“Contentment is golden. A contented mind is a golden mind.” –Swami Satchidananda It’s funny how children enjoy the simplest of toys and teenagers relish in their relationships with their best friends, while a quiet transition commences during adulthood and suddenly...
Spiritual Longing
To learn from a spiritual teacher, more than anything else, you need faith in God: “God, I really want to experience the Truth. Put me in good hands. Present a good teacher to me.“ Then, when you meet them, feel—not through the head, but through the heart. And if you...
NEW! Swami Satchidananda Teaches the Meditation Ślokas
Integral Yoga Media is please to offer the newly mastered audio recording “Swami Satchidananda Teaches the Meditation Ślokas.” These ślokas are part of the daily meditation sessions at Satchidananda Ashram Yogaville and Integral Yoga centers around the world. Integral...
Healing Unhealthy Habits as a Spiritual Practice
Healing from addiction or any other unhealthy habit is a spiritual practice. It’s impossible simply to say, “Oh, I don't want to indulge in this or I have to get rid of that.” We cannot. The more we try to push it away and get rid of it, the more we wind up...
Harmony of the Soul: Alice Coltrane and the 1971 Benefit Concert for Integral Yoga
In March 2024, Impulse! Records (whose parent company is Universal Music Group), released the live recording of Alice Coltrane (Swamini A.C. Turiyasangitananda) that was part a benefit concert held in 1971 for the Integral Yoga Institute of New York. This new album...
The Health Benefits of Yoga with the Yoga MD
In this inspiring and informative video, Integral Yoga's renowned Yoga MD, Dr. Sandra Amrita McLanahan, gives an overview of the health benefits of Yoga. She goes through each of the body's physiological systems to highlight these benefits. Citing the latest research,...
Reflections on Prayer
It takes a long time to learn how to pray just for the sake of praying and not for anything else, not for our own selfish desires. The reason that we obtain little satisfaction from our prayers is that they are not really sincere attempts to touch God. When we begin...
Living the Yoga of Sound
In 1971, Michael Grosso had an extraordinary experience in Greenwich Village, New York, that led him to realize he needed to balance his overly intellectual life with music. Michael had just spent the last several years obtaining a Ph.D. in philosophy from Columbia...
Embarking on a Spiritual Odyssey, Part 2: Tamil Shaivism and Palani Malai
In the South Indian state of Tamil Nadu, with its verdant landscapes nestled amid swaying coconut palms and fragrant jasmine vines, lies a quaint village steeped in timeless charm and rustic allure. This is the setting in which the family home of Sri Gurudev Swami...
Frozen Meltdown: Showing Up On the Path of Yoga
Huddled inside my heaviest winter coat at the edge of a pond, I watched as my coffee steam merged with misty clouds of my breath. At dawn the cranberry bog in coastal Massachusetts was an expanse of frozen sand and wiry tangles of russet vines; old snow scudded across...
Embarking on a Spiritual Odyssey: Tracing Our Integral Yoga Tradition Through Time, Part 1
It is said that a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step, but what if that journey encompasses not only miles but also centuries of profound wisdom, timeless traditions, and a tapestry of influences that have shaped our spiritual heritage? In this...
Understanding the Ego
God or Infinite Consciousness is That through which our own egos move. Unfortunately, the ego tends to overlook the fact that its capacity to function is from that Source, and instead it comes up with the notion that I am doing everything by myself. But it would be a...
Seeing Through the Illusion of “Normal”
Do we still believe that the sun travels across the sky while we stand stationary on a flat piece of earth? No, these once held beliefs were dispelled long ago. But how many other things do we accept as true simply because our limited senses tell us so, or that is...
The Light that Shines Through the Ages
We all need teachers in life; not everything can be learned from a book. According to Hindu tradition, there are four main teachers: Mata, Pita, Guru, Deva: Mother, Father, Guru and God. The mother is the baby’s first guru; she is everything to the baby: unconditional...
The True Spiritual Experience
People sometimes ask me, “What has been accomplished by my practice of Yoga all these years? I haven’t realized God. I haven’t had any noticeable spiritual experience.” I don’t know what experience they want. They haven’t levitated up from the floor at least a few...
The Unchanging Amid the Changing
It seems like any birthday that ushers us into a new decade brings with it a whole spectrum of feelings, and that is what happened for me recently. Turning 70 gave rise to that culturally influenced feeling, “OMG! I’m getting old.” But I’m grateful that I also...