Swami Prajñananda Saraswati

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Swami Prajñananda Saraswati

Yoga & Meditation Teacher
Teacher Trainer at Svaroopa Vidya Ashram I am a Teacher Trainer at Svaroopa Vidya Ashram. I teach both yoga & meditation.

My joy and goal is to share what my Guru, Gurudevi Nirmalananda has given to me. This yoga is amazing and I would love to share it with you. 🙏

11/07/2025

I love how the leaves on the trees change color in the Fall. The various shades of red, orange and yellow are so beautiful, almost like the trees are on fire. 🍁🔥🍁

Yet, while the leaves are beautiful, their changing of color signifies death. Each of those beautiful leaves are like a flame burning out. Soon they will fall from the tree to be blown away by the wind or someone’s leaf blower. 🍂

We can learn from the leaves. There is a beauty, an art to letting go when it’s the proper time. When you allow the letting go, that part of you dies. We have many leaves some that we keep for a while and some that change color and drop away.

Yet, you aren’t the leaves. You are the tree. Even when all the leaves fall, the tree stands strong ready for the winter and for the coming spring too.

So, as you see the Fall leaves may they be a reminder to you both of the art of letting go and the inner strength that supports you in doing so. 🙏

11/05/2025

Your mind is a shapeshifter. Whatever you are thinking your mind is morphing into. That means every time you worry about something that worry takes shape in your mind. You experience it, even if it hasn’t happened on the outside.
Can you use this to your advantage though?
Ta**ra says yes! 🙌

Here is a practice you can do anytime from the Vijñana Bhairava verse 85:

Contemplate the sky as contained within or dissolved inside your head, to experience the inner infinity and
to feel the entire universe being bathed in Divine Light.

liina.m muurdhni viyatsarvam bhairavatvena bhaavayet
tatsarvam bhairavaakaaratejastattva.m samaavi.set.

11/03/2025

🌙🔱🙏

09/02/2025

I’ve been travelling most of August. While it was nice being away and seeing my Aussie peeps, it’s been really great to be home too.

I taught my first class back this Sunday, a Yoga & Meditation class, and the grace was so palpable. I had forgotten the feeling of stepping into that role and how simple yet powerful it is. It reminds me how I am never on my own with this seva. The power of the lineage is always there supporting me and my students. It makes it all work. ✨💙✨

Here are some of the yummy offerings I’m teaching this month:
✨ Therapeutic Yoga Series begins Fri Sep 5 - online https://svaroopa.org/therapeutic-yoga-series-250905
✨ Free Newcomers Yoga Class Sat Sep 6 - onsite https://svaroopa.org/newcomers-class
✨ Learning from Others’ Mistakes Sutra Studies begins Mon Sep 8 - online https://svaroopa.org/es-22-learning-from-others-mistakes-250908

And my ongoing classes:
✨ Tue Continuing Yoga 5:45-7:15 pm onsite
✨ Wed Continuing Yoga 10:30 am - 12 pm online
✨ Sun Yoga & Meditation 4-6 pm online
https://downingtownyoga.org/weekly-classes

If you have any questions, feel free to message me. :)

07/22/2025

I had no idea how many shades of orange there were until I became a swami. I hadn’t even worn orange much, but now I love it! I feel like a walking flame. This is meaningful to me for we call the power of transformation and upliftment as the fire of yoga.

Wearing the color of the flame reminds me of my commitment to this path, to my Self and serving as a flame to guide others through the support of my Guru.

You too can be a walking flame when you do the practices. This flame will burn up the things that limit you and keep you small so that you can shine with your own divine light all the time.

Gurudevi describes it this way:
“This is the fire of yoga, which opens up the radiance of your own being, so that you can know your own essence and recognize it in everyone and everything that exists.”
- Physics, Anatomy & Yoga February 2006

https://svaroopa.org/assets/pdfs/2006_Contemplations/0602_Physics_Anatomy_and_Yoga.pdf

07/05/2025

We saw the fireworks last night from the Ashram roof. It was ecstatic - the fireworks bursting forth right in front of us like we were sitting in a panoramic theater with the sky as our screen. 🎆

It made me think of the wonders of yoga. Just like how on the outside the fireworks show was amazing, so too on the inside the stages and steps of yoga are a wonder:

Vismayo yogabhumika.h - the stations and stages of yoga constitute a fascinating wonder
- Shiva Sutras 1.12

Once you receive the inner awakening from a Guru, called Shaktipat, there is an ecstatic expansion of your inner being. As you apply yourself to your daily practice, sadhana, you will experience many wonders inside which fill up your senses with different sights, sounds, smells, feelings and tastes. You experience bliss and profound peace.

And each day is different like a different firework revealing itself in its own unique brilliance. Your life too is touched by the inner wonder. You are filled with a joy for no apparent reason, you’re just happy. You can be watching fireworks or simply sitting on your own reading. Your bliss fills you from the inside.

While every moment of your life may not be bliss-filled yet, it is your future as you continue on the path.

It truly is a wonder this yoga. 🎇🙏

06/29/2025

It feels good to get my hands in the dirt while doing some weeding seva. As I pull out the weeds it feels like I am also pulling out the weeds of thoughts in my mind. 🍃

And while this feels good, in a Shaktipat tradition, you don’t simply rely on your own efforts. You get the support from the inside through the grace of the lineage. This grace can be experienced as an uprising of fullness and presence. It not only clears out the weeds in your mind, it takes you to the space behind your mind and even deeper, to the source of your mind - your own Self. 🙏

Gurudevi discussed this in her Swami Sunday discourse today. She quoted Swami Muktananda:
A simple and natural love dwells just behind your complaints about the difficulties of worldly life… If you rid yourself of mental conflict, then… love will begin flow spontaneously wherever you may be.
- Swami Muktananda, “The Perfect Relationship,” page 43

You can check out her discourse in our video archive: svaroopa.org/deep-teachings-videos

06/28/2025

I love the time in-between two things. Like dawn or dusk. It’s not day time but not yet night time. For me, there is a feeling in the air of opportunity and possibilities.

Last weekend my flight was cancelled coming back from teaching. I ended up staying the night in Florida. And there was the same feeling. I wasn’t where I was for teaching and not yet back home. I was in the liminal zone - with this spacious feeling of freedom to do and be anything.

In yoga, there is a name for this liminal zone. It is called the vyutthana. And it used as a technical term meaning the liminal zone between deep meditative absorption and your usual waking state. However, if you linger in the in-between without leaving your deep inner state, you could live your day and your life in the vyutthana, in an inner state of depth and freedom even with your eyes open.

One way to cultivate the vyutthana is to linger after your meditation period and journal - contemplating your experience in meditation. Your mind becomes saturated with Consciousness and is more inclined to focus on Consciousness throughout your day.

Samaadhi-sa.mskaaravati vyutthaane bhuuyo bhuuya”s-cid-aikya-amar”saan-nityodita-
samaadhi-laabha.h. — Pratyabhij~na-h.rdayam 19
Meditative absorption leaves internal impressions.
Linger in the threshold zone, again and again contemplate your oneness with Consciousness...
- Translation by Gurudevi Nirmalananda

**ra

06/25/2025

Saraswati is the name of the energy that underlies the ability to learn - both things of the world and spiritual knowledge. She is the Goddess of learning and wisdom, speech, poetry , music, the arts and more. 🦢

I’ve always felt an affinity for Saraswati, because ever since I could remember, I’ve loved to learn and to share that learning as a teacher.

When I took initiation as a swami, I became part of the Saraswati order of monks. By becoming a swami you make the choice to focus your life on the ultimate knowledge of knowing and abiding in your own Self. And then, as a swami, you have a choice, will you leave the world or will stay and give and share? I chose to participate in this world and give what I have to share and continue to learn as a student. Serving my Guru, and anyone who comes to the ashram, is such a joy and an honor. 🙏

Anyone can choose to know and abide in their own Self. You don’t have to take any sort of vow to do it. You simply need to apply yourself, just like you would with anything else in your life.

Yaa kundendu tushaara haara dhavalaa
Yaa shubhra vastraa-vritaa
Yaa veenaa-varadanda mandita-karaa
Yaa shveta padmaasanaa
Yaa brahmaachyuta-shankaara prabhri-tibhir
Devaih sadaa vanditaa
Saa maam paatu saraswatee bhagavatee
Nihshesha jaadyaa-pahaa

O goddess Saraswati, white as snow
Or the moon or the k***a flowers,
Clothed in white garments,
Holding a magnificent veena,
Seated on a white lotus,
Ever glorified with offerings from the gods (Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva).
Protect us from all forms of ignorance.

06/23/2025

“To give up the ego means to merge it in the bliss of the Self, to dissolve our smallness into the vastness of Consciousness. When bubbles arise on the surface of the ocean, they seem to be different from the ocean, but after a while, the bubbles burst and merge back into the ocean. In the same way, when our bubble of ego bursts, when our sense of limitation leaves us, we will realize that we are nothing but that Consciousness.” 🌊💙🙏
- I Have Become Alive by Swami Muktananda p8

🙏🌊🙏🌊🙏🌊🙏🌊🙏🌊🙏🌊🙏🌊🙏
Meditation with Gurudevi Nirmalananda every Wednesday 7:30 pm ET and Sunday 10 am ET onsite or online svaroopa.org/calendar

06/18/2025

I was working on a project today for the Ashram. And as I was looking at the fabric and the way the wrinkles were set into place, it made me think of how the mind too gets set into certain thought patterns or vasanas. These patterns get stuck in place and change the shape of the cloth of your mind. You see situations based on those wrinkles. These patterns then underlie the way you make decisions in your life.

And as I was working with the cloth, even when I shook it out, the wrinkles stayed in place. It’s like that too with your vasanas. It’s very hard to change them once they are set. Yet, as I put the iron to the cloth the heat dissolved the wrinkles. They smoothed out and became part of the cloth in a seamless way again.

Ah! That’s it. The mantra is for your mind like the iron is for the cloth. When you repeat mantra, the wrinkles of your mind, those thought patterns, begin to dissolve into the fire of Consciousness. 🔥 You aren’t driven by those underlying vasanas anymore. This gives you the freedom to make choices from a deeper place inside.

Share a comment of what you get from repeating mantra!
🕉️ namah shivaaya

06/01/2025

Happy Shaktipat Anniversary, Gurudevi. 🔥

Today marks the day when Baba lit your inner flame. And now you do the same for so many. So much gratitude for you and Baba and this lineage of great Masters who light us up from the inside.

OM namah shivaaya 💙
Guru OM 🧡

Address

116 E Lancaster Avenue
Downingtown, PA
19335

Website

http://svaroopa.org/, https://svaroopa.org/prajnananda, https://linktr.ee/swami.prajna

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