Rama is one of the ten avatars (incarnations) of Supreme Lord Vishnu (God) — and along with Lord Krishna, one of the two most revered Divine beings in Hindu and yogic culture.

Rama Navami is a major festival for Vaishnavites, (devotees of Vishnu), and is celebrated more predominantly in Northern India. Tens of thousands flock to sacred places associated with Rama, like Ayodhya, Ujjain and Rameshwaram.

Traditionally, devotees would fast for nine days leading up to Rama Navami, meditating on the selfless virtues of Rama and seeking their own perfection as human beings. Events presenting discourses and stories on the Ramayana by a pundits are also staged during this nine-day period; grand processions are organized, as are many Indian classical music programmes.

Although it is Lord Shiva who is primarily associated with yoga, the example of Lord Rama should not be ignored. He is regarded as the supreme embodiment of Dharma, or right action—the highest ideal of yoga.

The Ramayana is a fascinating epic and among the most spiritual inspirational stories that all yoga enthusiasts should make part of their library of yogic experience.

“The Ramayana is also an allegory for the principles of yogic living. Lord Rama was the supreme Yogi: firmly wedded to Dharma, or Righteous Living; an upholder of Satya, or Truth at all costs. A supreme ascetic, or Tapasin, he was firmly in control of his senses. His one-pointed mind manifested itself in his ‘Skill in action’ as a warrior, a king, a husband, a son, a friend and a companion.

~ Meenakshi Devi Bhavanani, Acharya-Ananda Ashram


“Students came and generally went. Those who craved an easy path, that of instant sympathy and comforting recognitions of one’s merits, did not find it there. [My guru] offered his disciples shelter and shepherds for the aeons, but many students miserly demanded ego-balm as well. They departed, preferring before any humility, life’s countless humiliations… They sought some lesser teacher, who, shading them with flattery, permitted the fitful sleep of ignorance…

The disclosure of Divine insight is often painful to worldly ears. [The Guru] was not popular with superficial students. The wise, always few in numbers, deeply revered him.”

- Autobiography of a Yoga
(ref: Sri Yogananda Paramahamsa, speaking of his Guru, Sri Yukteshwar.)

“THE GURU SPIRIT”
BY: SMT. MEENAKSHI DEVI BHAVANANI
[FIRST PUBLISHED IN YOGA LIFE, JANUARY 2009]

Change is the only constant. All explorers of consciousness know this full well. Adaptability, adjustability, flexibility of spirit! These are the qualities which nourish the soul. Yet, something there is that does not love change. Yes! Something there is that dreads the thought of change. Something there is that drags its feet over every unfamiliar, unknown open threshold.

What is that “something”? Let me postulate. It is the old bundle of Samskaras, or Vasanas, which we, like rag pickers, carry upon our backs from lifetime to lifetime. Though its weight is heavy and burdensome, we consider it our treasure! We invest it with our consciousness and it acquires a mind of its own.

We are crushed by its weight. We stumble under its load. But we cannot let it go. After all, it is ours! We cannot enter that enticing open door, because the bundle upon our back is too large! We do not fit! We moan and we groan, and sit upon the floor before the open door.

The Guru appears – The catalyst of Change – The epitome of Change – The personification of Change – The agent of Change. He gently lifts the bundle of woes and past miseries and mistakes and habit patterns from our backs and says, “Enter Here! Do Not Fear!”.

But many cling in terror to their back-packs. “Every thing I know, every thing I have is within! My very soul is here! How can I let it go?”

The Guru gives a pull, a shove, and a loving blow. Perhaps a push. Some cling like crabs to their past, screaming, shouting, crying, walling! “What do you do! O Guru!”

Even a loving push, a kick, a shove, a shock, a blow is not enough to make them let go. The Guru shakes his kindly head and says, “Child! If not now, when? If not here, where?”

The recalcitrant disciple throws a tantrum. The Guru smiles: “Not now, perhaps, not yet, perhaps. Another time, another place, another body in this human race for you.” The Guru enters the abode of Consciousness and Light, through the Open Door of Change. He leaves the door ajar. Always, that door is ajar. Never, forever, closed to any straying soul who arises, awakes, and leaves his past behind.

As long as we humans remain, I think that this will be something we’ll struggle to grasp. Religions and spiritual traditions have devised ways to try and illustrate it. God is the Unseen from which all this world has arisen. In yoga we speak of adhi-vyadi, or that “the lower is a mirror of the higher.” Just as Jesus said, “As above, so below.”

Those metaphors refer to the seen and the unseen – the source and the manifestation. The source is Absolute. What comes from it is relative. Relative can’t exist without an Absolute – a reference point; a base from which it is measured.

Our mind is dependant upon the senses to experience the world around us, but the senses can only “sense” relativity – what “is” in “relation” to another. They cannot sense the Absolute.

That’s why we can never know the Absolute (God) through the intellect alone. We can create a “relative” image, a conceptualization, but we can never ‘experience’ the unseen this way – never truly know it.

The visible and the invisible are, in fact, not separate but one. The visible is a projection of the invisible. Thought is the invisible and the Thing is the visible. The thought and the thing are one.

An easy way to understand this is the simple illustration of a circle:

A circle consists of 3 things: a circumference, a center and a radius (the distance from the center to the outer edge, or circumference). The circumference ‘radiates’ from the center. When we look at a circle, we can only see its circumference. We cannot see its center.

Even if we put a dot in the middle, we still can’t see the center because if we look under a microscope, we will see that the dot is merely another circle with another circumference that radiates from it.

If we had fine enough instruments to place another dot in the middle of that circle, and another microscope powerful enough to magnify it, we would see the same thing – another circle.

There is no end to it. You can perform this process an infinite number of times, and still you would never be able to ‘see’ the center. The center is the Absolute. It is invisible.

The circumference radiates from the center. The center is the cause of the circumference. The seen is projected from the unseen.

The center is the thought, the circumference is the thing.

The circumference is your circum-stances in life, which are radiated by your Consciousness – your beliefs, your ideas, your conditioned way of thinking – the unseen center of your life.

The word ‘circumstance’ literally means what you “stand surrounded” with. You (your Consciousness) are at the middle, radiating your reality on a continual basis.

Most people are caught in a vicious cycle where they are constantly letting their circumstances create who they are. Your circumstances should not make you. You should make your circumstances.

If you want to change your circumstances, then all you have to do is change the center – YOU (your thoughts).

Notice where your thoughts are coming from. Are they coming from your Consciousness or from your circumstances? Are you living in what yoga calls “conditioned thought,” merely reproducing more of the same circumstances you already have?

Our mind continually creates thoughts that are relative to past beliefs and thoughts. Thus, the mind continues to create cycle after cycle of the ‘relative’ – or more of what we already have. This is what is known as being trapped in our past conditioning. In yoga we call this the wheel of karma.

Breaking free from our habitual patterns of thinking (samskaras) is vital to living a happy, healthy and evolutionary life. Learning how to go beyond the mind to experience the source of our relative existence is a central facet of the science of yoga.

Yoga is the search for the immovable reference point from which to view the relative world around us. Yoga is learning to live in the “wisdom of cause” instead of continually reproducing the same old ‘effects’ – living from the centre and not the circumference.

I suppose that sounds like a perfectly reasonable idea to a lot of folks. But is it a positive step for yoga or just another sign of the wayward direction modern yoga is following?

The idea of having liability insurance is now entrenched in the psyches of most in Western yoga circles. When people who are interested in becoming a yoga teacher contact me for advice, it’s usually one of the subjects that are at the front of their minds.

When I tell them that I don’t carry yoga liability insurance myself, they are usually bewildered and amazed – sometimes even stunned. You’d think I just told them I robbed a bank or something!

I can imagine the response from my Indian guru if he was asked the question, “Do you have insurance?”

“Yes,” he would surely say. “My insurance is the fact that I know what I am doing with yoga! What policy could give me better insurance than that?”

Yoga liability insurance is perhaps another indication that there are too many people out there today who don’t know what they are doing. If there is even the remotest of possibilities that a teacher could need to be protected by insurance, then, as I often hear in American media, “Some red flags should be coming up.”

Rather than asking about where to get insurance to teach yoga, perhaps we should be asking ourselves if we are really ready to be a yoga teacher yet.

I know I’ve just ruffled a few feathers with that statement. I usually do when I suggest that some yoga teachers may not be knowledgeable or experienced enough in this vast science to properly guide others with its teachings.

It’s the same in any field though; the bad drivers are the ones that need insurance, not the good ones; the careless Doctors, not the stalwarts of the profession, who need to cover their backs.

The concept of insurance in general is rather perplexing. For instance, if a teacher ‘causes’ harm to a student in some way or another (be it negligence, incompetence, etc.), then how could insurance remove the harm that was caused? If I drive over you with my car and break your leg, then the fact that I have insurance may provide you medical assistance and likely some monetary compensation, but it doesn’t change the fact that you still have a broken leg.

Insurance doesn’t prevent harm from occurring, it merely makes one feel better (with $$) after the fact, which itself is really an absurd way to look at things, isn’t it? It suggests that we are willing to suspend our complaints and overlook our pains as long as there is enough material reward in it for us. What a truly Western materialistic view of life!

On the other hand, wouldn’t it be great if you were assured that in no way, shape or form, could any harm be caused to you by your yoga teacher! Now that would be truly ‘yogic insurance!’

How do we get that type of insurance? By insuring that we, as yoga teachers, know what we are doing; that we have put in the necessary time, effort and practice to fully understand this ancient science of life before we jump ahead and start teaching it to others.

Inside The Basic Yoga Trainer …

• How to Use this Course
• Introduction

Section 1 – The  Foundations of Yoga

Day 1

• Welcome to Yoga
• The Warm Up
• Vajra Asana
• Shava Asana

Day 2

• Yoga Sadhana
• Preliminaries
• Learning Yoga
• Vibhagha Pranayama

Day 3

• Relaxation
• Foot and Ankle Kriyas
• Eka Janu Vajra Kriya
• Pada Vajra Kriya
• The Deepening of Relaxation
• Nishpandha Jnana Kriya

Day 4

• Pranayama – Part A
• Vyaghrah Pranayama
• Sukha Pranayama

Day 5

• The History of Yoga
• Yoga in the Modern World: Part A
• Transition Postures
• Standing Jattis
• Sama Sthiti Asana

Day 6

• Yoga In the Modern World: Part B
• Styles of Yoga
• Main Branches of the Yoga System
• Tala Asana
• Pada Hasta Asana

Day 7

• Classical Ashtanga Yoga
• Kaya Kriya

Section 2 – Building a Yoga Practice

Day 8

• Yoga Sadhana
• Asana
• Trikona Asana

Day 9

• Kriya
• Asana vs Kriya
• Surya Namaskar

Day 10

• Pranayama – Part B
• Sukha Purvaka Pranayama
• Nadi Jnana Kriya

Day 11

• Awareness
• Hathenas
• Ushthra Asana Paravritti (Camel pose
  variation)
• Sapurna Shasha Asana (Incomplete rabbit
  pose)
• Sapurna Matsya Asana (Incomplete fish pose)
• Purna Shasha Asana (Complete rabbit pose)

Day 12

• Karma – Part A
• Hathenas
• Sapurna Maha Mudra (the mighty tidal gesture)
• Nikunja Asana (the flower bower pose)

Day 13

• Brahma Danda
• Hathenas
• Sharabha Asana/Kriya (the griffin pose)
• Vyaghrah Pranayama (the tiger breath)
• Summary – The Full Hathena Set

Day 14

• The Pranava – AUM
• Pranava Pranayama
• Mukha Bhastrika

Section 3 – The Yoga Life

Day 15

• The Yoga Life
• Sitting Postures
• Sukha Asana
• Baddha Kona Asana (Kriya)
• Sama Pada Asana

Day 16

• Polarity
• Loma-Viloma – Polarity Prakriyas
• Eka Pada Utthana Asana (the singe-leg
  lift)
• Shirsha Utthana Asana (the head lift)
• Ardha Shalabha Asana (the half-locus
  pose)
• Unmukha Shirsha Utthana Asana (the head
  lift)
• Dridha Eka Pada Utthana Asana (side leg
  lift)
• Shirsha Utthana Asana (head lift)
• Stambhan Asana (the pillar pose)
• Ardha Dhanur Asana (half bow pose)
• Dridha Eka Pada Utthana Asana Paravritti (I) (side
  leg-lift)

Day 17

• The Yogic View of Reality
• Pancha Kosha – 5 Bodies of Man
• Loma-Viloma
• Dwi Pada Utthana Asana (the double leg
  lift)
• Utthana Asana with Danda Asana
• Shalabha Asana (the locus pose)
• Sharpa Asana (the serpent pose)
• Dakshina Dridha Eka Pada Utthana Asana Paravritti (II)
• Loma-Viloma Kriya

Day 18

• The Yogic Diet
• Pavana Mukta Asana
• Eka Pada Pavana Mukta Asana
• Dwi Pada Pavana Mukta Asana

Day 19

• Yama and Niyama
• Paschimottana Asana

Day 20

• Svadhyaya – Study of the Self
• Bhujanga Asana

Day 21

• Yoga Marga – The Yogic Path
• Ardha Matsyendra Asana
• Vakra Asana
• Some Final Words

Appendices

Appendix 1

• General Hatha Yoga Routine

Appendix 2

• Hathena Yoga Routine

Appendix 3

• Loma-Viloma Yoga Routine

Return to The Basic Yoga Trainer

Most people think that winning at poker is a mix of luck, skill and psychology. But in truth, it’s really just about 2 things: 1. Understanding the odds, and 2. Discipline. You lose in poker the same way that you lose in life – by letting your emotions, and not your intelligence, dictate your actions.

Amateur poker players lose all their chips in no time because they lack both of these qualities. They don’t know the right move to make and they don’t have the patience to wait for the right time to act. As the saying goes, “You’ve got to know when to hold em’ and when to fold em’.”

The most successful poker players, for instance, only actually play about 10-15% of the hands that they are dealt – the hands that they know have a good chance of winning. The rest they just fold – and wait. They play with their brains – not their hearts.

Those who consistently lose at poker will try to triumph with almost every hand they are dealt. They play with their hearts (emotions), not their heads, and they end up losing almost every time. They think that they are just unlucky and keep hoping that one day their luck will turn. It never does.

That’s how most of us approach our lives too. We re-act to situations in ways that do not have a good chance of turning out well. We say things that we know we shouldn’t have said. We do things that we know we shouldn’t do. But we can’t help it. We’ve become too accustomed to letting our emotions, and not our intelligence, lead us along.

Poker taught me two things long before I even knew what yoga was; it taught me to know what the best course of action is to take, based upon the facts (odds) and not upon my wishes; and it taught me to develop the discipline to act appropriately.

As Swami Gitananda reminded us, yoga is about knowing the right action to perform, in the right way, and at the right time. To be able to do that – to develop the wisdom to know what the right action is and the ability to perform it in the right way at the right time is what separates the amateurs from the pros in life, so to speak.

One thing is for sure in Poker – if you don’t have a clear understanding of the situation, and if you lose your composure, it won’t be long before you’re broke and out of the game.

If only life was so straight forward! But it isn’t. We humans seem to have a knack for slow learning – for falling into the same pit over and over and over again before it finally dawns upon us to step to the side of the path! (some folks never get it!).

Learning non-action (and not speaking), or how to take a more careful approach to many of life’s situations is a big step in consciousness. As yogis, we know that karma (a big topic that we’ll leave for another day) underlies every situation in life, and what “needs” to happen is not always the same as what we “want” to happen – something that is never apparent to the average person.

Yoga helps to raise our consciousness – to make us pro’s in life – people who are more aware of what is really going on, and what our best course of action is in all circumstances. It enables us to start living life with our heads instead of being lead through life by our heart-strings …

Of course, you don’t have to make this leap in awareness. There will always be room at the poker table of life for those who just can’t resist living life blindly, hoping that some day their luck will change.

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Well…

It’s “the next big thing” — you can use it to get newsfeeds from CNN or BBC, as well as just about anything else, including news on upcoming movies, DVD releases, etc…  even updates or special notices from your favourite websites too.

Once you get started, it’s like having your favorite parts of the Web come to you. No need to go out and check for updates all the time.

No more bookmarks either!

“RSS” means “Really Simple Syndication.” But that is just a fancy way of saying that you can keep up with all the updates on discover-yoga-online.com without having to check the site every week to see “what’s new.” Whenever I put up a new page or update an old one, I release it through RSS. And…

It comes straight to you… Well, to your RSS Reader, actually.

Yes, RSS is amazing. It’s so easy to subscribe and unsubscribe. No sign-up or giving out your email address required… and if you get tired of me :O(  you just have to delete the feed. Piece of cake!

And once you start, you’ll soon be tracking all your other favorite interests and news in the world too.

How do you get started?

Easy as 1, 2….  that’s it. No number 3!

Download a free RSS Reader first (skip to bottom if you do not want to download software). This is special software that reads the “RSS feeds” from the largest news organizations right down to little old me…

Windows — RssReader
http://www.rssreader.com/

Mac — NetNewsWire
http://ranchero.com/netnewswire/

Once you’re set up, here’s all you have to do…

Right-click (control-click for Mac users) on any orange RSS button on a site, blog or news source that interests you. Start by right-clicking on the orange button below. Then…

Select Copy Shortcut (“Copy Link to Clipboard” for Mac), and paste that URL into your RSS Reader.

And that’s it! You’re subscribed.

Right-click and get started.

Add discover-yoga-online.com RSS to your “My Yahoo!”

Add discover-yoga-online.com RSS to your “My MSN”


Add discover-yoga-online.com RSS to your Google homepage

I started International Yogalayam in 2007 to provide free online yoga information and yoga educational resources. Since then, I have received a steady stream of emails from yoga teachers, students and countless others interested in this ancient science, praising this web site for the traditional yoga information and online yoga resources it provides.

Although I no longer manage this website, discover-yoga-online.com, I continue to work hard to provide genuine yoga information and training programs, such as those offered through my primary yoga teaching site www.theyogatutor.com.

The Yoga News , a monthly yoga Ezine was developed soon after I created the first few pages of this site. My goal was to create “not just another yoga newsletter,” but something truly special. This free monthly publication has since evolved into something quite unique, each month providing insightful articles about yoga and contemporary life rarely found elsewhere. It has been described by many readers as “a breath of fresh yoga air.”

The Yoga Tutor was the next logical step in the development of International Yogalayam as a true yoga online training school. In addition to all the free online yoga information, this wing of the project offers comprehensive, online yoga training programs for both beginner and advanced yoga students.

The Basic Yoga Trainer is our most popular introductory yoga training program, providing 21 step by step online yoga lessons. The Yoga Master’s Course , now the internet’s most comprehensive online yoga course, provides the perfect opportunity for those who are ready to go deeper into their study and practice. Now I also have an intermediate yoga course too, called The Science of Yoga.

And of course we have a Yoga Blog too … another chance for me to share some ideas about current global events and issues from a yogic perspective, as well as commentary about the modern yoga world.

The creation of International Yogalayam and all of the training programs and free online yoga resources has been a labour of love for me. The study and practice of yoga has brought so much into my life, and I am continually humbled by how much this web site and all the resources I have created for it continues to touch the lives of others around the world in positive ways.

Wishing you much success on your own wonderful yoga journey!


Yours in Yoga,

Founder, International Yogalayam