Remembrances of My Guru on His 108th Birth Anniversary

For thirty-two years, I had the great good fortune to sit at the feet of Sri Swami Satchidananda (Gurudev). There were happy times and sad times, countless comings and goings, many ups and downs, but through it all, he remained the same: peaceful, patient, balanced,...

Let the Holidays Become Your Light-filled Holydays

If we want to make all our days holy days we should think of the inspiring thoughts of the great sages and saints. Otherwise, when we celebrate this holiday season, it will be just once a year fun. Instead, let us utilize the season to reaffirm that we wish to lead...

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...

Be the Centerpoint

We all look for excitement, thinking that it is a plus. But what is a plus? A minus crossed. A pendulum won’t swing to the plus side and remain there. When it swings to one side, it automatically has to come back to the other. When you want excitement, and swing to...

Yoga as “Lifestyle Medicine”

I first came across the teachings of Swami Satchidananda (Sri Gurudev) in a transcript from a talk he gave in which he said, “We have a natural state of ease and when we lose it we get disease.” I was in medical school at the time, and nobody was really addressing the...