Yoga & Massage by Atul Mulji

04/02/2024

Yoga? Vegetarian? Paul McCartney? Yesss

We look at the 81-year-old's regular yoga practice, complete with Headstands, eye yoga routines, and classes with famous friends.

03/01/2024

Meditation is simply a quiet, effortless, one-pointed focus of attention and awareness. In meditation, we try to let go of the many mental distractions, preoccupations and fleeting thoughts and associations of our normal waking experience. We do this, not by trying to make the mind empty, which is impossible anyway, but by allowing the mind to focus on one subtle element, which leads the attention further inward.

~SWAMI RAMA
Meditation and Its Practice [pg 4]

03/01/2024

Purpose of Hatha Yoga / Sept 2023

Swami Satyananda Saraswati

For most of you, hatha yoga and asanas are synonymous, but not for me. Hatha yoga is shatkarmas, then asanas and pranayamas are practised after that. After asanas, you have mudras and bandhas, in order to awaken the psychic forces, I mean the deeper mental forces. Then only you come to practise kriya yoga.
The purpose of hatha yoga is to prepare yourself for kriya yoga. If you don’t believe me, please read the books on ta**ra. There are sixty-four texts on ta**ra, and out of these, quite a few have been translated into English, French, German, and maybe Spanish as well. Mahanirvana Ta**ra, Vijnana Bhairava Ta**ra, Hai Vajra Ta**ra, Hema Vati Ta**ra, Ananda Lahari and Saundarya Lahari have been translated and a few more.
I am going to talk about kriya yoga but I won’t be able to finish it this morning. This is the tradition of all the hatha yoga practices. Mind is not something which you can control. You are trying to control the mind, but you are controlling the thoughts and not the mind.
When a bad thought comes into your mind, what do you do? You stop it. Are you controlling the mind? I am switching off this mike, am I controlling electricity? So do not talk about controlling the patterns of the mind; let us not talk about controlling the mind. Therefore, even after twenty years of meditation, you are only having psychic experiences; you do not have the power.
In meditation, are you escaping from the realities or are you awakening some sort of energy, which will feed your mind with extra power? The philosophy and the practices of kriya yoga are very clear on this point. They say, ‘Look here, there is no point in trying to control the mind, because mind is a consequence, it is not an original object.’
According to Samkhya and other philosophies, mind is a composition of various elements and various items. How can you think of controlling the mind without controlling the physical energies and the physical elements? You try to control your mind, okay, and I will give you an injection of co***ne – see what happens.