Learning to Work Through Challenges: Tapas (Self-Discipline)

“God knows your breaking point. You simply don’t know your own strength.” –Swami Satchidananda How many times have you been a safe container for those you care about?  What did it look like? What did it feel like? Challenging oneself to be...

The Glory of Santosha – Contentment

“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...

Using the Yoga Sutras in Daily Life

We all get those physical signs of stress and anxiety. We might feel tired or have random aches and pains and can’t pinpoint the source. We stretch, we breathe, and we feel rejuvenated right afterwards. But after a few days the same aches and pains are back, and...

The Kleshas: Exploring the Elusiveness of Happiness

The kleshas are Yoga’s framework for understanding the discord between our desires and our lived experience. Deborah Adele’s new book, The Kleshas: Exploring the Elusiveness of Happiness, lays open the insight and wisdom of the sage Patanjali, as described in the Yoga...

The Real Yoga

The essential teaching and goal of Yoga is to make the mind calm. “Yoga chitta vritti nirodha,” says the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali. That means that Yoga is the calming of the waves created in the chitta, the mind by keeping the mind balanced under all conditions. In...