Bhakti Yoga is the branch of yoga that focuses on devotion and devotional practices. God is love and love is God. Bhakti yoga uses our fundamental emotional relationships and sublimates them into pure, selfless, divine love. There are 9 traditional ways to sublimate emotions to devotion, overcome egoism, and realize God according to the teachings of Bhakti Yoga. These methods can be applied in our relationships with others:
- Listen to inspiring divine stories – Develop the capacity to listen to others without judgment. Be honest in what you say about yourself.
- Sing God’s glories – Learn to praise others and to look for their positive qualities and be appreciative of one’s own positive qualities.
- Remembrance of His name and presence in prayers – Learn to hold people you love in your heart in a prayerful mood, feel the sacredness of relationships. Be detached and forgiving. Be grateful for all people who you interact with in your life.
- Service with humility – Learn to actively serve everyone as God whether you like them or not.
- Worship – Learn to see God in your relationships. Offer your time and presence, as well as beautiful gifts, as if they are being offered to God.
- Prostrations – Learn to give utmost respect to people you encounter or people surrounding you no matter who they are.
- Cultivate the feeling of being a servant of God – Learn to develop an attitude of self-sacrifice.
- Cultivate feelings of friendship for God – Learn to open your heart equally to all, without ulterior motives and discriminating who is higher or lower than you.
- Complete self-surrender – Learn to accept all things happening to you with equanimity and overcome your own expectations or feelings about anything done by yourself or others.
© Swami Sitaramananda 2014 No part of this article may be reproduced in any form without the written permission of the author.
Author: Swami Sitaramananda
Swami Sitaramananda is a senior acharya of the International Sivananda Yoga Vedanta Centers and is director of the Sivananda Yoga Farm, California and the Sivananda Yoga Resort and Training Center, Vietnam. She is acharya of China, Taiwan, and Japan as well. Swamiji is the organizer and main teacher of the Sivananda Yoga Health Educator Training (SYHET), an 800-hour program on yoga therapy, accredited by the International Association of Yoga Therapists (IAYT). Swamiji is the author of Essentials of Yoga Practice and Philosophy (translated in Chinese, Japanese, and Vietnamese), Positive Thinking Manual, Karma Yoga Manual, Swamiji Said, a collection of teachings by Swami Vishnu in His Own Words, as well as two poem books. She is responsible for the Vietnamese translation of The Completed Illustrated Book of Yoga. Some of her audio lectures on Yoga Life, articles, and webinar presentations can be found on the website.
EXCELLENT article. Thanks
What happens if you don’t want to follow all of the points mentioned?
I wouldn’t be comfortable with number 5 & 7.
these are tips follow your heart
Then should try following other paths such as kriya or karma yoga. These qualities require some time for development.
You may be confusing the one true God ,REAL,with the Christian God that exists as an idea in their mind,UNREAL
All spiritual paths lead to God if followed with love for God and respect for all His creation. Dogma separates us, but devotion to God is the great current underlying All True Religions. See God everywhere and you will be always in His sight.
Kelly, hello! I hear you, absolutely. What is crucially important is to understand that God is LITERALLY ‘I am’. ‘He’ said so himself 100% in the beginning; Christians don’t quite get it, the truth of it all, yet. God is not some bald man floating in the sky waving his hands around and fulfilling prayers selectively. God is not an entity outside of ourselves which we are disconnected from or less than in any capacity. God is why you can set intentions/prayer, and find the universe subtly working in your favor and teaching us the right lessons, however painfully. It’s why it’s impossible to watch an animal being mistreated, why we feel weather changes atmospherically and know what’s coming before it’s here, it’s why we get spidey senses about our loved ones when they are in a bad way, and it is the prana charges these ‘flesh sacks’ ie. bodies to evolve, love, improve and sing. God is the life force that is in you connecting us all through consciousness and spirit. You are God. We truly overcomplicate these things.. And the ego won’t let you understand any of this, as it wants to be your God and keep you possessed in the dark blindness, in pergatory. Once you recognize you are the observer of your ego and the conflicting voices in your mind, well, a quiet mind can more clearly see and connect with the truth of our existence and purpose and reality. Took me 29 years. I have been desperate for deeper meaning, to figure out this ‘thing’, chasing for meaning outside of myself, when it has literally been there the entire time.. under all the internal chaos, trauma, ‘faulty wiring’, in me. I hate the word ‘God’. God is energy. We are conditioned not to believe this or see anything for what it is, capitalism wouldn’t be if we knew. It’s like a warm blanket waiting to wrap you up and alleviate all of your inner sufferings when you do come to see it was there all along. Your ego doesn’t want you to worship the ‘bald man in the sky’. Your ego also knows that there is no bald man in the sky. It’s gaslighting you, the collective, into worshipping IT. It’s like a possession of the ego until you see.
So, in a way, you are already practicing 5 & 7, subconsciously. God/the charge of the universe that flows through and connects is all is in you and it is everything.
You are not your mind, the voices in it saying ‘I don’t want to worship a God I do not believe in, or know, that is outside of myself’. I agree with that sentiment completely. I rejected the church when I was old enough to decide for myself. I used to think my mother was crazy for talking about Angels (bless you all). But now, I have connected it all and am at peace. My mission is clear to me now and I sing louder.
God is how are reading this. God is ‘I am’. Tell your Egoic mind to shush so you can get to the core of the truth of the Root of IT ALL my love, and really sing. Namaste! Peace & Love. It’s been in you this entire time. You are we.
Focus on the others and with that practice, your discomfort with 5 and 7 will disappear.
This is so beautiful.
I was wondering if I might be qualifing as following Bhakti Yoga, under a few of these 9 ways, cos after I woke up to learn that I had lost my memory whilst I was on my spiritual origins searching adventures in India where was taken deathly ill with Encephalitis, but was some how against all odds correctly treated and rescued back to the UK. I after I had lost who I used to be, I was granted an Mp3 player and was told it contained tunes which I used to listen to so that when MahaMantra Meltdown by KD came on, I just knew that I had to press the single track auto repeat button, so that then for the last 8 years I’ve always made sure that Mahamantra is ringing in my ears and rolling off my lips each and every day, where in the first days I was using my ‘disire to have Mahamantra in my ears as a way to relearn how to walk by making a pledge that I was not allow to just sit indoors and that in order to listen to it I must be heading out for a walk to listen to my walkman 😉 and then soon as things developed and I found that my chanting walks would lift my spirits, occationally I couldn’t help but share some lifted spirits with others on my way who looked like the could use some brightness to shine on them. So then soon like this every day I would make some sort of excuse for my walking practice adventures like shoping, so that in actual fact I could then be listening to and chanting the mahamantra and also helping share out some of the boosted mood energy, which I recieved from chanting, with any others on my way who looked like they could used some positiive boost.
So, although after a couple of years of my daily single track auto repeat journeys, I did add a couple of other mantras to my daily single track auto repeat journeys so that I now had also the Nonstop Ganesha mantra and the Gayatri mantra, I still make sure to have each of these mantras ringing in my ears at least once a day, where now I always start my journeys with the Nonstop Ganesha mantra and proceed to head out for my walks where now I guess that I might qualify as Bhakti under at least N2. “Sing Gods glories” even though half the time I’m making these lip clicking noises, which at first was just my way of still be dedicating my mantra journeys to god, whilst overcoming the “no singing on the streets” taboo , but then later I discovered that something called Human Beatboxing already existed which might cover the sounds that I was making.
Also being that now each day my mantra wanderings turn out so that I’m often sharing waves and smiley greeting with folks on my way (more and more nowdays where it is myself who is now on the recieving end, from I guess folks who are helping to show me that Karma realy does work 😉 ), I guess this might count as service with humility, where I activley serving everyone to help lift their mood (by doing things like wearing my pants as a face mask) so their lifted mood shall be granting them a stronger immune system (according to Mayo Clinic), which i todays times of pandemic shall be helping to protect them and keep them safely virus free.
So, would I count as doing Bhakti Yoga cos I also do feel that feeling of being a servant of God, where I feel that I have been sent back here to this mortal plane, where being that I have been granted the discovery of the healing powers of the Ishnaan (cold shower) way to start each day, I now have made sure to start every day with a cold shower, whilst which I also now always making sure to be chanting the Non stop Ganesha mantra (with added lipclicks and what I call my “Human BellyBashing”), so that like this whilst the vagus nerve stimulating effect of cold showers grants me boosted neurogenesis to heal my damaged grey matter, I also get granted the extra bit of first hand healing evidence in order to be better equiped to N4 be of service with humility and serve every one as God, cos if I am able help more folks to over come that false fear of cold showers and discover the many healing powers e.g. especially relavant in today times of pandemic –
“Scientific studies have found that taking a cold shower increases the amount of white blood cells in your body. These blood cells protect your body against diseases.”
then like this I can be of service to everyone to both help protect them from this pandemic with cold showers, whilst then also be helping to inspire them to discover that cold shower practice shall add their emissions reduction to our global total so that together we shall strike some “global pandemic defeating” sized emissions reductions to help defeat climate change, which will be quite a big bonus service to everyone, as well as my feeling of being of service to God and completing a big chunk of the mission which I have been sent back here to the mortal plane to accomplish before its my time to cross that final curtain of seperated individual existence in this mortal plane and I can be allowed to return to reunite with the infinite one that is the source of all.
So, Hopefully might I qualify as practicing Bhakti Yoga? cos if not then I shan’t let that stop me and I shall still continue to do my chanting with full faith that I shall discover my purpose for being returned here for the means to be of true service by somehow shining the true power of divine forces for us all to discover with full faith, so that as we then over come our instincts of self preservation first, and let go of our ego’s we shall dispell so many power struggles and instead our united efforts to help each other shall make the world we share into the wonderful world for us all to be equally part of.
Thank you so much for sharing of your journey. Yes you are an enthusiastic bhakti yogi!
“No part of this article may be reproduced in any form without the written permission of the author.”
Heavy! I guess I need to ask… is it ok to print these 9 practices out so I can include in my Master Yoga Binder?
Message to Kelly: AFAIK, IMHO, These aren’t REQUIREMENTS just practices.. let it flow and do what works for you!
Well said Tessa T!! 🙂