Yoga for Personal and Social Resilience
"Start where you are. Use what you have. Do what you can." Yoga helps us develop personal resilience. Yes, the world's a mess, but I can't save the whole world. I tried and succeeded mainly at making myself miserable. I was a radio news reporter at the end of the Vietnam war. I wanted badly to change the world through truthful reporting. But I was so stressed by the chaos I saw that I was becoming more and more like the people I thought were the problem—I was increasingly unable to sort out what was true or at least accurate. Yoga became my way of coping and eventually, I realized I could serve the world by sharing tools for peace of mind better than I could by stridently objecting to the military-industrial complex. In the process of becoming a whole, happy person, I gradually became a more positive influence on the world around me. Consider this report on the epidemic of stress in 2021. The CDC estimates that stress is a causal factor in an estimated 80% of primary care doctor...
Personal Transformation: An Ocean of Change
Everywhere in nature, we see change. The one unchanging thing about Mother Nature is that she is constantly changing. Day gives way to night. The hot and humid days of summer yield to the brisk, cool winds of fall. The garden is in bloom and then goes to seed....
IY Teacher Feature: Jayadeva Mandelkorn
With a distinguished career teaching Yoga since 1969, Jayadeva Mandelkorn speaks with an authority few other teachers can match. He knows not only the challenges of teaching subtle Yoga practices but as the founder and director of the Princeton Integral Yoga...
More Recent Articles
Self-Care: The Key to Selfless Service
As a lifelong caregiver who has devotedly served her patients and community, Susan Turnage, RN, CYN, RYT 500, knows about burnout. Susan suffered from stress and fatigue before finding Yoga and experiencing the benefits that regular practice brought her. Inspired to...
Joy Through Relationships
Valentine’s Day is a special time to celebrate love and to put energy into personal relationships. Bhagavan and Bhavani Metro, longtime devotees of Swami Satchidananda, Integral Yoga Ministers, and a happily married couple with decades of relationship wisdom and...
Heaven on Earth
With the interest in Yoga and other mindfulness disciplines such as meditation steadily growing among Westerners, many find themselves curious about visiting an ashram but don’t know what to expect. What is an ashram? Traditional to India, ashrams have now spread...
Key Teaching of the Month – December 2016
Bigger Body, Less Stress
Yoga is widely recognized as an antidote to stress. But in mass media, it’s common to see the practices demonstrated by young athletes who have had years of conditioning. Unintentionally, these images can make Yoga seem reserved for a rare group of people. Meera Kerr,...
Sow What?
Do you ever lie in bed at night, wondering what the future holds? Swami Satchidananda offers some advice for how to plan your future—excerpted from The Golden Present. Question: Would you please speak about what you foresee in the future, for the next ten or twenty...
Movement as Meditation
Meditation doesn’t have to mean sitting in silence. Physical movement can also bring the mind to a place of stillness—and for some, it’s easier than hours on a cushion. After all, anything that is done with one’s full attention and awareness is meditation: walking,...
Goddess Power
Ellen is a medical student, and thinks of herself as a rational person who doesn’t go in for mystical experiences. But one day, as she closed her eyes and relaxed in Savasana, Ellen felt a powerful, maternal energy around her and ‘saw’ the Indian goddess Durga, whose...
Key Teaching of Integral Yoga – November 2016
Learn to say: ‘Don’t want, don’t want, don’t want.’ That will make you someone who is above wants.
Key Teaching of Integral Yoga – October 2016
Do anything and everything with the idea of serving God, serving humanity, serving the world-at-large.
What Makes Mindfulness Work?
Amy Weintraub wants to understand why Yoga works. For over 20 years, her work has broken ground in the field of mental health—her evidence-based treatments use asana, mudras, mantras, meditations (and more) to alleviate anxiety and depression for a variety of...
Yoga, by the Hours
Should you adjust your practice? It depends on the time of day. Everything in nature engages in consistent, daily routines—plants and animals embrace a daily rhythm and live by it. Humans, however, have gotten away from this habit. You can experience better health...