WATCH NOW: Recording of Led Primary class, plus Conference

WATCH NOW: Recording of Led Intermediate class

Sharathji is undoubtably the foremost teacher of Ashtanga Yoga in the world today. If you’re unable to travel to India to study with him directly, these recorded classes are the next best opportunity to experience his teachings and the powerful benefits of the Ashtanga yoga practice under his guidance. You’ll get a chance to experience the atmosphere of his yoga shala in Mysore with the presence of many of his most dedicated students.

The Led Primary Class is followed by a conference in which this master of Ashtanga yoga answers questions from students from around the world. And the Led Intermediate recording offers a rare glimpse at one of Ashtanga yoga’s most challenging sessions.

WATCH NOW: Recording of Led Primary class, plus Conference
WATCH NOW: Recording of Led Intermediate class

If you plan to practice along with the recordings:

• For Led Primary, students should ideally be familiar with the Ashtanga Yoga Primary Series.
• For Led Intermediate, students should have been regularly practicing the Ashtanga Yoga Led Intermediate Series and be competent at least up until Dwipada Shirshasana.

“Everyone should practice yoga for their own well-being,” Sharathji says. “Once that happens, the whole planet becomes a spiritual place. The whole planet will become totally different. Everyone will realize their own responsibility in their life toward this planet, toward humanity. Yoga will give you that kind of knowledge.”

The post On-Demand: Watch Paramaguru Sharath Jois’s Recent Led Classes appeared first on Sonima.

This is where the practice of seva can make a difference. Seva is a Sanskrit term that translates literally as “together with” and represents the act of performing charity work or service without any expectation, acknowledgment, or recognition in return.

Seva can be applied to anything: people, animals, the environment, your community, your country, the world. It does not require a particular setting or location, nor does it need to be done at a particular time or frequency. There are no application processes or standards for the doer, other than the work be done selflessly. This is very important because seva gives peace of mind and satisfaction for you, the person doing the work, because you did something for your community. When you do seva you should not advertise to others, otherwise you will not reap the benefits of whatever seva you’ve done.

Because the world is in need of such work, seva often comes when our consciousness has illuminated our desire to work for others or for something other than ourselves for the betterment of the world. Supporting projects financially is important, but seva is more profound in that giving your time and skills greatly adds to the aid of those suffering. Human contact and human energy put forth from people in the community can reach areas where money cannot.

In this life, there are three paths we can take to obtain moksha, or liberation. One is through self-realization, which includes doing yoga, studying philosophy, and applying that to your life. This requires a lot of studying, and after many years of practice you may be liberated. The second path is through devotion to your Ishta Devata, which is to show devotion to whichever deity you like. The third path is through seva. You can be liberated by doing community service and continually doing service for others.

Related: Why Practice Yoga? The Many Ways It Changes Us

Many people devote their entire lives to seva. Everyone has to earn money for a living, but we should also spend some time doing community work without expecting any returns. Each one of us has our own profession, and we can do seva through that. Everyone also has certain skills, and when brought to the act of seva, the benefits can be enormous.

For example, if I’m good at teaching yoga, then I may help people without charging any money. I can do this type of seva in my everyday life. In fact, we are doing this through the shala by offering scholarships. Now many Indian students are learning yoga. Yoga is for humanity’s well-being, and that’s why it should reach everyone.

Wherever there are people in need, be it in your neighborhood or elsewhere, that is where you go and do the work, and it becomes seva.

Seva reminds us that there is something beyond meeting our own life goals, such as education, good health, and providing for our family and ourselves, because when we do seva, we have the satisfaction that we did something for someone. It is very powerful and an important motivator in life. When you do seva, it’s the experience of doing something not for your survival or success—it’s selfless giving.

The post The Power of Seva appeared first on Sonima.

As Ashtanga yoga practitioners, we have a dedicated time in our day where we connect our mind and body together through the use of our breath and the subtle movement of internal energy. This practice gives us so much, including physical health, mental stability, and a deep sense of inner serenity. It is a part of the very fabric of our existence.

For many of us, it’s also a solo practice, often done in our living room with only our pets or children to keep us company. Sometimes we may be fortunate to have a dedicated school and teacher to guide us through the poses. But nothing quite compares to receiving the practice from the source.

No wonder the presence of Guru Sharath Jois teaching in the U.S. draws students out from all corners of the globe. It’s not only a more accessible option for those who cannot make the difficult and often costly trek to Mysore, India. It also brings the global community together in a spirit of oneness and devotion, while his teachings give new light to the practice and philosophy that we aspire to embody.

All of us come to receive the transmission that happens when we practice together in the presence of our teacher. These few days with Paramaguru Sharath Jois are a unique opportunity to share in the energy of the practice with hundreds of others who also share our passion and heart for the practice. This intensity creates the kind of focus that invigorates the old routine with new life and rekindles a spark where the enthusiasm may have dampened. It draws the community of students together, allowing old friends to catch up and new students to feel the excitement of being invited into the global family of Ashtanga yoga practitioners.

Related: Sign up to practice with Paramaguru Sharath Jois now!

Hearing Sharath Jois call out “Samastihi”, a sound many students have heard hundreds of times before, is an emotional moment filled with elation and anticipation. On the surface, the practice looks the same, but inside this group of students there is a heightened vibration of intensity that holds the power to perform this secret inner alchemy we call yoga.

There’s still an opportunity to take part in this transformational experience. Paramaguru Sharath Jois begins his 2019 U.S. teaching tour with a week in northern California at Stanford University. Then he will be in Miami for another full week of practice before returning to New York to complete his tour with five classes in Brooklyn.

Don’t miss your chance to attend class with Ashtanga yoga master Sharath Jois when he visits the U.S. this spring! Watch the video above to learn more, then click here to register.

Photo by Agathe Padovani; Video by Jesse Gordon

The post Why Nothing Compares to Paramaguru Sharath Jois’s 2019 U.S. Tour appeared first on Sonima.

Now with the advent of social media, we as a world culture are learning on the fly how to live with a new toy (or weapon, you may call it), and life as we know it has forever changed. If ever there was a time when yogic philosophy proved useful to guide us from the disturbances of the mind and toward a peaceful existence, it is now.

In India, one of the world’s stalwart cultures, I find solace in many of the impermeable traditions and philosophies gathered around yoga. India’s yogic philosophy has directed and guided countless searchers, from the novice to the learned, who hope to make peace with that which brings us so much joy and pain: the ego.

The ego helps us achieve, but it also draws us into conflict and confusion; it plays a witty game with us until we somehow, if we are lucky, tame the beast. But how do we begin to understand what we’re up against? How do we shunt being a contestant in the game of life and simply contentedly live the game? Ageless, a wonderful new book by R. Sharath Jois with Isha Singh Sawhney, is a good place to begin.

Share

Tweet

Pin

Jois’s entire life has been steeped in the eight pillars of yoga, which he contends lead to an ageless life. Agelessness is not simply defined by time but, by “giving ourselves the chance to live a longer, more satisfied, happier life”, we can be ageless, he says.

With ease and adaptability, Ageless makes Jois’s practices accessible for all who care to live a better quality of life. The book covers physical care, mental care, and care for others, with space allotted for 10 asanas in step-by-step form, which Jois states is all you really need.

The first part of the book largely covers diet. In India, food has been a science for millennia. When you enter the world of modern yoga, half of one’s time can be spent simply understanding the fuel needed (and not needed) for our humanly vehicles.

Jois lays out how the Vedas, the guiding texts to Hinduism, say that eating too much ultimately can lead to sickness and disease. The body really doesn’t need too much food after all. In this context, we can be “frugal” with food for wiser reasons than to look skinny. Fasting for one day out of the month can be done not because you are going to the beach the next day, but because it’s tendered through a grounding spiritual base.

Related: Sharath Jois on Balancing the Body for a Stable Mind

Jois addresses emotional and mental health throughout the book, starting with cultivating a positive outlook. He proffers that while there is a great need to support ourselves and our families and to be productive, “perhaps taking time out to play an instrument, write, paint, cook, mediate, exercise, or practice Ashtanga yoga is all one needs to come back to the daily grind refreshed and with a more optimistic outlook.”

“We all live by deadlines and place a lot of stress on ourselves to achieve what we think are ‘perfect lives,’” he says. In doing so, we inadvertently crave negative things and thus bring negativity. But when we do something joyful, a natural instinctive positivity arises to face our problems. That mindset is far different from the one that generally causes problems and is essential for mental well being. A yogic practice can further help this by creating a calm state of being and lowering the burden on our mind and body.

But the most inspiring portion of the book is Jois’s simple codifying of the act of seva, or service, which is performed without any thought of reward or repayment. “Being ageless is intricately intertwined with selflessness,” Jois states. There is seva for yourself, seva for nature (the physical environment), seva for country, and seva for community. “A real yogi shares money and knowledge,” Jois says. “A real yogi considers everyone equal.”

If every corner of the world imported this type of approach to equality, I wonder if we would see less suffering? To honor and respect oneself and others and to serve humanity is the essence of being not only ageless but also of transcendent. And that is the real crux of the book.

The post How Yoga Can Lead to a Longer, More Satisfying, and Happier Life appeared first on Sonima.

There is really no other student who can claim to have received this kind of continual instruction and apprenticeship from Guruji, and no other student who has practiced all Six Series. This placed Sharath in the unique position of assuming the role of teacher and guru to an exponentially growing population of new Ashtanga yoga practitioners around the world.

In 2016, I traveled to New York City and joined Sharath’s six-day tour stop there. I was amazed to discover how similar the experience was to actually being in Mysore, India. The feeling of practicing Primary Series or Intermediate Series in a group of more than 300 people was astounding. In the months following, I felt that this experience provided me with a massive energy boost to my solo self-practice life. I felt lifted by the convergence of so many practitioners from around the world who had all traveled to assemble together for this week of practice.

Personally, I had already made 14 long trips to Mysore before I had ever considered joining Paramaguru on one of his U.S. tours. I just couldn’t comprehend the benefit of taking a full week out of my busy schedule to practice with him in America, when I could spend months at a time practicing in India.

However, it was such a special experience to see my teacher outside of the intensely demanding schedule that he keeps in Mysore. Here, on tour, Sharath was relaxed, smiling, laughing, and truly enjoying his time with the students, both in and outside of the classes. This was a very special connection to make.

In addition to reuniting with close friends from across the globe, I was able to visit many famous sites and attractions in New York City during the day after the morning practice. It was the perfect mix of discipline and relaxation that I needed to feel refreshed upon returning home.

Related: Sign up for the New York City tour stop now! Or check out the other two U.S. stops he’ll be making this spring here.

Life comes with many challenges. It’s not always possible to take months away from family, work, and responsibilities to fly off and practice in Mysore, India, especially when you have school-aged children at home. Being away for an extended period of time is not a realistic option at a certain stage in life.

I am so happy that Paramaguru Sharath Jois will be coming again to teach in the U.S. from April 22 to May 16. I will be making the most of his tour as it is an excellent way to reconnect with him, along with an international community of practitioners, and infuse a little extra energy into my daily practice.

Even if you have never been to India, or maybe you are not even a regular Ashtanga yoga practitioner, coming to this kind of event and experiencing the intensity of being in a class of over 500 people, all breathing and moving in unison, is beyond anything words can describe. It is simply transformative.

You are welcome to seize this opportunity to practice with Paramaguru Sharath Jois at one of these three locations:

Stanford University, California: April 22 – 27
Miami, Florida: May 1 – 7
New York, New York: May 11 – 16

Registration is now open! Grab your spot soon before we sell out.

The post Experience the Energy of Practicing Ashtanga on the U.S. Tour appeared first on Sonima.

We all want to know the secrets to a successful career, and my former boss, a self-made billionaire, later became the mayor of New York, transforming for better what was already one of the country’s most beloved and visited cities. Now, once again, I have the good fortune of knowing another high-profile success story whose rightful owner has decided to share his philosophies on life and the art of living in his new book, Ageless: A Yogi’s Secrets To A Long And Healthy Life.

The core difference between the two book authors is that in India, from where Sharath Jois, author of Ageless, hails, philosophies are not merely claimed as one’s own. They are credited to a time-tested culture that has evolved over thousands of years and that contain the learned pillars for human contentment.

However, philosophies are nothing if not put into practice and this is the key to discovering and learning from any person’s story. What has been their unique experience that has led them to where they are now and why we would trust them or spend our precious time reading what they have to say?

I’ve had the good fortune of knowing and studying with Sharath Jois for 15 years and my biggest take-away is that he has lived a unique life. I know no one who has his extraordinary family experience, his formative years surrounded by doting and admiring foreigners, young seekers who explored the other side of the world for answers, and becoming a person unscathed by the ego’s temptations. Last week, this former Wall Street rube, the young woman who yearned for knowledge, once again became consumed with interest in yet another boss’s book, Ageless.

Share

Tweet

Pin

Sharath Jois, or Sharathji, as Indians comfortably say to show respect, is not my boss—although some students outside of practice like using that moniker for him in an endearing way—but I found he shares at least one quality that my other New York City boss has: Taking their inherent gifts and doing something more, something that is not founded in accomplishment strictly, but in giving, offering, and transforming something we now know into something better.

Related: Be sure to bring your copy of Ageless to Sharath Jois’ 2019 U.S. Tour (check out the dates and locations here) to have it signed by the author in person!

Attuned to their surroundings, these stories come from the heart of humanity. They are not strategized but rather flow from a natural source of conscious material. In fact, what is consciousness itself if not the clarity to see the truth without the ego’s cluttering? Sharathji’s book will undoubtedly inspire many to make those slight adjustments needed on the yogic path, so that we may all gravitate to the selfless, conscious, pure in nature beings that we all are.

>>Order your paperback of Ageless: A Yogi’s Secrets To A Long And Healthy Life on Amazon today!

The post Sharath’s New Book, <i>Ageless</i>, Is a Timeless Take on Approaching Life with Vision appeared first on Sonima.

The student-teacher relationship is well defined in India’s ancient texts and, oftentimes, before we engage in any teachings, we chant the mantra found in the Upanishads:

Om sahana vavatu, sahanau bhunaktu
Saha veeryam karavaa vahai
Tejasvi naa vadhee tamastu maa vidvishaa vahai
Om Shaanti Shaanti Shaantihi

Translation:

May he protect us both (the teacher and the student).
May he nourish us both.
May we both work together with great energy.
May our study be enlightening and fruitful.
May we not hate each other.
Om Peace, Peace, Peace.

Sahana means together and, in this chant, we ask the teacher, together with the student, to maintain a certain calmness or tolerance toward each other. After many years of practice and sadhana, the teacher has certain knowledge, and for a student to grasp that knowledge his or her involvement is very important. It’s as simple as if the teacher offers community service, then his or her students should try to help this effort. This mutual understanding, support, and tolerance must be there for the knowledge to exchange hands.

Though we do physical asana at a yoga shala, it is far different from working out at a gym. In gyms, you pay money, you work out, and there is no connection. This is not the same for yoga. Yoga implies that there is a connection between the student and teacher. At a shala, the teacher monitors your practice and postures with which you need help; students also learn from other students. Maybe they are more advanced than you, more focused, or more disciplined, but together, with the teacher, everyone is creating good energy, which you practice in a shala.

In many respects, a yoga shala is not unlike a temple, or a place of worship where we go to get connected, detach from material things, and dedicate our efforts to a practice. At temples and churches, the priests have devoted their lives to spirituality. They get up early every day to do puja, and they develop a certain type of environment that worshipers feel as soon as they enter. In this sacred place, people can forget their troubles at home, at work, and in their social life. They can be themselves and feel closer to the divine. You can pray at home, but it’s stronger when you go to a temple. Yoga is similar.

Related: Sharath Jois on the Importance of Having a Yoga Teacher

With a good teacher, we can surrender to learning and a positive energy flows within us. When I say surrender, I’m suggesting that students be open to the teachings, otherwise, you will be blocked. Without any particular agenda, you should try to learn from a teacher. If a student thinks he knows everything, or more than the teacher, then the energy will not flow from teacher to student. Yoga is a seeking path; you seek and learn new things all the time. It’s not about saying, “I know everything.” In fact, “I” should be deleted from yoga. If you are this kind of person, then your ego will block your spiritual progress.

One of the first ways people experience change is by following simple disciplines. Yoga isn’t dominated by one interpretation, but to experience true yoga there are consistent yogic principles, or disciplines, found throughout the great bodies of Vedic texts that people should follow.

A shala that has certain disciplines, or principles, helps facilitate discipline within you. A very basic example is that when you go to a shala for daily practice, you’ll get a time slot or a window of time to start and stop practice. Let’s say your time is 7 a.m.. So you get up at 6 a.m. and take a bath. You start to watch what you eat the night before, and when you’re eating. Yoga becomes more than just bending the body. Your overall health begins to improve because your life has become more principled. It happens slowly over time, but it’s these disciplines that will guide you on your spiritual journey.

Many people go to ashrams to help adopt discipline and listen to lectures, or satsangs, from a swami or a spiritual leader. They go to get good thoughts and when you get good thoughts, your actions will also be good. In this respect, a shala is also like an ashram. Teachers in ashrams have dedicated their lives to the practice. They wake up very early and dedicate themselves to their students. They want their students to experience the good that they’ve experienced.

When you find the right yoga environment, it draws you in. Automatically, your mind, body, and soul want to return to practice. How the space is cultivated is dependent upon the teacher; if there’s gossiping and talking nonsense, then that kind of culture will manifest, and there will be little transformation. If a teacher creates a spiritual environment with spiritual talks and thoughts, then a student’s mind will transform in many ways. Which also doesn’t happen sitting at home alone.

Photography by Tom Rosenthal

The post Sharath Jois on How a Local Shala Offers More Than a Workout appeared first on Sonima.

Share

Tweet

Pin

Once I started practicing yoga around the age of 18, I learned the opening prayer. The 8th century Indian theologian Shankaracharya contributed to the ancient shloka, or prayer, that is not only chanted for yoga practice, but can be done by anyone. Before our practice every day, we chant it to pray to the guru so that his or her blessings and great spiritual knowledge guide us stage-by-stage on how to get rid of the obstacles on our spiritual journey.

To understand how important chanting this prayer is in Aṣṭāṅga yoga, you must first know the meaning of saṃsāra halāhala mohasantyai. Saṃsāra, is a Sanskrit term that broadly means the whole of society and the cyclical nature of the world. Disturbances that arise here are the obstacles that impede our growth.

Saṃsāra provides many attractions and distractions, good and bad, but, mostly, it increases the fluctuations of the mind. We get drawn to material things and situations that make us happy for a while, but then, ultimately, they disturb our thoughts, which can lead to sadness and even depression. It’s an endless cycle. This is what is referred to in the opening chant as halāhala, or poison, and it affects our sādhana. If the mind is not stable, it is impossible to grow in our spiritual journey.

We start the opening chant with vande gurunam caranaravinde to give respect to the guru so that he can guide us through this saṃsāra. The guru has gone through this process and has found a solution through yoga practice of how to gain certain steadiness in the mind and how to judge things.

Before social media and the digital world, our connections involved mainly family, school, work, and community. The effects of saṃsāra were a result of those environments alone. In India when I was a kid, if I wanted to know anything that happened in America, it took time for news to travel, and, back then, it was mainly through newspapers. There was a communication gap for weeks, sometimes months.

Now, through technology, we can view the whole of humanity if we try, whenever we want. As the world becomes closer, the saṃsāra becomes vast. Through our communication devices (i.e., smart phones and computers), straight away, we know what happens in the farthest reaches of the world, and oftentimes, about things that we don’t need to know. We react, form opinions, and have feelings for things that are not remotely close to us. We see how people don’t like other people or their religious practices, ideologies, politics, and belief systems. The result is that we confront more people, more attractions, and more saṃsāra. Greater saṃsāra increases unwanted thoughts coming to our minds, reaching further into our psyches, and this creates unwanted suffering and more poisons.

Related: Connecting to the Seed of Spiritual Knowledge through Yoga

Every living thing has a right to live peacefully in this world. Plants, insects, birds, animals, humans all have the same right. We have the right to live in a society that is happy and healthy; a pure society with no poison where everyone should be able to pursue their spiritual journey and do what they want in their personal practice.

A spiritual journey is personal; it shouldn’t be driven by a society. A spiritual journey or practice is not born of one religion. It is not religious; you have to understand that. Spiritual practice is for gaining higher consciousness. Many religions divide people, but spiritual practice makes us come together. This is why we pray in the opening chant to the guru to rid saṃsāra of the halāhala. We pray to rid society of these evils to obtain mukti, or moksha, the freedom from ignorance, to put an end to the poison, and start our spiritual journey.

Share

Tweet

Pin

So how do you create saṃsāra that is a harmonious place where we can coexist with all living things? Where we can live up to our maximum best self? How do we eradicate the poisons from ourselves so that there is no negativity in society? How do we strengthen our mind, thoughts, and action?

Just like a spiritual journey is personal, so are the answers to these question. “Nih sreyase jangalikayamane” states that we must be like the jungle doctor, or snake charmer, jangalikaya, who removes the poison of the snake in the jungle of saṃsāra. We too must try to remove the poison, and disturbances, in our own lives. It’s a thought process. We have to focus on ourselves. If you think negatively, you start misunderstanding that everything in life is negative, and then your mind becomes negative. This is a big challenge, but it does not mean that you should separate yourself from people in this world. There are different kinds of people (both positive and negative) and we have to coexist with everyone. We must learn to mingle. We have to find a solution where everyone stays harmoniously and healthy.

In practicing yoga, we will learn many things through our own sādhana. Over time, the practice calms the nervous system and the mind gets trained not to get distracted and to allay the negativity. When the mind is pure, and steady, and stable, then our actions will be pure, and steady, and stable.

This is why we pray so that our guru can guide us how to lead a life that’s more peaceful and harmonious, where we respect others, and others respect us. Once we live in that kind of environment, then our spiritual journey will reach the highest level.

Share

Tweet

Pin

At the beginning of a new year, we should all pray for the year to come. Our new year in Kannada, Ugadi, comes in the spring, and we always pray that the past is the past, and let us start a new beginning with good thoughts with good intentions, peacefully. We always start like this, but, unfortunately, the decision we make at the start of the year often gets caught in saṃsāra later in the year and, therefore, our thoughts may go in a different direction.

This is why it’s very important that we practice yoga and begin our practice praying that our whole lives will be very positive. Through our daily practice, we fortify the oaths that we make, they stay with us for the whole year, and the year passes in a positive way.

We are many people with different practices and religions living in this saṃsāra. If we want to coexist and live happily, we have to respect each others’ practices as personal journeys and rid the world of samsara. This is received from our guru’s knowledge and blessing and this is how we will live harmoniously.

Photography by Danielle Tsi

The post Sharath Jois on the Essence of the Opening Prayer appeared first on Sonima.

The world rarely sees a good politician. That doesn’t mean there are no good politicians; just that it is not common. In the past, there were many good kings, or maharajas as they are called in India. In that time, there were no politicians per se. The family chose the rulers. The good kings kept a tradition of governing by maintaining the objective to make decisions for the greater good of the people and not simply for their own personal gain. The ruling family also supported this.

In today’s world, where there are more things to own and exotic experiences to have, perhaps the rulers of the past would have succumbed to greed, too, and been less philanthropic. But when there were good rulers, everything was for the citizens of the country.

If leaders do not seek the truth for altruistic reasons then how can the people they represent be inspired to seek the truth? Leaders are representatives of the people by the people, but today, they only want to expose right or wrong to gain more power. We are not born hating or thinking bad things. Yet, some people yearn for power. They strategize to claim power, and when they are willing to fight for it, it can destroy them inside. In this line of work, eventually, one gets marked as bad. Is this really good for anyone?

Do we need more good politicians? Do we need more good leaders?

Not everything can be done by a politician. Citizens have their own responsibilities. To create a proper society, leaders and citizens both have a responsibility. In the U.S., there are a lot of self-made people, but they don’t understand the first thing about themselves. Most people have not grown up in search of consciousness. Most people and most societies don’t want to know clarity. Or if they do, they don’t know how to start looking. Many people are scared with this basic premise because they are not honest with themselves or others.

What yoga does is give them clarity. Once a leader has clarity, what they have to deliver to the people benefits the people. This is called transformation. All politicians and people need a transformation. To gain this, we don’t need more politicians, we need more spiritual teachers and consciousness seekers. We need more yoga done the proper way with a proper teacher.

Related: The Importance of Bhāvanā in Attaining the Purpose of Yoga

The post Sharath Jois on What Makes a Good Leader appeared first on Sonima.

Likewise, many yoga philosophers say yoga is within you. The supreme is within you. Therefore, the state of yoga is to realize the supreme inside you. So how do we connect to the supreme soul?

Most people are caught up in so many delusions, which won’t allow them to understand their inner purity. I love children because just to see a child or to carry a child is like carrying the divine. He or she is untouched by anything. There is no greed, no envy. But as we grow into adults, we become consumed with delusions and this inhibits our pathway to samadhi, the final limb of the eight-limbed Aṣṭāṅga method.

Related: The Eight Limbs of Yoga Explained

Ancient texts have identified six poisons, or arishadvargas, that we must rid ourselves before we can see the divine. They are kaama (lust), krodha (anger), moha (attachment), lobha (greed), matsarya (jealousy) and mada (pride). We are not born with these things, but over a period of time, we get influenced by all of them, and they stay within us. Greed comes, lust comes, anger comes. In fact, these poisons can consistently grow within us. This is not good. This is not healthy. A person might be physically healthy, but mentally, he or she is not healthy. This is why āsana is only one part of the Aṣṭāṅga method. A healthy body cannot realize the divine if the mind is not healthy.

Aṣṭāṅga yoga is a method to understand your inner self. Through the eight limbs, we can rid ourselves of the six poisons. He or she who tries to get rid of all these things, we call them a sādhaka. A sādhaka is more than a practitioner. He or she is focused on how to eliminate the six enemies within. This effort, when undertaken, is called sādhanā. Sadhana is the state of the yogi. A sādhaka lives differently because he is striving to a higher level of being. Through dedication and devotion to his goal, his perception changes, his views change, his thoughts also change—everything will change within him as he goes to higher levels. Yoga liberates us from the poisons within ourselves. The purification happens in the body as well as the mind.

A yogi is untouched by poisons. This is the purpose of doing yoga and this is the state of a yogi. We must always put more effort towards this through dedication and devotion to experience clarity within ourselves. It doesn’t matter where you are. If you come to Mysore and you don’t see me, you’ll think yoga doesn’t happen. Then you’ll start blaming me. “I went to Mysore, you were not there, and yoga didn’t happen,” you might say. But yoga is within you. The supreme is within you and all of us.

Photography by Jesse Gordon

The post Sharath Jois on Ridding Yourself of the Six Poisons appeared first on Sonima.

I remember a student asked me about sleep. If you sleep too much then you become very lazy and your body becomes unhealthy. We are not lions who sleep 20 hours. Six to seven hours is good. This is common sense, but it is also mentioned in the Bhagavad Gita, which is a sacred Vedic text, “Yuktāhāra-vihārasya, yukta-ceṣṭasya karmasu, yukta-svapnāvabodhasya, yogo bhavati duḥkha-hā.” [This translates to: “One who is regulated in habits of eating, sleeping, recreation and work can mitigate all material pains by practicing the yoga system. ”]

One should regulate food intake, too, by not eating too much and not eating too little. The body needs only a certain amount of food to keep it nourished. If you go to India, you might order a thali, which is a platter with several small dishes laid out around rice with chapatti. If you eat this three times a day you will die; it’s too much food.

Related: Sharath Jois U.S. Tour Report: A Journey to Stanford to Start a Yoga Revolution

Bhagavad Gita says to regulate not only food and sleep, but also to manage work and recreation. Eight hours of work is enough. You can’t work 20 hours. You can’t be at a festival for 20 hours. If you do too much of any of these, your yoga will suffer.

So yogis should be very careful with what they do, how much they do, how much they sleep, how much they eat, how much they work. This is called tapas, which can mean how you dedicate or organize your life. Upsetting your body’s rhythm will disturb your own sadhana and practice. Good habits are very important. If you habitually eat one day at 8 o’clock and the next day at midnight it will upset your body. Try to eat your food at the same time each day. Keep your sleep habits the same. If you keep on the same schedule, your body stays balanced, and you better focus your energies.

A student asked me about drinking alcohol. Why do you, or does anyone, drink alcohol, to relax, to feel differently, to lose your senses? It’s like external ecstasy. You give up on finding this sensation naturally so you go for something external. It’s common sense if you have alcohol over time you damage your body and organs. It’s like ahimsa, you are doing ahimsa to yourself. Because your mind is very weak, you are attracted to something external. You can’t control yourself. You crave this external help. Four months back, I quit coffee. Alcohol is a higher addiction, but coffee is also an addiction. My body craved it. I felt shaky. But I had a strong mind. I never had coffee after I quit.

So you have to strengthen your mind. This Ashtanga practice is to strengthen your mind. What happens if you have alcohol in the night and then come to practice? The hangover is there the next day. You are exhausted, not blissful.

I can live, everyone can live, without these things. And things like too much or too little food, sleep, work, definitely affect your yoga practice. Overindulging or intoxicants disturbs everything. But once a stable mind is there, you can do anything. You can get rid of all the delusions. This is the main thing yoga does. Regular practice is compulsory for everyone. Don’t worry about how much you’re bending or not. Be on the mat. Try to do whatever asanas you can. Try to do the breathing techniques. Padmasana, sirsasana, sarvangasana, these asanas strengthen you mentally and physically. Many habits that don’t work for your mind and body, you can get rid of when you practice yoga, but when you overindulge then your yoga will suffer.

Photography by Tom Rosenthal

The post Sharath Jois on Balancing the Body for a Stable Mind appeared first on Sonima.

Today, there are so many styles of yoga. People put their surname in front of the word yoga and invent a new style. They hope to get many followers. They create so many videos, but it’s like junk food. It’s tasty, it looks good, but it’s not healthy. People look at these styles as yoga, they try them, and think they are doing yoga, but they are not.

Ashtanga yoga is not a style of yoga. It is a method to explore something far more than handstands. Many people see handstand and leg-behind-the-head and think that is what Ashtanga yoga is. But Ashtanga yoga is a method to experience what yoga is, to understand who we are, how to be more responsible, how to live in this world as better people. Ashtanga yoga is a method.

I’ve said this many times, but students need to be reminded of the fundamentals of Ashtanga yoga: the yamas and niyamas. They are the key ingredients to establishing and practicing yoga. It’s like making a dish from a recipe: You need these ingredients or else it won’t work, and you won’t be doing yoga.

Related: An In-Depth Look at Yamas and Niyamas

The Ashtanga method has eight limbs. The first four are the external pillars: yama, niyama, asana, and pranayama. Yama has sublimbs, which are ahimsa, satya, asteya, brahmacharya, aparigraha. The niyama sublimbs are saucha, santosha, tapas, svadhyaya, Ishvara pranidhana. These are all very important ingredients essential for our spiritual journey. If you want to get deeper in your practice, these ingredients are indispensable. Without these ingredients, you will never understand yoga. You will live your entire life missing out and thinking yoga is what flexible people do in photographs and videos like leg-behind-the-head and handstands. It’s attractive, it makes for a nice photo, but it is not yoga.

The remaining four limbs—pratyahara, dharana, dhyana, and samadhi—are internal practices. Once the first four limbs are established, the other four will automatically happen. You don’t have to try, they will automatically happen. Of course, these are higher, more subtle levels of yoga. To achieve these, you have to get rid of many patterns, attachments, dispositions, many things.

This will be a life-long practice and the real transformation happens once one is educated in all the limbs. Without understanding yoga through proper education, it is impossible to understand what yoga is. Yet what is meant by education here is the practice, putting theory into practice, not necessarily a formal education.

My grandfather, Sri K. Pattabhi Jois, used to always say “99% practice, 1% theory,” but oftentimes, people got this wrong. They practiced asana from morning until evening. What he meant was to practice the theory, the yamas and niyamas, all the time. To do this, you don’t sit around and read about it in books, you have to live it. Can you expect to calm the mind by reading citta vritti nirodha (the second sutra of the Yoga Sutras)? Simply reading it, even a thousand times, won’t make it happen, and it will probably do just the opposite. Yoga theory must be put into practice all the time. Only when you apply all the things in your daily life will citta vritti nirodha happen.

For us, however, what is important is to be calm every day, to have a peaceful life everyday. This is what we are focusing on. Someone can be very famous one day and then the next fall out of favor. Asana will come and go, money will come and go, fame will come and go. What we have to do is keep ourselves calm, steady and stable. This is what asana gives us.

How many of you can sit still in one place for long periods of time having control of your mind? To bring the vrittis, or the fluctuations of the mind under control you must have stability found in a practice. This is the method to gain equanimity. Samatvam yoga uchyate. Samtvam is calmness, balance, equanimity. This is what yoga is. It is a lifelong practice of key ingredients for the entirety of your life. The proper fundamentals will help the stability grow, and thus, the yoga to happen. If it can happen to me, it can happen to you. We are not different. It takes a firm, positive outlook. Yoga can happen to anyone when we put in the proper ingredients.

Photography by Julia Lofstrand

The post Sharath Jois on the Key Ingredients for Experiencing Yoga appeared first on Sonima.

Sūryanamaskāra A introduces the concept of vinyāsa (how movement is linked together and combined with the breathing) and includes all the important components of the Aṣṭāṅga yoga practice. In this tutorial, yoga master Sharath Jois breaks down each movement in the Sūryanamaskāra sequence and offers variations for all levels of practice.

Related: Sun Salutation B

Cover Photo by Caitlin Steuben

The post Yoga Tutorial: Sūryanamaskāra A appeared first on Sonima.

And just like that, Sharath Jois’ annual tour of the U.S. is over. It always goes by too quickly, leaving us wanting more and already dreaming of next year when he will return from Mysore, India to teach us again. Still so much to learn!

Before we start looking ahead, it’s good to consider what we’ve accomplished in one short month. This May—starting in Stanford, continuing to UCLA, and ending in NYC—practitioners from all walks of life met up to practice Ashtanga yoga straight from the source. Nearly 2,000 people joined the three- to six-day workshops and drop-in classes at all three locations.

Tag and Share the Facebook Photos Here!

Thank you all who came out this year! Each and every one of you contributed such amazing energy and enthusiasm that we’re still riding the high from a truly remarkable experience. Let’s keep this feel-good momentum going with a strong daily practice. If you ever need a reminder, take a look at these three albums of the tour—see photos for Stanford, UCLA, and NYC—which showcase some of my favorite moments. Be sure to tag yourself and share with family and friends on Facebook, too. Maybe we can recruit some new faces or inspire some long-time practitioners who missed out this year to join us in 2018. I’m already looking forward to it!

Many blessings,
Sonia

Photos by Agathe Padovani and Tom Rosenthal

The post Sharath Jois Visits NYC: The Last Leg of His U.S. Tour! appeared first on Sonima.

The 17 vinyāsas of Sūryanamaskāra B introduce new movements that strengthen the legs and increase the flexibility of the hip joints, knees, ankles and back. In this tutorial, yoga master Sharath Jois leads you through all you need to know to get started.

Related: Sun Salutation A

The post Yoga Tutorial: Sūryanamaskāra B appeared first on Sonima.