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Kula for Karma: Yoga Therapy Seva
Kula for Karma is transforming lives and changing the face of healthcare by delivering therapeutic Yoga, meditation, and stress management to people with physical and mental health challenges. Since 2007 we have pioneered the integration of therapeutic Yoga into...
Off the Mat, Into the World
Seane Corn believes that the future of Yoga is seva, selfless service. But, it’s not just a belief, it’s something she is helping to manifest as an activist working as the Yoga ambassador for YouthAIDS and as cofounder of Off the Mat, Into the World®. In this...
Sure Success in Life
. . . Reduce your wants. Be honest in your dealings. Earn at the sweat of your brow. Control the indriyas and the mind. Develop noble qualities. Take recourse to the company of wise men. Remember God. Sing His Name. Feel His presence. Think aright. Speak truth and act...
Q & A with Swami Satchidananda: How to Be Successful in Life
Question: What is success and failure? Swami Satchidananda: There’s no need for failure in the worldly sense. If you really work hard, if you know the way, if you gather enough strength, nothing is impossible to achieve. But remember: that, even if you have the whole...
Yoga, Creativity and Active Surrender
Perhaps best known for her role as Serena Southerlyn on Law & Order, Elisabeth Röhm is also an advocate for human rights, health and education, serving as a Red Cross ambassador, among other service roles. She may be less renowned as a yogini, but in this...
Happiness in Daily Life: A Yogic Formula
In the world today, most people approach the study of Yoga through the asanas (physical postures). And for many schools, that’s where the study of Yoga ends. People want to be healthy and have a trim physique. One may ask, why do you want a trim physique? In some...
Freeing Our Voices: Yoga & Writing
As a writer and teacher of Yoga and Buddhist meditation, Anne Cushman explores the poignant intersection between spiritual practice, creativity and life. In the process, she’s struggled to balance her identities as a writer and a yogini. In this interview, she shares...
How a TV Producer Learned to Let Go & Get a Life
I sat on the bench outside the Integral Yoga Institute (IYI) in New York City yelling into my cell phone at my boss, “Forget it, I’m done. I can’t take this anymore. I quit!” People coming out of the IYI stared at me in horror. An ashram is not exactly the place to be...
Yoga and My Path as an Artist
Cat Bennett is an artist and writer who believes that everyone can draw and use the practice of drawing to grow awareness of the creative self within. Her experience in Yoga class helped her to understand the relationship between art and spiritual practice. In this...
Out of a Yogi’s Cave, Into an Office
Karen Karuna Kreps met Swami Satchidananda (Sri Gurudev ) in 1967, while she was in high school. She wanted to become his secretary, but her parents wanted her to go to college and have a career. Sri Gurudev told her to go to college and then decide what to do. She...
Lessons I Learned From My Beautiful Master: The Transformation Begins
Integral Yoga Teacher Trainer Nalanie Chellaram shares the story of the spiritual journey that led her toward an ever-deepening discipleship of Swami Satchidananda, whom she calls Sri Gurudeva. In this article, she relates the beginning of that discipleship and how...
How to Live Yoga
Yoga is something that you live. If you want to be a yogi you should be a yogi always, not just while you are standing on your head. If you are a yogi only when you stand on your head, then what are you when you walk on your feet? If you are a Yoga teacher, you are...
Karma Yoga in Daily Life
In the light of Karma Yoga all actions are sacred. That aspirant who always takes immense delight in doing works which are considered by the worldly man as menial services, and who always does willingly such acts only will become a dynamic Yogi. He will be absolutely...
The Humble Vegetarian
In this article, Integral Yoga teacher April Gauri Hunziker (pictured here) explores the issue of how a yogi and vegetarian remains humble and avoids self-righteousness while remaining faithful to his or her principles. She poses some hard questions we may want to ask...
A Yogic or Sattvic Diet
To fully understand Swami Satchidananda’s teachings on the relationship between Yoga and diet, specifically, the psychological and spiritual benefits of a vegetarian/vegan diet, it’s important to know something about the three gunas, or the qualities of nature. The...
Vegetarianism & Ahimsa
Diet plays a very important part in people’s lives. Food not only makes the body, it makes the mind. It has a direct connection to the attitudes of the mind. Today we do not think much about the different qualities of food and its effect on the mind. In Yogic...
Diet for Transcendence
In preparation for writing his book, Diet for Transcendence, Steven Rosen surveyed the world’s religions with the intention of proving that at their foundation—and as reflected in their scriptures—these faiths encouraged vegetarianism, nonviolence, love and compassion...
Enlightened Eating
The ancient yogis noted that the universe goes through cycles of potentiality and manifestation, similar to the speculations of modern-day physicists about an oscillating universe. During the process of creation, out of primordial matter known as undifferentiated...
The Healing and Transformative Power of Chanting
An internationally acknowledged master teacher, Jonathan Goldman has studied with masters of sound from both the scientific and spiritual traditions, including the Dalai Lama’s Chanting Gyuto and Gyume Monks. In this interview he gives an overview of some of the...
Kirtan and the World’s Sacred Chant Traditions
If we look into creation narratives from different cultures, in almost every case the world is said to come into being through sound, through chant. Kirtan is the essence of Yoga, for by chanting the holy names, we experience a linking, a union, with the Divine. In...
Music of the Universe: Our Relationship with Sacred Sound
Everything begins with a seed. The ancient scriptures describe this seed, or bija, as sonic in origin. They paint mystical pictures of a primordial sound from which the entire cosmos sprang. They describe planets, stars and galaxies as being magically strung together...
Nada Yoga
Yogi Hari is a master of Hatha, Raja and Nada Yoga. He is well known and respected around the world as an exceptional and inspiring teacher. Yogi Hari comes from the Sivananda lineage. When he met his gurus, Swami Vishnu-Devananda and music master Swami...
Sankirtan Yoga
Sankirtan is the Svarupa (essential nature) of God. Dhvani is sankirtan. Sankirtan is the essence of the Vedas. The four Vedas originate from sound. There are four kinds of sound, viz., vaikhari (vocal), madhyama (from the throat), pasyanti (from the heart) and Para...
Chanting from the Soul: An Interview with Krishna Das, Part 2
Profiled by Time magazine and nominated for a Grammy, Krishna Das is regarded as America’s leading “chantmaster.” Each year Krishna Das gives a workshop in Yogaville and he graciously agreed to be interviewed. Krishna Das talks about his Guru, his path, and falling in...