divinity is revealed to you.  Even a moment of that experience heals all the wounds, dissolves the memories and frees you from old patterns that keep you limited.  It takes only an instant to have an experience of your own Self.

It’s like lighting a match.  How do you light a match slowly?  You can’t.  It flares in an instant.  Svaroopa^® yoga is not stair-step yoga.  Svaroopa^® yoga is the yoga of Grace; it is the yoga of revelation.  Grace gives you your own Self.  To receive this Grace, do more Svaroopa^® yoga.

You may have thought that “grace” meant something graceful, beautiful, flowing and elegant.  More expansively, you may know that you want Divine Grace to make your life easier: finding a new job, a new spouse or a better situation.  Yoga says, as important as these all are, they fall within the third power of God, maintenance — not Grace.  Let’s look at it again.

by Swami Nirmalananda Saraswati

There are so many wonderful things about Shavasana, especially when you have the props that make it possible for your spine to relax.  But the real reason you love it is because you dive in deeper.  What is deeper?  Deeper is the experience of your own Self.

Shavasana is not a nap.  If your head stays in the middle, you’re not sleeping.  You’re experiencing your own Self, your Divine Essence.  If your head turns to one side, even slightly, you do fall asleep; you are not experiencing the Self.  Check it out.  In a Shavasana, turn your head toward one side a little bit and remain in the pose for the same amount of time.  You can tell that it’s not the same. The nap makes you feel a little tired as you are getting up.  Instead, with your head in the middle during your Shavasana, you experience a profound deep immersion into Self.

The physical improvements you get from Svaroopa^® yoga are amazingly easy.  It works from the inside-out; we call it core opening.  This spinal decompression provides physical benefits, plus it creates a deeper opening, into your Self.  It becomes easy to explore who you are at the innermost level.

Deeper than your body, deeper than your mind and heart — who and what are you?  You find your answer by finding your Self, “svaroopa,” which is your Divine Essence.  Knowing your own Self is the real purpose of Svaroopa^® yoga, the mystical secret hidden in the seemingly simple physical processes.

Your body is a living body because the energy of enlivenment flows through your spine.  Named “chi” in Chinese, Sanskrit calls this energy “prana.”  As your core opening increases, your pranic flow opens up, making you progressively healthier, more alive and even younger.

Once you get enough opening at your tailbone, the Grace of Svaroopa^® yoga ignites a more powerful current: the enlivening and enlightening power named “Kundalini.” This is your own inner force of upliftment, working within you to reveal your own Self to you.  This is Shaktipat, the specialty of Svaroopa^® yoga.  This is why Svaroopa^® yoga is the yoga of Grace.

Grace is a technical term in yoga, classified as the fifth of Shiva’s Divine Powers, clearly described in the Pratyabhij~nah.rdayam:

Aabhaasana-rakti-vimar”sana-biijaa-vasthaapana-vilaapana-tastaani.  — Sutra 11

Shiva performs the five processes on the cosmic level [as well as on the individual level]:  manifesting, sustaining, ending, concealing and revealing.

Shiva is the name we use for Ultimate Reality, the “who” that brings these powers into being and uses them to create the world and to become you.  As an individual, you use all five of these powers, though in a more limited way because you don’t yet know you are Shiva.   These five powers are:

• Manifesting: Shiva creates the universe and all that is in it, including you. As an individual, you create a family, music, a beautiful meal, a garden, etc.

• Sustaining: Shiva maintains the universe, keeping it going, including continuing to be you. As an individual, you maintain your relationships, your home, your car, your job, and more.

• Ending: Shiva is the destroyer as well, bringing about endings every day. A tree falls in the forest.  A beloved person or pet dies.  Everything that was created reaches an ending point.  As an individual, you destroy things:  even relationships, jobs, or a place where you live (when you move).  Sometimes endings are thrust upon you; sometimes you choose them.

• Concealment: Shiva conceals His own Presence within each being, each object and each atom of the universe, including you. As an individual, you hide your feelings, you hide parts of your life from others, and you hide your mistakes or your ability to do things well.  The power of concealment means a hidden dimension is there in everything, including the Divinity hidden within you.

• Revelation (Grace): Shiva reveals His own Presence within all that exists. Grace is the power of revelation. The ultimate revelation is your own Divinity — Shiva is revealed as your own Self.  As an individual, you also reveal things.  You show someone an easy way to do something, you say something that sheds light on the situation, or you do something uplifting for others or for yourself.

Svaroopa^® yoga is the yoga of Grace, meaning it is the yoga of revelation.

OM svaroopa svasvabhavah namo namah

To your Inherent Divinity, again and again I bow.

excerpt from article published June 2013

By Vidyadevi Stillman & Swami Nirmalananda

In embryonic development, the spine forms first.  The whole rest of your body, including your brain, formed after your spine.  Swami Nirmalananda explains yoga’s perspective on this, “Consciousness manifests everything in this universe.  Consciousness used your spine to direct your embryonic development as well as to empower everything afterward.”

Your brain blossoms forth on one end of your spinal cord.  Most people think their spinal cord is a tail on their brain, but it’s actually the other way around.  Your brain is the mushroom cap on the top end of your spinal cord.  Your brain does not control your whole body, your spine does!

While Svaroopa^® Yoga’s core opening poses give you more prana (energy) to fuel you through your day and through your life, there is more.  Once you get enough lengthening of your tailbone, Grace ignites an inner fire — the enlivening and enlightening power called Kundalini.  This is your own personal power of upliftment, working within you to show you your own Divine Essence.  In yoga, Grace is defined as the blessing of the ancient sages, carried into our modern day by those who dedicate their life to discovering, and then sharing, these ancient mysteries.

What this means is that Svaroopa^® yoga is “Kundalini yoga.” Swami Nirmalananda has been doing this work quietly for years, not publicizing this information for several reasons.  One is that few know what Kundalini is, so hearing that Svaroopa^® yoga awakens Kundalini wouldn’t mean anything to them.  In addition, others unfortunately suffer from widespread misinformation that makes Kundalini sound terribly scary.  The greatest blessing a human being can receive in their life is the awakening of this inner force of radiance, but the media makes it sound terrifying.  It’s not.

Another reason that we don’t publicize Svaroopa^® yoga as Kundalini yoga is because another style of yoga practice that uses that name.  We choose to be respectful and not to create confusion.  You may have done some Kundalini Yoga classes, which usually feature pumping your breath in rhythm with repetitive movements.  Swami Nirmalananda says, “While, from my perspective, it’s spinal tightening, it is also ecstatic.  They pump enough prana that the bliss pushes past the knots in their spine.  In Svaroopa^® yoga, we don’t pump the prana because we dissolve the knots in your spine and let the prana flow of its own accord, 24/7.”  We allow Grace to awaken Kundalini so the whole interior process takes place naturally, organically, smoothly and grace-fully.  We call this “Alignment with Grace.”

Once your own Kundalini is awakened, most yogis get a feeling of physical warmth or inner spaciousness.  Within a short time it may become a periodic surge of energy, while you are doing poses or meditating, which further dissolves the blocks you carefully installed, probably even lifetimes ago.  As you open more, this inner current becomes a reliable flow that expands your knowing of your own Being and makes you able to see the world in a whole new way.

Each stage along the way offers profound transformations, which help to uncover your deeper identity as Consciousness-Itself.  This is Self, svaroopa.  This is the inner blossoming of your own Divine Essence.  Vidyadevi describes, “At first, waves of bliss would move up my spine in meditation. As my spine became more open, I had a stronger experience of that bliss.  In meditation, it was like a geyser was flowing through, not made of water, but of pure bliss.  It was so powerful, so wonderful.  I know now what Sage Shankaracharya describes in the Vivekachudamani — ‘ever expanding ecstasy.’  It is always flowing through your spine.  It is there to be experienced and so much more… your own Self.”  Do more yoga.  Do more Svaroopa^® Yoga.

Originally published in May 2013

by Vidyadevi Stillman &
Swami Nirmalananda Saraswati

Everything physical is made of atoms, including you.  Atoms are made up of subatomic particles, which are tiny bits of contracted energy swirling around in seemingly-empty space.  The subatomic particles that make up your Svaroopa^® blankets and that make up the floor and the air that you breathe aren’t any different than the subatomic particles that make up your body. Everything is made of protons, neutrons, electrons, quarks, muons and other things the average person doesn’t really understand.  Everything is made of these same “building blocks,” yet everything is different.  The difference arises from the patterns in which the particles swirl. Different patterns create different objects, including you.

There is an energetic pattern for the human body — a template.  We all have two eyes, one nose, one mouth, two arms, two legs, etc.  The ancient yogis mapped the energy patterns of the template, an atomic map of the human body. Their map is the foundation for acupuncture as well as many of yoga’s practices.  Acupuncture calls these energy flows meridians. Yoga calls them nadis.

Thousands of years ago, yogis mapped all of the 720 million nadis in the human body.  All of them branch out from the core flow, in middle — your spine.  Your nervous system is the physical equivalent of the nadis with all your nerves branching off from your spinal cord.  If scientists designed an instrument to detect these energy flows in the human body, they would find the template the yogis describe, and tell you that your spine and nervous system hold the highest concentration of energy in your whole body.   Unfortunately this means that your spinal tensions have not only physical effects, but they also block the flow of the energy that keeps you alive.  Svaroopa^® yoga specializes in core opening, which is the decompression of your spine, both physically and energetically.

When you begin Svaroopa^® yoga, you get rapid, almost miraculous improvement in your physical condition.  From foot and knee pain, through digestive imbalances, to neck or jaw pain and even headaches, core opening helps all of them, even all at the same time.  Chiropractors and osteopaths explain how this works, a familiar paradigm.  Yet yoga describes more:  the energy that makes your body’s energy grid work, called prana in Sanskrit, is the power of your own presence enlivening your own body.  Decompressing your spine is like getting the kinks out of a garden hose, so your whole body becomes more fully alive, enlivened by you, from your spine outward.

When we use a particular pose to release tension in muscles connected to your tailbone or another part of your spine, we are working on your physical anatomy.  Your body feels more open and free, which creates an instantaneous effect on your mind.    Yet more is going on, whether you’ve been able to identify it or not yet.  Simultaneously, the angles of all the poses are opening up subtle energetic levels.  Yoga describes that the fullest potential of a human being becomes available through this inner opening, specifically through your spine.

Madhya vikaasaach chidaananda laabhah

— Pratyabhijnahrdayam Sutra 17

By means of the middle channel (your spine),

you attain the bliss of consciousness.

Swami Nirmalananda describes your spine as the “conduit of consciousness.” What is consciousness? Consciousness is beingness, the pure Is-ness that has always existed, and existed before anything existed.  Consciousness also moves and flows, being the energy that materializes this world out of nothing.  Your body is one of the things being materialized.  In your body, a current of energy flows through your spine, keeping you alive and giving you the unique capacities of a human being. One of those capacities is something that few people have interest in exploring – an inner potentiality.  Most people explore the world outside of them, but yoga says your greatest potentiality lies within.

Once you get a certain amount of core opening, the prana (life-energy) in your spine is amped up by a higher frequency moving through.  Swami Nirmalananda’s presence and teaching assures these reliable effects of core opening:  the release beginning at your tailbone provides:

1. Profound physical benefits
2. Transformative changes that improve how you feel in your life, and
3. The awakening of a profound energy flow through your spine, assuring you access to your own Divinity.

Alignment with Grace is core opening — the spinal release that opens up what was hidden inside you; opening and aligning your spine opens a profound doorway to experiencing your own Self.  Do more yoga.  Do more Svaroopa^® Yoga.

Originally published May 2013

By Swami Nirmalananda Saraswati & Rukmini Abbruzzi

Svaroopa^® yoga is a path of Grace.  Everyone else is on the other path, the path of self-effort.  In Rukmini’s first yoga class, the movements of those athletic, acrobatic yogis were graceful.  But the Grace of Svaroopa^® yoga is completely different.  Swami’s beloved Guru, Baba Muktananda, gave her Shaktipat initiation, awakening the dormant energy called Kundalini.  Kundalini is your own Divinity in a seed form that grows and blossoms within.  That transmission created Svaroopa^® yoga and enlivens it today.

“After Baba sent me back to America, I could see that my students were not getting the openings that the poses are meant to provide, the openings I knew so deeply and so intimately.  So I taught variations, using angles to target their spinal tensions, providing the core opening that is now named Svaroopa^® yoga,” says Swami Nirmalananda.  It surprised me when people started getting Shaktipat.  Now I realize that I was carrying my Guru’s Grace, a gift to the next generation. Over several decades, I have watched a few teachers take the poses out to teach under a different name.  While the poses are still enjoyable, their students don’t get Shaktipat.  That flow of Grace doesn’t enliven their teaching or their students’ practice.”

Yet Svaroopa^® yoga is a hatha yoga, so there still is self-effort involved.  This is a path of both self-effort and Grace. Self-effort is very important:  you must apply yourself to the practices.  Yet, on a path of Grace, you have to remember to make space for something more to happen.

“I remember my first yoga class,” Rukmini describes. “I had done yoga at home with a book, so I was awed to encounter a group of acrobatic, athletic yogis wearing spandex and using towels on their mats to catch the sweat.  I wanted a peaceful, quiet mind, and I found it – the intense physical effort made me focus on my body, so there was little room for other thoughts. The class pushed me to exhaustion, so then I was too tired to think.  Ahh, peace…”

Svaroopa^® yoga provides a reliable experience of peace as well but brings it about in an entirely different way.  You don’t become exhausted; instead you are filled from your own Inner Source.  You are “blissified.”

Patanjali pairs self-effort and surrender in Yoga Sutras 1.12, promising that your churning mind will be stilled by abhyasa and vairagya. Abhyasa is persistent practice.  Vairagya is surrender, a profound letting-go. Patanjali puts the two together:  self-effort and surrender.  Why?

• Self-effort is very important; you must persist in order to accomplish anything. But self-effort alone makes you prideful and arrogant, or you become mean and self-punishing.
• Surrender is essential. In Svaroopa^® yoga, we surrender to svaroopa, your own Divine Self, which is found through Grace, the gift of Freedom. Yet surrender alone makes you into a doormat, without any clarity or will, and leaves you stranded in helplessness.

You must have both:  self-effort and surrender.  You already know about self-effort, so we teach surrender in every class.  When Rukmini tried out her first Svaroopa^â yoga class, she was used to doing Shavasana in other styles of yoga — flat-on-your-back, flat-on-your-mat, 90-seconds of ticking clock at the end of class.

She grudgingly accepted two zeds and a roll under her knees. And that final Shavasana was a revelation!  She says, “It felt like coming home. I felt a deep comfort and ease in my body, a calm and peace in my mind.  I felt bliss.”

The surrender and Grace are there in the final Shavasana; they are in every pose.  Svaroopa^â yoga arose out of Grace. It’s suffused with Grace in the same way that ice is made out of water.  How can you take the water out of the ice?

Svaroopa^® yoga is unique, a hatha yoga that’s full of Grace.  You put forth effort. You make time to attend a class or have a private session. Or you practice Ujjayi Pranayama, do the Magic Four, meditate, or you do it all.  Grace supports you every step of the way.  But where are you going?  There’s really nowhere to go.  You’re not travelling to your Self because you already ARE the Self.  You already ARE Consciousness-itself. Do more yoga.  Do more Svaroopa^® Yoga.

Previously Published, April 2013

By Swami Nirmalananda Saraswati & Rukmini Abbruzzi

In India, the land of its origin, the poses are only 10% of yoga’s technology.  The other 90% is about your mind and getting beyond your mind, to experience svaroopa, your ever-blissful Divine Essence. Body-centered practice goes by the generic hatha yoga.  The West offers many brand names, including Svaroopa® yoga.

The generic hatha has two translations, literal and mystical.  Literally “effort-filled,” it is even translated as “forceful” and “violent.”  It doesn’t mean you should hurt yourself!  It means you can propel yourself towards enlightenment through rigorous self-effort.  You can push yourself.  Hatha yoga is DIY (Do-It-Yourself).

Contrast this with 90% of the yogis in India.  They are sitting:  sitting to listen to their Guru expound on the teachings, sitting to contemplate the teachings they’ve heard, sitting in meditation, sitting to watch the sunrise or sunset, sitting as they participate in rituals, sitting and waiting for their own Divinity to fill into the stillness they’ve created in their mind.

Hatha yogis keep busy.  They don’t sit and watch the sunrise; they do Sun Salutations.  They don’t listen to teachings or contemplate them; they practice the poses and try to make their body measure up.  They don’t regulate their breath in order to quiet their mind; they pump their breath in order to sustain continual movement.  They don’t create stillness in their mind; they keep moving.

Swami Nirmalananda describes a yoga therapy conference she attended, “I arrived fresh from a yoga retreat in India.  I’d been sitting for long sweet hours of meditation and traditional ceremonies.  I joined 2,000 other yoga teachers and yoga therapists for the first plenary session, a full two hours of PowerPoint presentations by medical researchers, showing how they proved that yoga works.  I arrived a little late, so I sat in the back of the hall and watched the drama play out.

“Within 30 minutes, the 2,000 yoga teachers and therapists were squirming in their seats.  They couldn’t pay attention to the presenters.  They were wiggly, noisy and distracting.  After another 30 minutes, the moderator announced, ‘I know it’s hard for you to sit, so we’re adding in a break after our next presenter.’ I was shocked.  They couldn’t sit!  They think yoga is about movement.”

Yoga has been growing in the West since 1893, when Swami Vivekananda brought it from India.  Western yogis now compete for championships and even Gold Medals.  Google it; yoga is a sport.  This is a different direction than the sages intended.  Hatha yoga is described in the texts as efforting practice, a way to apply yourself physically, but for progress toward Enlightenment, not towards mastering a pose or perfecting your body.  Ultimately your physical mastery gives you the ability to apply yourself to more subtle and interior practices.

Let’s look at the second meaning of hatha, the mystical meaning, found in every Sanskrit word.  The syllables ha and tha name the energies that flow along the two sides of your spine:  ha — along the right side of your spine; tha — along your left.  When you open and balance these two flows, the energy shifts and flows through the center of your spine.  In the beginning, this flow is prana, your body’s own healing power.  Grace invokes a stronger flow: the transformative power of Consciousness, the power of your own upliftment.  This is Kundalini.  This is the Svaroopa^® yoga difference.

In this mystical meaning, hatha doesn’t mean effort-filled or forceful.  You won’t get any spinal release if you’re forcing.  You have to ease off.  You may have already experienced the difference: working, pushing and trying in a pose compared to propping, softening and settling into the precise angles. More change happens when you effort less.  When you combine precision with compassion, something happens. This is Grace, the power of inward expansion.

To summarize, hatha has two meanings:

• Effort-filled or forceful, meaning your progress towards Enlightenment is self-propelled through first cultivating physical mastery, then applying your highly developed will to subtle practices.
• Opening and balancing the energies flowing along the two sides of your spine, so the flow of Consciousness can arise from tail to top, revealing your own Divinity to you.

One is a path of self-effort, and the other is a path of Grace – two radically different paths.

Svaroopa® yoga is a path of Grace.  Everyone else is on the other path.  In Rukmini’s first yoga class, the movements of those athletic, acrobatic yogis were graceful.  But the Grace of Svaroopa® yoga is completely different.  Swami’s beloved Guru, Baba Muktananda, gave her Shaktipat initiation, awakening the dormant energy called Kundalini.  Kundalini is your own Divinity in a seed form that grows and blossoms within.  That transmission created Svaroopa^® yoga and enlivens it today.