Featured Guests and Events:  Satsang with Reverend Jivana Heyman speaking on “Accessible Yoga”.

Schedule:
7:30pm – Kirtan 
8:00pm – Video of Sri Swami Satchidananda
8:20pm – Introductions
8:30pm – Satsang with Reverend Jivana Heyman speaking on “Accessible Yoga”.

Location:
Sivananda Hall

You can also view this Satsang live with Yogaville Livestream!

What is Satsang?
“Satsang” is a Sanskrit word meaning “gathering of seekers of the Truth.”

Learn more about Satsang

Featured Guests and Events:  Satsang with Sayyid M. Syeed: Islam Society of North America Director of Interfaith and Community Alliances (Sponsored by Lotus Center for All Faiths)

Schedule:
7:30pm – Kirtan
8:00pm – Video of Sri Swami Satchidananda
8:20pm – Introductions
8:30pm – Satsang with Sayyid M. Syeed: Islam Society of North America Director of Interfaith and Community Alliances

Location:
Sivananda Hall

You can also view this Satsang live with Yogaville Livestream!

What is Satsang?
“Satsang” is a Sanskrit word meaning “gathering of seekers of the Truth.”

Learn more about Satsang

Schedule:
7:30pm – Kirtan
8:00pm – Video of Sri Swami Satchidananda
8:20pm – Introductions
8:30pm – Satsang with Muktan Sullivan speaking on the “Life and Teaching of Swami Vivekananda”

Location:
Sivananda Hall

You can also view this Satsang live with Yogaville Livestream!

What is Satsang?
“Satsang” is a Sanskrit word meaning “gathering of seekers of the Truth.”

Learn more about Satsang

$30 at the door

Schedule:
7:30pm – Video of Sri Swami Satchidananda
7:50pm – Introductions
8:00pm –Chanting with Krishna Das

Location:
Sivananda Hall

You can also view this Satsang live with Yogaville Livestream!

What is Satsang?
“Satsang” is a Sanskrit word meaning “gathering of seekers of the Truth.”

Learn more about Satsang

Prana is the vital energy or force that causes movement. atom, even the movement of thought—is caused by prana, the cosmic energy. Electricity is prana. Your breathing is prana. Your digestion is prana. The different functions have different names, but they are all the same current or force: prana.

You get prana from food, from the sun, and from the air you breathe. It’s not simply breathing. The air stops at the lungs, but the prana goes throughout the body. Even though your lungs may be able to convert only part of the oxygen intake for the blood, the prana uses the other oxygen for all parts of the body. You are a bundle of energy. This vital force is prana. The practice of pranayama leads to the control, regulation and mastery of this vital force. It is learning to control the prana and direct it as you want. Oxygen is a great panacea, a fine medicine for all kinds of poisons. The world will be much happier if it knows the importance of pranayama.

By practicing the breathing techniques of pranayama, the mind becomes clear and fit for concentration. Pranayama purifies the nervous system and eliminates toxins from the body and blood.

You must regulate the breath for meditation because the breath binds the mind to the body. If the breath is regulated, the mind is too. Calm, slow, and steady breathing will also keep the mind very calm. But, before you calm the mind through slow, steady breathing, you should become alert. In the early morning, you can reshuffle the entire system, drive off drowsiness, bring a kind of exhilaration all over the body, remove the tension from different places, and bring harmonious movement in all the cells through bhastrika.

Patanjali says that, by practice of this pranayama, the mind becomes clear and fit for concentration. Practice a few rounds of alternate nostril breathing before meditation, and you will soon experience its benefits. This deep breathing is the nerve-purifying breath. Follow the breath with the mind. Feel how it comes in, how far it goes, and how it returns. At a more advanced stage, you can hold the breath for a period before exhaling. But you should work up to that very gradually or you could hurt yourself.

The main purposes of pranayama are to purify the system and calm and regulate the mind. Should you ever feel upset, tense or worried, do some slow deep breathing with full attention on the breath, and you will easily bring the mind to a calm state. The prana—here, as the movement of the breath—and the movement of the mind go together. They’re interdependent. If you regulate the prana, you have regulated, through the movement of the breath, that same pranic movement in the mind.

If you can control the mind you are the master. Pranayama helps you control certain parts of the body—certain muscles that are not normally under our control. By these practices we can, thus, control the mind. By controlling the breath you can control that subtle prana. But go slow. Be patient.

Pranayama should never be done in a hurry, nor should you try to advance too quickly because you are dealing with vital energy. The Yoga scriptures personified prana as a deadly cobra. So remember, you are playing with a cobra. If you play well and make the cobra dance well, you will accrue many benefits, as did the snake charmers in India. They used their snakes for their livelihood. But if they didn’t play properly, they would be killed. In the same way, with prana, you should be very careful. Do everything gently; avoid even the slightest strain and never hurry.

During pranayama practices, concentration should be inward to observe what is happening. On the inhalation and the exhalation concentrate on the flow of the breath. During retention, just look within and see what is happening. For each person it will be different.

How many of us are conscious of how we breathe? It just goes in and out fifteen or sixteen times each minute. Isn’t it strange to see the air remaining in this holy city—the human body? How many holes does it have? In a tube with many holes or punctures the air escapes. But here we have the nine gates of the city. Yet the life breath seems to be staying. It goes out, but some power seems to be pushing it back in to us. Even though we don’t worry about our life breath, somebody seems to be interested that we should stay alive.

That is why we are living. We cannot take credit for our living ourselves. We do all kinds of things to destroy ourselves, yet still we live. Isn’t it surprising? We should have died long, long ago. What makes us live then? Probably God still has something to do with us.

(Excerpted from To Know Your Self, by Sri Swami Satchidananda and reprinted in the August, 2007 IYTA Newsletter)

Featured Guests and Events:  Mongolian Buddhist Presentation & Teacher Training Graduation

Schedule:
7:30pm – Kirtan with Satya Greenstone &  Basic TT Graduates
8:00pm – Video of Sri Swami Satchidananda
8:20pm – Introductions
8:30pm –Mongolian Buddhism Presentation with Ganna including Mongolian Dancing

Location:
Sivananda Hall

You can also view this Satsang live with Yogaville Livestream!

What is Satsang?
“Satsang” is a Sanskrit word meaning “gathering of seekers of the Truth.”

Learn more about Satsang

I was living in the temple with Maharaj-ji in the fall of 1972, during the festival known as Durga puja, a fire ceremony that goes on for nine days and celebrates the destruction of various demons by the goddess who manifests after being prayed to by all of the gods. It is one of the biggest festivals of the year, and many of the devotees would come to the temple to stay with Maharaj-ji for the entire period. Because of the nature of Indian culture, it was also one of the few times that his female devotees—the Mas, or mothers, as they’re called—were able to come and be with him for an extended period. They’d all live together in the back of the temple, and at night they’d gather to sing holy songs and chant in one of the inner rooms that was off-limits to men.

I would sit outside the window of that room for hours, totally immersed in the intensity, passion, and joy that these ladies sang with. The chanting would be going on for a while, and then all of a sudden there would be a scream of ecstasy as one of the women went into a state of absorption in God. The sweetest thing was that when they discovered I was sitting outside and listening for so many hours, they cracked the window so that I could hear better, knowing I’d respect their privacy. This was one of my most important and life- changing experiences. I bathed myself in their devotion and opened up new rivers of love in my heart.

The heart of this practice is simply repeating the Name over and over again. Everything comes from that because it is said that everything is contained within the Name. When I can do this wholeheartedly, then I’ll see if there is anything else I have to do. In the meantime, it’s enough. When I’m really chanting—singing the Name and coming back to it again and again—no matter what is going on in my head, I have to let go of it. There’s no option. The only option is to sing. And that’s what the instruction is: Sing. Not to think or imagine anything; not to try to make anything happen; not to ruminate about stuff that happened earlier or might happen later … I just have to sing. I try to gather all of my strength together and sing, no matter what.

When I started, even if I got myself to sit down and sing, my mind was somewhere else in a second. But that’s the beauty of this practice. We start from where we are. We get lost in thought, and we come back. As soon as we realize that we’re gone, we come back. It’s amazing. Most of us will have to do it 40 billion times a minute, but that’s okay. As soon as we realize we’re gone, we’re already back. Then by the time we realize that, we’re gone again. Thinking is not the same as being back. Recognizing that we’re lost in thought is the first step in turning within. We can’t hold on to the awareness in the same way that we clutch a cookie in our hand. It’s not something we can understand or think about in our head. That’s why we’re asked to simply chant. The chanting begins to draw us into a deeper space in our own being, so we sit more at ease in ourselves.

Chanting is called a practice for one reason: it only works if we do it. Chanting has been my main practice for years, but it took me a long time to realize that it’s only by doing it regularly that we begin to experience ourselves changing. If we want to get wet, we have to jump in the water. If we want to get wet, we have to learn to swim, or at least float! We can read about sugar, people can tell us about sugar and describe the sweetness to us, but if we want to know what it tastes like, we’ve got to put some in our mouths. That’s why we do practice: we must have our own experience. In order for it to help when difficult things in life happen — we lose someone, we get sick, we have a car accident, or someone dies — we have to do it. Over time, we’ll see that we’re getting stronger, making it easier to deal with difficult situations.

Krishna Das is a Western musician who has created a wave throughout the American Yoga scene with his rousing, soulful kirtans. He has led kirtan on a regular basis in Yoga centers all over the world, has taught with Ram Das and sung for many saints and yogis in the USA and India.

By simply chanting from the heart and making kirtan fun, Krishna Das has ignited a new enthusiasm for holding kirtan and chanting these ancient sacred mantras. Over thirty years ago, he made his first trip to India and became a devotee of Neem Karoli Baba. Since then, Krishna Das has made numerous pilgrimages throughout India, meeting teachers and saints of many spiritual traditions on his quest to open and purify his heart. He has studied Buddhist meditation and has been initiated into Tibetan Buddhist practices by lamas from various lineages.

Join Krishna Das for his Memorial Day Weekend Chanting Retreat, “Yoga of Devotion,” on May 24-27, 2013 at Yogaville, VA.

Excerpted from Chants of a Lifetime, Hay House Publishers with permission from Krishna Das, reprinted in the IYTA Newsletter November, 2010.

Featured Guests and Events:

Schedule:
7:30pm – Kirtan with Manjala Spears
8:00pm – Introductions
8:10pm – Video of Sri Swami Satchidananda
8:40pm –Swami Ramananda speaking on “Retreat and Surrender” Winning Choices During Difficult Times:

Location:
Sivananda Hall

You can also view this Satsang live with Yogaville Livestream!

What is Satsang?
“Satsang” is a Sanskrit word meaning “gathering of seekers of the Truth.”

Learn more about Satsang

The first issue is to recognize the misery that arises from a lack of self-awareness.

What do I mean by ”lack of self-awareness?” The Yoga Sutras state: The restraint of the modifications of the mind-stuff is Yoga (chitta vritti nirodhah). Then the Seer (Self) abides in His own nature. At other times As Yoga teachers, we tend to believe in the benefits of meditation–either from our own experience or from our faith in the words of the great Yogis. Yet when the time comes to sit still on our pillow, we may find that the mind is not very enthusiastic about the practice. It could be actively resisting or just preferring to get to the other things on our ever-increasing to-do list. As someone who has made meditation a priority in my life, I’ve watched these tendencies closely, always looking for ways to bring more wholeheartedness and sincerity to my practice. Over time I recognized three fundamental issues into which my soul needed to look squarely in the eye to bring my entire Being into my meditation practice. The first issue is to recognize the misery that arises from a lack of self-awareness. What do I mean by ”lack of self-awareness?” The Yoga Sutras state: The restraint of the modifications of the mind-stuff is Yoga (chitta vritti nirodhah). Then the Seer (Self) abides in His own nature. At other times the Self appears to assume the forms of the mental modifications (Book I Sutras 2-4).

In other words, when we are not in a state of Yoga, we experience both thoughts (vrittis) and our identification with them. What does it mean to identify with our vrittis? We become the thought–our identity is locked into the mental or emotional pattern–leaving no one home to watch what is taking place. When there is no observer, our thoughts are unconscious—below the radar of our awareness. When we wake up a little more, we may become aware of a vritti, but because our identity has become so linked to it, because we are so close to it, we have no perspective to determine its validity. So, we tend to assume that whatever we’re thinking is true and accurate. This identification with the mind and the resulting lack of self-awareness creates most of our problems in life. Why is that? Because we’re almost always thinking! Almost our entire life is spent immersed in vrittis—600 thoughts a minute or 10 per second, according Dr. Amrita McLanahan. Though most of these 600 thoughts are unconscious, they are in complete control of determining our experience of life. Our past conditioning—our samskaras—determines how we see the world and how we react to our perception. We project our reality and then respond in pre-programmed, repetitive tape loops. This makes it hard for us to see the lessons we need to learn to grow and evolve, so we find ourselves in the same types of dilemmas again and again, like Bill Murray in the movie Groundhog Day. Our lack of awareness makes it so we can’t see:

a) How we are attracting these challenges,

b) How it is our attitude toward the challenge that is the cause of our pain and the reason we continue to inflict pain on others,

c) That the purpose of the challenge is to support us to free ourselves from these repetitive grooves and thus become alive and awake human beings. The end result is that we end up blaming others for our unhappiness, feeling victimized, and stagnating at our current level of awareness.

The second issue is to recognize the misery that arises from the awakening of self-awareness.

The helpful side of the lack of awareness is that we don’t really see our situation and how painful it is. You probably know so-called non-spiritual people who seem to be getting on better than some Yogis. This bliss of ignorance begins to get disturbed once the soul gravitates toward Yoga in general and meditation in particular. These tools are going to shake us out of our slumber—out of our complacency—out of our comfort zone.

The Buddhists are particularly up-front about the fact that a dimension of waking up is perceiving that there is misery inherent in life. Buddha didn’t see this as a negative or pessimistic perspective. It was simply self-evident to him that to reach the end of suffering, or nirvana, we first have to accept the fact that there is suffering. Buddha recommended that we not turn away from the fact that we and everyone we hold dear is living in a body that is going to get old and die–or even die young. Buddha wanted us to be able to hold this in our consciousness in a way that would help us to keep our eyes open from moment to moment, rather than immobilize ourselves.

So, it is a common experience, and a good sign, if after the initial honeymoon stage of discovering Yoga, you find yourself not feeling so good. This is what happened to me. My friends and family took one look at me and said, “This Yoga is not for you, man.” Yoga transformed me from a happy-go-lucky kid to a contracted, anxious, uptight fanatic. I was beginning the process of waking up, and it wasn’t pretty!

The third issue is to recognize the misery that arises from unskillfully trying to increase self-awareness.

What do I mean by “unskillfully trying to increase self-awareness?” Mostly, pushing too hard to achieve chitta vritti nirodhah (the restraint of the modification of the mind-stuff). I spent a few decades thinking that forcing the mind to be still was a reasonable goal, especially for a gung-ho seeker like myself. Vrittis are disturbing the peace of my mind and stealing my identity. Patanjali defines Yoga as stopping them, right? If I’m having a difficult time accomplishing this, then I need to grit my teeth harder and jump back into the battle. However, I couldn’t help but notice that I was tending to come out of my meditations more tense, frustrated, or depressed than when I started. I began to question if this was how it was supposed to be. I figured that I either needed to find another approach, or I just wasn’t cut out for the spiritual life.

My Solution

Since you are reading this article written by me, you probably surmised that I didn’t give up on the spiritual life. I explored the above issues more consciously, and it became clear to me that I needed to find a way to meditate that was more enjoyable. I intended to be sitting on my meditation pillow three times a day and I wanted to develop an approach and attitude that would get me there happily. Not only didn’t I want to foster the adversarial relationship I had developed with my mind and its thoughts, I wanted my meditation to help me develop an open, healthy relationship with the mind. Over time, I gradually came to see that if I was going to enjoy the process–or game–of meditation, then it needed to be challenging, but doable. For me, “Chitta Vritti Nirodhah” wasn’t really a fun game to play because I couldn’t do it. I found that, rather than moving right into playing the “Chitta Vritti Nirodhah” game, I did better playing the “Becoming Aware of the Vrittis in the Chitta” game. In this game, we shift the focus from trying to stop the mind from doing anything to becoming conscious of what the mind is doing. This also is no cakewalk, but I find it very interesting, engaging, and—most of the time—a fun challenge.

How I play the “Becoming Aware of the Vrittis in the Chitta” game

I call this stage of my meditation “Preparing for Dharana” (concentration) and it goes like this:

1) Begin observing the breath.

2) Don’t try to not think. Rather, encourage the mind to let out any of its concerns or nonsensical ramblings that are percolating beneath the surface.

3) When you become aware that a thought has surfaced, thank the mind by saying, “Good.” Why do I recommend saying “Good?” I say “Good” because the mind followed my direction to let the subconscious become conscious, and it is good that I was able to recognize that thinking is taking place. It is actually very good if I can recognize what the mind was thinking about–identifying the content requires more awareness. And it’s excellent if I am able to follow the progression of thoughts backward to be aware of what vritti started this train of thought.

4) Next ask: “Anything else on your mind?” (And mean it.)

5) Then gently return to observing the breath. You may have a few moments when you are simply witnessing consciously and the mind is not moving. Both the conscious witnessing and the lack of thoughts will probably last only a few moments. See if you can learn to savor those few moments, while at the same time not harboring any negative reaction to vrittis. (You don’t want to say “Good” when thoughts arise, but really prefer that they didn’t. Notice if you kind of wish the mind would shut up and see if you can drop that preference.)

How I have benefited by starting my meditations in this way

1) Thoughts are weakened. When we become aware of what the mind is doing, we have begun the process of breaking our identification with the vrittis. This weakens their power, and leads to chitta vritti nirodhah.

2) It is a less violent approach. “Chitta Vritti Nirodhah” tends to be a harsh way to play the meditation game. Stopping thoughts by becoming aware of them is like turning off a fan by unplugging it rather than stopping it by sticking your hand in the blades.

3) It does not encourage guerilla warfare. If a thought is greeted with a negative reaction, it is like any of us, it skulks away. But unhappily going away doesn’t mean disappearing. It sees that the conscious mind is a hostile environment, so it goes back down to the subconscious where it is safe and has more power over us. You’ll have a fuzzy meditation where you sense your mind wasn’t still but you have no idea what it was thinking about.

So, if you have been finding yourself less than eager to sit for meditation, you may want to try out this approach for a few minutes before asking the mind to be still or focused on one thing. You may discover for yourself what the mystic poet Rumi talks about in his poem The Guest House.

The Guest House
This being human is a guesthouse
Every morning a new arrival.
A joy, a depression, a meanness
Some momentary awareness comes as an unexpected visitor.
Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they’re a crowd of sorrows
Who violently sweep your house empty of its furniture.
Still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out for some new delight.

Jelaluddin Rumi (1207-1273)

 (by Swami Asokananda, from the February, 2005 IYTA Newsletter)

Everything begins with our thoughts. We sow a thought and reap an action. If we repeat an action, it be- comes a habit. The sum total of our habits defines our character. And our character, in turn, determines our destiny. This means that everything we are experiencing now in our lives is the result of thoughts that we chose to cultivate.

Even our physical body is the product of past thoughts. Body is none other than solidified mind. Body and mind are the same stuff at different rates of vibration. Just like water can exist in three states: vapor, liquid and solid; the mind is like vapor, our energy currents are like water, and the body is like ice. If you persist in a particular way of thinking, the body will come to reflect those thoughts.

The more holistic schools of medicine know this to be true. Samuel Hahneman, the founder of homeopathy, used to say that the origin of disease is wrong thinking. Ayurveda also recognizes that unresolved emotions play a significant role in causing illness. It asserts that repressed fear affects the kidneys, anger affects the liver, greed and possessiveness affect the heart and spleen. Chinese medicine cites similar findings. Even Western medicine today understands the impact of stress on the cardiovascular and immune systems.

Years ago there was an experiment performed by psychologists at a prison. They were investigating the mind/body connection. They asked for volunteers from the prisoners on death row. One man volunteered, and the procedure was explained to him as follows. He was to lie down and be blindfolded. He would then be punctured at a crucial spot along a blood vessel, after which he would hear his blood drip into a pan. After ten minutes had elapsed, he would die due to loss of blood, but the whole process would be totally painless.

At the appointed hour, the experiment was per- formed as it had been explained, except for one important point. He was simply pricked with a pin, causing no significant blood loss. Instead, he lay there listening to water dripping into a pan. But at the end of ten minutes, he expired. Why did he die when no physiological harm had actually been done to him? It was simply because he totally believed that he would.

I once heard about a mining accident in Germany. The miners were trapped with enough air to last three days. Only one man had a watch. What he decided to do was to announce every two hours that only one hour had elapsed. It took five days to rescue the men. Everyone but the timekeeper thought that less than three days had actually transpired, and they survived. The only person to die was the timekeeper who knew that more than three days had actually passed.

In English, there’s a saying, “As you think, so you become.” Our state of mind impacts our physical well-being, our ability to engage in harmonious relation- ships, the skill and efficiency with which we execute our work, and the way in which we see the world.

We don’t see the world as it is. All our perceptions are filtered through the mind, which has been conditioned and colored by all our past experiences. Swami Vivekananda describes it like an oyster making a pearl. When a parasite gets inside the shell and causes an irritation, the oyster throws a sort of enamel around it, and that is what we call a pearl.

Similarly, when we perceive external objects or events, they are like little irritants falling into our minds. Immediately, our mind throws its own enameling around them. And here is the important point: All we ever really know about the world are the pearls created by our own minds, minds that have been conditioned since birth (as well as in prior births) by our family, friends, education, society, media, and environment— by all of our past experiences. Our known universe consists of these pearls, which are the vrittis, or thought-waves, that are set up in our minds.

We go through life weighing information and events, but our “scales” are not set at the “0” point. We project our own point of view onto all that we encounter. Sri Ramakrishna told a story about four people strolling down the road one morning. Each passed the same spot where there was a man lying motionless. The first man to pass by gazed at the man and said, “So, you spent the night in the gambling den and lost all your money. You couldn’t afford a room at the inn, so you had to sleep in the street. Well, you got what you deserve.” The second passerby looked at the man and reflected, “You were probably up drinking all night and couldn’t make it home. You’re no doubt sleeping it off now.” The third individual saw the same man on the road, but was moved to compassion. He hurriedly ex- claimed, “Poor fellow, you must be ill. I’ll be back soon with help.”And the fourth fellow, upon sighting the man humbly bowed and in a prayerful manner said, “Oh for the great ones, it matters not where they sleep. The sky is their roof, the ground their bed. I salute you noble soul.” And he went on his way. Who was lying in the road: a gambler, a drunk, a sick person, or a saint? Each saw him according to his own mind.

We don’t see things neutrally. Our minds are like colored glasses through which we filter and interpret everything. And here is where the great science of Raja Yoga comes in. It can help us to recognize the particular glasses we are wearing, and then en- able us to remove them so we can see clearly. In the process, we learn how to purify and strengthen our minds, resulting in a healthier body, an emotionally balanced mind, and a more skillful and successful life. We become easeful, peaceful, and useful, and ultimately fit to realize the Supreme Truth.

(by Swami Karunananda, from the IYTA Newsletter, May 2002)