Yonatan Saar - Inner Work: Focusing, Meditation, Yoga

07/01/2026

After some posts I’ve been sharing in yoga groups, people reach out to me to study kundalini yoga and ta**ra, s*xual and non-s*xual. A small part I accept into practice, and a significant part I stop and tell them honestly that it’s not for them, or that right now it’s still too early. Not because I’m trying to be some gatekeeper, but because I see what happens when people go into this without a base and real readiness.

This is not a marketing post. I’m writing it to clear things up a bit, and also to say out loud something that isn’t always pleasant to say. I’ve met and also treated quite a few people who were harmed by kundalini practices taught too fast, or in workshops that teach it too freely, without a gradual build and without real fit. Sometimes it looks exciting and ecstatic at first and then it flips. Nervous system overload, anxiety, confusion, trouble sleeping, emotional flooding. Sometimes also very uncomfortable physical symptoms that weren’t there before. Not always of course, but when it happens it can be really tough.

In traditional yoga schools in India and in the East, kundalini wasn’t something taught to everyone at every stage. It was passed mainly to practitioners who were very balanced, with a wide spiritual foundation in understanding and practice, and with readiness for a process that can get very intense.

And when I say kundalini here, I mostly mean the more classical track, the one involving intensive pranayama and mudras, strong work with breath and energy, and also kundalini work inside s*xual ta**ra practice. This is not the same as softer modern variations, like what is taught in schools of Yogi Bhajan, and it’s also not exactly the same as what people call Kriya Yoga. I’m not getting into an argument about methods here, I’m just clarifying what I mean in this post.

So what matters before someone enters a track like this. First, a minimum of two to three years of consistent hatha yoga. Not on and off, but practice that truly builds awareness and stability, both in the body and in the inner energetic movement. Along with that, a clean, sattvic lifestyle, healthy nutrition, preferably vegan but at least vegetarian, and no alcohol or drugs.

And also mental stability. If there is a history of instability, a tendency to flooding, or periods of falling apart, in my view you need to work much more gently, and sometimes simply not go in this direction. It’s not a pleasant sentence, but it’s better to stop in time than to go in and pay a price. And if there is a history of schizophrenia, psychotic states, severe bipolar disorder, or significant personality disorders, usually it’s better to stay away from this field.

A steady meditation practice is part of this base, to develop concentration and the ability to stay steady when things start moving strongly inside. This happens in an amplified way when kundalini begins to work within the system.

If you have questions, feel free to ask here or privately.

About the author: I have been practicing kundalini work and meditation for over 25 years. I live in India, my life is dedicated to personal practice and also to teaching yoga and meditation, and I also work as a Focusing therapist.

25/12/2025

Wishing peace on Earth for every animal this Christmas. 🐷🎄

23/12/2025

The basic Buddhist view, and most classical Hindu views, see craving as a central source of suffering. So most methods that arise from these traditions aim at releasing craving from life.

Cravings are seen as bonds to be loosened. The goal of practice is complete release from them, leading to equanimity toward everything that exists, a state with no craving or aversion toward anything in material existence.

When a person chooses this path in traditional forms, they follow the way of renunciants or monks, reducing their needs to the minimum required for survival.

Inner practice is directed toward freeing oneself from the emotional and mental bonds that form through the search for happiness and the pursuit of craving.

Not everyone who walks this path does so in a total way. There are also paths and views meant for householders, where some space is given to certain desires, but in a limited way, with boundaries meant to protect the practitioner from sliding into an immoral pursuit of desire.

One example is restrictions around s*xuality. Many spiritual teachers throughout history guided their students to live their s*xual drive within a monogamous partnership, seen as safer than polyamorous frameworks or a s*xually free lifestyle. I also think it is more fitting for most people, and at a deeper level it can be a very beneficial path.

The ascetic approach serves many practitioners in the East and the West. But in my view it also carries traps that can delay real liberation, not because of the approach itself, but because of how it is sometimes held as a spiritual position.

This stance can create a subtle pattern of inner judgment that carries negativity toward the body and s*xuality, both toward the practitioner and toward others.

At times, teachers who hold this view develop a puritan facade that serves them in front of their students.

A teacher may maintain a certain image, aware that if they were fully exposed they might lose appreciation and status. In extreme cases, this can lead to repression so deep that the teacher themselves cannot recognize it.

When a teacher in this state meets students with issues related to s*x or romance, they may respond with tightness and judgment.

Even if people say that everything can be spoken about, in practice a barrier can form between teacher and student. Instead of an open space for recognition, there is a sense of contraction and lack of holding.

The student may keep inside what they want to release, from an intuitive feeling that the space is limited, and that the teacher carries a certain rejection toward them, or toward what is arising in them.

When a teacher or practitioner cannot meet their own processes openly, they will also struggle to meet the processes of others.

Repressing s*xual desire can eventually erupt and create suffering for the practitioner and for those around them.

This is one reason some teachers may develop s*xual feelings toward their students and even try to act on them, which can make the space unsafe for the student.

Even when it does not reach that point, a repressed inner state can lead to negative emotions and make the atmosphere around that teacher toxic in certain circumstances.

In the Ta***ic view there is a different direction for working with desire, a path that includes it and gives it more expression.

The Ta***ic path also aims at complete freedom, like the Buddhist and classical Hindu paths, but it focuses on experiencing craving with awareness, unlike ascetic paths that emphasize observing cravings without fulfilling them.

In the next post, I will continue exploring this topic.

You are welcome to comment or ask questions.

**ra

16/12/2025

The use of affirmations has become an inseparable part of quite a few practices of training and therapy.

From my understanding, using affirmations can sometimes have real value, but when it’s used in an imprecise way, it can create the opposite effect from what we intended.

I’m not writing this as a post against affirmations (personally, in my own work, I don’t use them), but as an attempt to be more accurate about when and why they work, and when they start working against us.

In this post I’ll try to look at the inner processes that happen when we use intentional inner statements, especially when we use them in a way that isn’t quite right.

When we use these inner statements, in most cases it’s because we want to change something we don’t like in ourselves, or as a way to change a situation that’s happening in our lives.

The basic idea behind affirmations, usually, is that by saying what we want to happen, we can create an inner state that will take us out of that inner or outer place that feels not good for us, and create a new reality.

For example, people with low self-worth sometimes repeat sentences like:
I have high self-worth, I am worthy, I have value in any situation, etc.

And not rarely they will also put daily reminders near the bed, on the fridge, or in fixed places, so they can come back to it again and again.

I’ll try to look at this through the lens of Focusing and mindfulness, which are the fields I’m working with.

I’ll use insecurity as an example, but basically this can apply to any inner belief that’s rooted in us. (In classical Buddhist language, a conditioning like this is called samskara.)

When we have a place of insecurity, there is usually a stream of thoughts, and also bodily sensations that characterize that place.

Most of the time, if we don’t practice meditation or don’t really know mindfulness processes, there will also be identification with the inner experience, and a belief that we truly are like that, that this is who we are.

At that point, the limiting view gets embedded in the system (body and mind), and sometimes very directly in the nervous system.

The experience feels familiar and normal, because it’s a conditioning that gets triggered again and again when situations from the outside activate it. Sometimes it sits there for years, and sometimes for as long as we can remember. It becomes a very familiar feeling, something that’s taken as part of who we are.

Here’s an interesting point: we can choose affirmations that sound right and healthy, and still they feel like something foreign.

On the level of words and the inner story, it can sound great. But on the level of bodily feeling, and on the level of deeper conditioning, something inside still doesn’t settle with it.

And then, when we repeat again and again something that still isn’t truly connected to the experience, sometimes the part that doesn’t believe it starts to rise more and more strongly.

It can come up both as thoughts and as bodily sensations. In Focusing terms, the felt sense of worthlessness becomes more and more present, and it tends to express itself through the sensory layer, the emotional layer, and the mental layer.

In Buddhist language, you can see here a process called papañca, a mental proliferation that sometimes also takes on a somatic expression, and takes up more and more inner space.

And sometimes, the more we say I have value, I’m worthy, the part that resists it will rise more into awareness and express itself more strongly. The attempt to push something out ends up bringing it back, sometimes even with growing intensity.

This process becomes sharper especially when we try to push away and erase the part we don’t want to meet, and focus only on the place we want to develop.

What we try to ignore tends to return, sometimes with more force.

An inner struggle against parts of ourselves, even when the intention is good, often creates more suffering.

Through somatic-awareness-based methods like Focusing and mindfulness, there are tools to work with what arises from within and is present in our experience. Tools that are based on listening to the part that feels worthless, on making gentle contact with it, sometimes with the understanding that it’s only trying to protect us.

And out of that contact, sometimes something shifts, and a carrying forward happens, a movement forward that comes from within, not from pasting a sentence on top from the outside.

Also in Buddhism, the guidance is to work with what is there and understand it through deep seeing, not to try to manufacture an alternative reality. I think that here, both the therapeutic approach of Focusing and the classical Buddhist approach see it in a similar way.

I believe we can move forward from the place we are actually in. Repeating sentences, even if they are beautiful and true, doesn’t always create change by itself, if the body and the lived experience are still somewhere else.

You’re welcome to share how you see this from your own point of view.

14/12/2025

https://youtu.be/3e43I97DP7s?si=at8Okq8YZoD6RTZt

In many spiritual models, morality is framed as a tradition, a preference, or a culturally shaped ideal. In this talk I explore a different claim found in Bu...

09/12/2025

There are many parallel and different lines between the therapeutic work of Focusing and processes based on mindfulness that were taught by the Buddha.

In this post and in the coming ones I want to touch on elements that we can take from Buddhist practice – ideas and principles that can serve as guidelines for deepening Focusing work.

One of the striking things I see in my work is that people who come to Focusing sessions with a background of mindfulness-based meditation practice find it much easier to connect to the felt sense and to stay for longer periods in the somatic experience without escaping into a world of daydreaming.

The simple and direct explanation for why it is relatively easy for a mindfulness practitioner to connect to the place of felt sense is quite clear - it comes out of the stable practice of observing bodily sensations. At the same time, I want to point to something in the mindfulness process that might be missed by someone who doesn’t come from that world.

One of the things that characterizes mindfulness practice is working with what the Buddha called kaya - body. In this term he mainly referred to what the body does and the postures it is in - like sitting, walking, lying down, and any movement that happens through the body.

When a practitioner is aware of their bodily movements, most of the time they come with a neutral feeling. They can of course also be accompanied by pleasant or unpleasant sensations, but the point I want to emphasize is that the basis of the practice is not necessarily the subtle sensations in the center of the body, but more the coarse sensations - and not necessarily “important” sensations.

This kind of attention builds states of concentration and mindfulness throughout the day, in any situation. When a more subtle inner movement calls for attention, the preparatory work has already created the conditions in which the mind is stable and focused, and from there it is ready to meet more delicate experiences as well as challenging inner experiences.

Within a Focusing session there is also a place for observing the less subtle sensations in the process of entering the body, but this phase is relatively short, and from there in most cases the focuser moves to look for the felt sense, which is usually connected to some kind of uncomfortable feeling.

If the focuser learns how to create continuous awareness around the coarser actions of daily life, it will be much easier for them to enter the deeper resolutions - both in their personal meditation or Focusing practice and within a therapeutic process.

If the Focusing guide directs the focuser toward understanding attention throughout the whole day, the deep processes become much more effective, and the process of finding the felt sense and deepening with it becomes part of the natural movement of life, rather than something limited to the time of the session.

30/11/2025

When we come to therapy or to a spiritual process, our motivation is always a search for a place in us where we want change.

When the spiritual or therapeutic process goes deep, we sometimes experience a deep transformation in our inner world, and from that changes are created also in our life with the world – in our dynamics with people, in our aspirations, and in the way we see life.

A question that can arise is: what is the reason that after we have gone through a transformation and released ourselves from painful places, sometimes life actually looks more challenging than it was before, and a new experience of suffering appears that we cannot always explain.

There can of course be different answers to this, but here I want to relate especially to one process that is very common for people who go through deep spiritual or therapeutic work.

When we go through a deep inner transformation, our dynamics with life almost inevitably change. The way we see close friends, family, and sometimes partners can change in a very deep way.

I remember that when I was young, I loved to go drink with friends in bars on Allenby. After I entered the world of Vipassana, the whole world of going out and drinking at night suddenly became an empty experience. Those experiences of drunk camaraderie suddenly felt like an illusion that has a lot of loneliness inside it.

I also saw this in romantic relationships in my life. With partners where I thought there was real love, after I went deeper in the process I could see that sometimes it was actually built on fear and dependence. And when the way I looked outward changed, something in the magic and in the connection faded.

These are two examples from my personal life. In my work as a teacher and therapist, I meet again and again people who, in the midst of their process of development, go through a kind of sobering up that comes from a deeper seeing of themselves and from there a clearer understanding of the places they are in.

Then a process of de-enchantment begins, and sometimes a kind of farewell comes with it – from an old world that we lived in and loved. But as our seeing deepens, we start noticing the cracks, the lies, and the things we could not see in earlier stages, when we were more caught in a state of illusion.

When this kind of sobering up happens, and the world we lived in starts to dissolve, parts in us rise up that very much want to go back to the old and safe place – but the more wise part knows that this is no longer possible. This can create an inner conflict and pain.

Sometimes we have already said goodbye to an old and safe world, but we still do not have clarity about how to move on. In this kind of vacuum, fear can arise, and a sense of instability in the reality we live in.

I believe that these transitions, which are sometimes painful and threatening, are an inseparable part of our psychological and spiritual development.

When I look at this from the perspective of Focusing or mindfulness, I would place inside questions like: what does the part in me that does not want the change feel? What fears exist in me about moving forward into places, relationships, or dynamics that I do not know?

I think that part of the spiritual and therapeutic process is to pay attention to these parts that want to pull us back to a place that is no longer possible for us. Deep listening to these parts, precisely to them, is what in my view allows us to move forward.

I will continue to share thoughts on this topic in future posts.

29/11/2025

כשיש תשוקה חסקה אנחנו לא רואים את האדם שמולנו אלא את התמונה שהמיינד מצייר,רק כשנרגע משהו בפנים אנחנו יכולים לראות את האדם השלם.

#מיינדפולנס #מדיטציה #התמקדות #זוגיות #אהבה

23/11/2025

One of the most important things, when we choose a teacher training or an advanced training, is to pause for a moment and check inside ourselves what conscious and unconscious reasons are moving us to look for an initial or additional training.

I divide this into two basic states of mind.

The first, healthier state:

I understand what kind of growth I need in order to be a better yoga teacher, or a more mature practitioner. I look for a person I feel can create the conditions for me to develop – both on the external level, to understand yoga more deeply, and on the inner level, that naturally unfolds within a yoga that comes from a deep view.

From this place, a commitment to a learning process is born, a process that helps us move toward a more developed and integrated place.

In this state I can see with relative clarity what I genuinely need in order to grow, and make a decision from a relatively clear seeing of myself and of the teachers I am connecting with.

The second state, which is very common, comes from a very different inner space.

In many cases, these are unconscious inner processes that drive us to act. I feel that I do not know enough, and inside there is a feeling of low self-worth.

I look for a teacher who has a lot of knowledge and confidence, so that they will confirm my worth for me, and so that I will have another certificate that proves to others that it is worthwhile to come to me.

If I do a training that is long enough or prestigious enough with a well-known teacher, this will supposedly place me in a position where people will see value in me.

Often, this is also connected to a part in me that longs for the teacher role itself, that wants to place myself in the position of teacher out of a hidden belief that this position will give me validation for my existence and my worth.

When a person acts from this second state, the tendency is often to join courses they do not actually need.

From here also comes the tendency to go back again and again to trainings in things we already studied. In general, we can say that this almost never truly solves the problem of low self-worth, and sometimes even deepens it.

In such situations it is worth doing deeper work with meditation and therapy, in order to meet the parts in us that create this inner block and lead us to unsuitable decisions.

The very understanding of these parts can help us stop looking for an external, ineffective solution to the problem – like yet another course – and instead look for inner work and teachers or therapists who can help us reach a freer and clearer inner state.

Between these two states there are many shades of grey.

What I am trying to say in this post is that before we enter any teaching process or advanced training, it is worth doing an honest inner inquiry and really meeting the place inside from which we want to step into this process.

29/10/2025

Reflections on relationships, loneliness, and meditation

I want to share some thoughts on dealing with feelings of loneliness. I think there are many reasons why people seek relationships or romantic or s*xual connections, but I believe the deeper reason is often the desire to be released from loneliness.

Loneliness is sometimes called the most serious epidemic of our generation. Personally, I have experienced long periods of loneliness in my life, and as someone who accompanies people in spiritual processes, it’s one of the most common things I encounter.

I think that when people feel lonely, the almost automatic solution that comes to mind is that loneliness is solved by finding a relationship.

Just as a hungry person seeks food and a thirsty person seeks water, so a lonely person seeks and finds love. The mind automatically tunes itself to one familiar solution to numb the emotional pain that stems from loneliness.

I think our inner belief that the solution must come through relationships is sometimes a kind of blindness to a deeper solution—one that can truly free us from the pain.

Personally, I experienced long stretches of loneliness, especially during the period when I lived in the religious world, particularly regarding the need for emotional connection with women. In my twenties I opened up to meeting women, and it did ease the loneliness for periods of time. But it also brought other kinds of emotional distress, stemming from a very strong sense of dependence and a fear of losing the women I was with. I think that fear arose in part from the fear of returning to loneliness.

Over the years I understood that relationships didn’t really solve my loneliness; they mostly hid or covered it, and certainly didn’t create a satisfying resolution to that suffering.

Encountering the world of meditation gave me a different perspective on how to work with these feelings. The core understanding was that the emotion that arises doesn’t necessarily need to send me to seek women to make it go away, but rather toward practice in a new direction to meet it.

At its base, the practice is oriented toward fully holding the emotion with much gentleness but without reacting to it. That is, not running to the bar on the weekend to meet women, but coming into direct contact with the most painful place.

Over time there is a sense that the pain softens and dissolves; the external situation may not change, but the inner pain of loneliness dissolves, and there is a sense of relief and freedom even when I am alone.

My point is not that we should avoid relationships; I think they are very beneficial and enrich the soul. The point is that relationships can grow from a source of deep friendship and emotional connection, rather than as a reaction to an inner state of lack and pain.

As we approach this point, we learn to live at peace with ourselves when we are alone, and when a relationship ends, the dependence will be far weaker, so there will be much less experience of pain.

When pain arises, we can pause, practice, and experience it through deep meditative observation. This process helps us reach a sense of relief and deep inner regulation, which ultimately allows for a deeper connection from a place of calm rather than from pain—leading to a much more harmonious bond.

I also see the paradox that when romantic encounters don’t arise from the distress of loneliness but from a place of freedom, people are much more drawn to you, and relationships become far more stable and satisfying.

When a relationship comes to compensate for inner distress, it inevitably leads to clinging, accompanied by many negative emotions like jealousy and anger when the relationship loses its stability.

When we are in a state of freedom, there is a much freer movement that brings a sense of freedom and happiness.

15/10/2025

The chakras as a lived map of consciousness and emotion — and the practical bridge to Focusing through somatic work.

The chakra system is a foundational layer of spiritual practice in Ta**ra-Yoga.

When the chakras are understood not only as a mental idea but as a lived experience in the body, this esoteric knowledge can become—beyond its use in esoteric yoga—a practical therapeutic and developmental tool in modalities such as Focusing, Hakomi, and more, helping us meet the layers of emotion and consciousness with greater precision.

Traditional yoga aims at developing consciousness and realizing a person’s full, deep potential. Each chakra is seen as an emotional-mental-spiritual dimension that marks a developmental stage in human consciousness and a facet of our whole being.

In the traditional yoga world, practice directly targets these dimensions; in other words, it activates a dimension of human experience and integrates it into the practitioner’s mental and emotional life.

A simple example is yogic work with awareness of energetic movement around the center of the chest (Anahata Chakra).

Focusing on this area can cultivate a deeper sense of empathy and love. In Focusing-based therapy we often see that when a person carries an emotional block in close relationships, it may express itself in this region.

As layers gradually peel away, the person feels more love and empathy, and the capacity for intimacy with others grows.

In Focusing the client sits on a chair, and in yoga the practitioner is in different postures, yet both paths move in a similar direction: sustained awareness of bodily sensations in specific areas.

In Ta**ra, the basis of yogic practice is somatic awareness of particular regions during practice (asana, pranayama, mudra), with extended, meditative attention in precise areas to focus the movement of energy.

Every experience we have—whether ordinary and everyday or sublime and spiritual—is felt through the physical body and through consciousness: thought, inner imagery, and inner sound.

This focus on bodily experience—in both yogic practice and Focusing-oriented therapy—is the pathway to deepen our inner experience across all its layers.

In Focusing, the work is not directed explicitly at the chakra centers, yet this can happen naturally, because the chakras’ locations are tied to meaningful emotional experience and often call for attention on their own.

In Focusing we open into the depth of experience through somatic awareness, without intensifying yogic techniques.

Yogic practices can certainly accelerate the process, but in my experience the same gradual opening can also unfold through the basic somatic awareness that happens in Focusing therapy, personal Focusing, or mindfulness-based meditation.

Deep yogic practice is not, in my experience, for everyone. It can greatly speed up the opening, yet it requires prerequisites and committed effort.

Similar results, in my view, can be achieved through a blend of Focusing-based therapy and meditation grounded in somatic awareness.

Through practice we can generate energetic movement within the body; by placing attention on the bodily experience we direct that energy and open, in awareness, new and deep dimensions of spiritual experience.

In the next posts I’ll continue exploring the relationship between yoga and Focusing. I’d love to hear your reflections—how do you see this from personal or clinical experience?

**rayoga