[email protected]

Putting Our Ahimsa Where Our Mouth Is

In the early 1970s, I was in the dance department at the University of California, Berkeley, and right when I passed from my apartment to the campus, there was the Integral Yoga Institute. I went in there, long story short, to take a Yoga class. The postures were...

A Nondual Approach to the Niyamas

Retaining what we’ve learned about the yamas, we now train our attention on the niyamas which occur in sutra 2.32. When prefixed to a noun “ni” can be a negation. It also means “down, back, in, into, within.” Thus, niyama is traditionally rendered “observances”...

Raja Yoga Now: The Master’s Touch

It was in September 1970 that I first met my spiritual master. It was a time when many great Gurus were being drawn to the West, attracted by the awakening aspiration of the youth. Several hundred of us had gathered at a rustic site in the mountains of California for...

Hope is the Best Medicine

There is a village proverb in South India: “It doesn’t matter who pounds the rice; as long as I get the rice, it’s fine.” I think this also could be the motto for health and wellness providers. It doesn’t matter what approach you take, what “pathy” you use: allopathy,...

Finding the Joy in Self-Discipline

Question: Why do Yoga practices appear as disciplines when they are the source of joy? Yoga practices don’t appear as discipline—they are discipline. And who said that a disciplined life is an unhappy life? This seems to imply that discipline doesn’t make us joyful....