Swami Ramananda, director of the Integral Yoga Institute of San Francisco, will be presenting a weekend program at Satchidananda Ashram–Yogaville "Resilience in an Age of Uncertainty" from April 18 – 20, 2025. We live in an age characterized by an increasing sense of...
In the mid-1980s, Swami Satchidananda was interviewed by Meenakshi Angel Honig, one of his students, in Santa Barbara, California. Meenakshi asks him a series of questions about Integral Yoga and the practices of Integral Yoga, including Hatha, pranayama, and...
For many years, I’ve given a talk on New Year’s resolutions at our annual Integral Yoga New Year’s Retreat. I focus mainly on setting achievable goals for a regular spiritual practice of poses, breathing, relaxation and meditation. Here’s a few suggestions from that...
Imagine a country whose citizens—maybe even its leaders—are brave, calm, and open towards each other; a country whose people realize that all human beings belong together as one family and must act accordingly; a country guided by Common Sense. This may seem more than...
If you want to see well through a window, you have to clean both sides. Practice (abhyasa) and non-attachment (vairagya) work much the same way. They are the complimentary practices given in Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras as a means to quiet the movement of thought in the...
Change is the act of becoming different, a natural occurrence that makes life possible. So why does it cause so much stress? Change comes into our awareness at the end of comfort. When life is good, there is no need to change. Only when things are uneasy do we begin...
Contentment is a deceptively simple concept that offers tremendous benefit if we fully embrace its practice. It is referred to as santosha in the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali and is not so easy to master because the habit of wanting and achieving is so deeply ingrained in...
A few years ago, I read an article titled “Humility, The Virtue No One Wants.” It was a good title, I thought, because humility is maybe just a little too close to the word humiliation for comfort, a bit like shame, the sort of thing we think we’d like to get away...
Many of us come to meditation for the first time to still our mind. We recognize that the source of suffering has something to do with the way our minds work (or don’t work) and we believe that by sitting still and taming our mind we will become calm and peaceful. One...
Often in life, we overlook the value of the simple and familiar: a kind word, a helping hand, a timely smile. Such everyday gestures impart meaning and a sense of connectedness as we wend our way through time and space. Similarly, the breath is our constant companion,...
In this episode of the Integral Yoga Podcast, Avi Gordon (director of the Integral Yoga Teachers Association) is in conversation with Carroll Ann (Prashanti) Friedmann. She shares her personal journey with the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali and the sankalpa (vow or...
Many years ago, I took other types of Yoga but also just regular Integral Yoga Hatha classes. And I noticed whenever I left an Integral Yoga class, I just felt so incredible. Everything was moving in slow motion, I was floating and everything was totally clear. I was...
Who am I really? Who am I being? These are two queries and discoveries to be made while practicing svadhyaya (self-study)—Yoga’s fourth niyama, as well as the second practice in the Kriya Yoga of Sri Patanjali. Svadhyaya includes the study of sacred texts and the...
Your practice of mantra repetition creates a sort of sound within. The sound is already in you. You are not doing anything new. That is the divine within you in the form of sound: namarupa, in Sanskrit. The Bible says that in the beginning there was the Word. That...
FireFlex Yoga, an online donation-based Yoga class designed for First Responders (anyone is welcome to register/attend), is happy to announce a new initiative. All proceeds go toward supporting a nonprofit that serves First Responders. The class will be LIVE and...
In this article, Laura Sevika Douglass shares the insights she’s gained from her own sadhana practice in the hope that readers can benefit from her experience and avoid some of the many challenges everyone encounters when trying to establish a regular practice Since...