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A Turning Point: Learning to Breathe While I Listened
A father whose son has cystic fibrosis learns, standing in a dark hallway at night, that the breath he keeps holding is his own, and that listening itself can become a practice.
New Year’s Silent Retreat 2027: The Power of Presence
The New Year’s Silent Retreat: The Power of Presence with Swami Karunananda, E-RYT 500 and Swan Michelle, E-RYT 500 will be held at Satchidananda Ashram–Yogaville from December 28, 2026 - January 2, 2027 Join us at the peaceful sanctuary of Yogaville for our signature...
200-Hour Integral Yoga Teacher Training – February 2027
This 200-Hour Integral Yoga Teacher Training will be taught in 2 parts by Swami Divyananda Ma, E-RYT 500, Saci Murphy, E-RYT 500 and Aurélie “Anjali” Gauthier, E-RYT 500, YACEP, ISMETA starting February, 2027. Part 1 will be taught online from February 14–April 25,...
Yoga Nidra Teacher Training March 31 – April 4, 2027
Satchidananda Ashram–Yogaville will host a Yoga Nidra Training with Chitra Sukhu from March 31 - April 4, 2027. This transformative Yoga Nidra Training is open to all: Yoga teachers who want to share this practice, and anyone who wants to experience it more deeply for...
“Restoring Our Natural Center of Balance and Peace” Retreat – Dec 2026
The Integral Yoga Institute of San Francisco is holding a 4-Day Yoga Retreat: "Restoring Our Natural Center of Balance and Peace" at the Commonweal Retreat Center in Bolinas, California from December 10–13, 2026. As the holiday season approaches, we invite you to step...
Thanksgiving Benefit Yoga Class
The Integral Yoga Institute of San Francisco will host a Thanksgiving morning Hatha Yoga class to benefit the Community Outreach Program. As we move through our Yoga practice, we will focus on gratitude and the profound effects that cultivating gratitude can have in...
How I First Came To The Bhagavad Gita
I was five years old when I first learned to chant the Gita Dhyanam, the meditation on the Gita. My mother had learned it from her father, and she passed it on to me the way such things tend to be passed: during bath time, when she was helping me get dressed, at...
Practicing Yoga’s Ethics in Children’s Yoga
Imagine a children's Yoga class becoming a constellation. Arms spread into stars. One child's star is tiny, made with two fingers. Another stands firmly on the floor. Then somebody announces, “My star is going to sleep.” A teacher could correct the astronomy: stars do...
Embarking on a Spiritual Odyssey, Part 32: When the Heart Melts into Silence
In our continuing exploration of the Tamil spiritual heritage that shaped Swami Satchidananda, and the Integral Yoga Tradition he taught, we encounter a remarkable saint whose devotional poetry expresses some of the most profound insights of nondual realization. Sri...
Allowing Our Yoga Practice to Shape How We Live
We are systematically damaging our home, Mother Earth, and our response to this crisis is an important part of spiritual life. Yoga invites us to recognize our interconnection with all of life and to let that awareness guide the choices we make. Spiritual practice can...
Sitting Like Nandi: A Lesson in Steady Devotion
In the courtyard of Pashupatinath Temple in Kathmandu, a great golden image of Nandi, the sacred bull associated with Lord Shiva, sits facing the main shrine. Visitors who cannot enter the temple courtyard may glimpse him from outside the walls. Evening after evening,...
The Deathless Self, the Fearless Heart
What is it that we call “death?” Death is only a change of form, a change of name. In a way, everything is immortal. Everything is filled with life. There’s no dead matter in the entire universe. God created everything. And God created everything in God’s image. So,...
Integral Yoga 60th Anniversary Commemorative Booklet – free!
Integral Yoga Magazine is pleased to present a special Integral Yoga 60th Anniversary Commemorative Booklet available online and for free. The more than 90-page flipbook is the expanded version of the recent anniversary issue eMagazine. This publication celebrates...
Understanding the Guru Principle (Guru-tattva)
One of the central teachings of the Integral Yoga Tradition is also one that can be difficult to understand in the modern West: the principle of Guru. In the traditions of Yoga and Vedanta, Guru means more than an individual spiritual teacher. Behind the human teacher...
Coming Home: Reweaving Integral Yoga and Ayurveda
There are moments along our path when something new enters our lives and, strangely, feels less like a discovery than a remembering. That is how Ayurveda came to me. My formal path into Yoga began at Satchidananda Ashram–Yogaville in 2009, where I completed my...
The Global Legacy of Integral Yoga
By the time Swami Satchidananda arrived in New York in 1966, he was no newcomer to the work of transformation. He had already spent more than a decade in Sri Lanka, where he transformed the lives of all who came within his orbit — opening Divine Life Society branches...
Meditation Teacher Training in India – January 2027
Join Integral Yoga's Meditation Teacher Training In India with Swami Ramananda, E-RYT 500, C-IAYT and Ram Wiener, E-RYT 500 from January 10 - 24, 2027. Travel to the birthplace of Yoga and earn your certification as an Integral Yoga Meditation Teacher. In the...
How to Navigate Pain and Other Challenges
In this short video teaching from Integral Yoga Teacher, therapist, and center head Nalanie Chellaram, she gives practical strategies for those going through painful times, relationship problems and living in gratitude. She shares inspiration from Yoga and the...
Embarking on a Spiritual Journey, Part 31 – Thirumular: Yoga, Love and the Divine
In the previous installment of the Spiritual Odyssey series, we paused after Ramaswamy’s time at Sri Ramanasramam to explore another voice from the Tamil spiritual world that had helped form him: the beloved poet-sage Avvaiyar. Before following Ramaswamy on his...
The Gateway and the Mountain: How the Yoga Sutras and the Nondual Vision Fit Together in Integral Yoga
The Recipe Swami Satchidananda once explained Raja Yoga with a recipe. In New York in September 1966, in his first conversation with a young student named Sadasivam Greenstone, he asked whether Sadasivam could cook. You get a recipe from a trusted source, Sadasivam...
Swami Sivananda and the Yoga of Synthesis: A Formative Stream of Integral Yoga
As we celebrate sixty years of Integral Yoga, we also look back to the spiritual streams that helped shape the path Swami Satchidananda brought to the West. In 1949, Swami Satchidananda met his Guru, Sri Swami Sivananda of Rishikesh, and received Sannyas initiation...
The Spirit of Sat-Chid-Ananda
Looking Back at the First Ten Years In 1976, Integral Yoga marked ten years since its founder, Swami Satchidananda, first came to America and began the work that would take root as Integral Yoga in the West. To commemorate the anniversary, Satchidananda...
When Integral Yoga Was Young in New York
It all started in June 1968. I had just graduated from Columbia University with a degree in math and philosophy. But after all those years of studying Eastern and Western philosophy, much of it still felt theoretical. I wanted a real practice. Then I noticed an ad in...
“He’s Here!”: Meeting Swami Satchidananda in 1966
The Beginning When Peter Petronio first encountered Swami Satchidananda in the summer of 1966, he was already a renowned spiritual master with students in India, Sri Lanka, Hong Kong, and Europe. It was Peter’s close friend, the artist Peter Max, who had met Swami...
How Integral Yoga Came to the West
It was 1966. The Beatles had stopped touring. A generation of young Americans was searching for meaning, for peace, for something the world around them could not seem to provide. From that searching rose the counterculture: restless, idealistic, and beneath all its...