Swami Karunananda

The Yamas and Niyamas: Aparigraha (Non-Greed)

If you’ve ever taken a class with Swami Karunananda, you know that she is a Raja Yoga master teacher and a fantastic storyteller. That’s why we couldn’t miss the opportunity to share the transcript of her talk on one of the five yamas: aparigrapha (non-greed). Swami...

The Yoga of Teaching

Beginning in the 1960s, there was a tremendous wave of enlightened masters who came to the West to impart the teachings of Yoga. Their coming was heralded by singular great souls who taught in the early 1900s, like Paramahansa Yogananda and Swami Vivekananda. Most of...

Ishvara Pranidhana: The Bhakti Yoga of the Sutras

Our whole experience of life is based on the stories we tell ourselves about what unfolds. Swami Vivekananda describes it like an oyster making a pearl. A parasite gets inside the shell, and then the oyster reacts to the irritation by producing enamel around it, which...

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...

Really Living Yoga

When I think of what it means to really live Yoga, I recall a special visit in late December, in the mid-1970s. I was serving as director of the San Francisco Integral Yoga Institute, and Swami Satchidananda (Sri Gurudev) was coming to California for the celebration...