Each planet has many characteristics. Each planet has an element (earth, water, fire, air, and ether). Each planet has a guna (sattva, rajas, and tamas).
1. Surya – Sun (fire, sattva)
2. Chandra or Soma – Moon (water, sattva)
3. Mangala or Kuja – Mars (fire, tamas)
4. Budha – Mercury (earth, rajas)
5. Brihaspati or Guru – Jupiter (ether, sattva)
6. Shukra – Venus (water, rajas)
7. Shani – Saturn (air, tamas)
8. Rahu – North Node (tamas)
9. Ketu – South Node (tamas)
Rahu and Ketu are the nodes of the Moon. Rahu and Ketu are known as Chayya Grahas or shadow planets, as they are points on the ecliptic where the eclipses occur. The ancient Indian astrologers recognized the importance of eclipses in life and gave Rahu and Ketu the status of planets.
The planets rotate around the Sun in an anticlockwise direction through different stars and constellations. Traditionally, the planets’ names are written in the charts with the first two letters of their Sanskrit name. For example, the Sun (Surya or Ravi) is written as SU or RA. You can also use their Western names to write the Moon as Mo. Alternatively, you can use the symbols of the planets.
The 12 Signs or Rashis
The signs used in Vedic astrology are similar to Western astrology/ tropical astrology. However, the areas these signs cover differ from those of their Western counterparts. They are more astronomically precise. The signs are based on the constellations in the sky; the names given to the signs reflect their characteristics. Each sign or rashi has its Sanskrit name. The rashis are the twelve faces of the Sun and reflect the seasons. They are:
1. Mesha: Aries ruled by Mars – 0 to 30 degrees
2. Vrishabha: Taurus ruled by Venus – 30 to 60 degrees
3. Mithuna: Gemini ruled by Mercury – 60 to 90 degrees
4. Kartaka: Cancer ruled by the Moon – 90 to 120 degrees
5. Simha: Leo ruled by the Sun – 120 to 150 degrees
6. Kanya: Virgo ruled by Mercury – 150 to 180 degrees
7. Tula: Libra ruled by Venus – 180 to 210 degrees
8. Vrishchika: Scorpio ruled by Mars – 210 to 240 degrees
9. Dhanu: Sagittarius ruled by Jupiter – 240 to 270 degrees
10. Makara: Capricorn ruled by Saturn – 270 to 300 degrees
11. Kumbha: Aquarius ruled by Saturn – 300 to 330 degrees
12. Mina: Pisces ruled by Jupiter – 330 to 360 degrees
You can learn the Sanskrit name of each sign or use the Western one. You can also use the signs numerically, i.e., Tula / Libra is number 7. Many Vedic charts only put the numbers in the signs. They also use the first two letters of the sign, e.g., Tula can be written as Tu for Tula or Li for Libra.
The 12 Houses or Bhavas (or Bhava Chakra)
Vedic astrology is based on houses or Bhavas. In Sanskrit, bhava means expression, a state of being, as well as a division, and Chakra means a wheel. The Bhava Chakra is our natal chart, an expression of our life through the wheel of time. This chart shows what we bring into our lives, how we are going to express it, what obstructions we are going to face, and what good fortune will be there to make things easier for us. Every second of this life is expressed through our natal chart, which is why we need to understand and study it.
Not everything will be revealed to you immediately, but as you start studying Vedic astrology, insight into yourself will deepen. You will start comprehending why you were born. What motivates you? Why do you face problems and obstructions? And most importantly, you will start to understand how you can deal with them successfully.
1. Thanu Bhava – Self – 1st house. Also known as the lagna or the ascendant.
2. Dhana Bhava – Wealth – 2nd house
3. Sahaja or Bhratru Bhava – Brothers – 3rd house
4. Matru Bhava – Mother – 4th house
5. Putra Bhava – Children – 5th house
6. Ari or Shatru Bhava – enemies – 6th house
7. Jaya or Yuvati Bhava – wife or husband – 7th house
8. Ayu or Randhara Bhava – age – 8th house
9. Dharma Bhava – spirituality – 9th house
10. Karma Bhava – career – 10th house
11. Labha Bhava – profit – 11th house
12. Vyaya Bhava – loss – 12th house
The twelve houses deal with different aspects of our lives. One Rashi or sign rules each house. To know which Rashi / sign rules a house, we need to know the Ascendant Lagna or simply Ascendant (rising sign) – the most important part of the Vedic chart. The ascendant is the Rashi or sign rising at the time of birth. (The Lagna is the exact degree of the sign.)
To know your Lagna, you need to know your time of birth as well as the place of birth. The place of birth gives the exact longitude and latitude of your birthplace, and the time will tell you exactly what sign and degree of that sign was rising.
Whether you are looking at your birth, or that of a country, event, or Muhurta, the Lagna is of supreme importance. Each sign rises for about two hours during a day, and your Lagna rather than your Moon or Sun sign is the true representation of an individual. The Moon takes two and a half days to cover thirty degrees or one sign of the zodiac, the Sun takes thirty days, and the ascending sign takes only two hours. Each sign also has its nakshatra divisions. 2½ Nakshatra covers one sign. So the degree of your rising sign will give you the nakshatra. The Lagna is a point of contact between the past and the present life. It is the beginning of the cycle of birth. This is the physical manifestation of life that is connected on subtler levels to its previous births.
I will be posting some lessons from our intro course in Jyotish. The lessons will be translated into Vietnamese and Japanese. To get info about our programs, send me a friend request on Facebook. You will find me as Swami Pranava. We will be starting a course for beginners on Saturday, August 2nd, at noon Vietnam time.
I would like to share my experience teaching yoga in Tokyo recently, as much has happened, and I have been transformed. First, the Japanese language experience: I found myself teaching every day for 45 minutes for five to ten of the most motivated students of our Sivananda Yoga Vedanta Center, a spiritual community. The language was a challenge from the beginning, as I had no background in Japanese and no source of yoga instructions other than Chat GPT. I was learning a new language by speaking it, having never heard anyone speak the yoga instructions that I was saying!
It became a battle between the higher and lower minds. My lower mind was screaming: “Why are you putting yourself through this stressful and embarrassing situation? Just say the instructions in English, and someone will have to translate. The director has no reason to expect that you can learn Japanese to teach the classes!”
But somehow I wanted to learn, and this situation presented an opportunity to practice speaking Japanese. I thought, “This could be great if I can pull it off, but how?” I noticed that, unlike Vietnamese, Japanese for me is relatively easy to pronounce because English has most of the sounds used in Japanese. So when I spoke, right from the beginning, people usually understood.
I found that I could win the battle by arranging my notes of the instructions and practicing them. Still, I was challenged as each new instruction became easier, many more instructions came to mind, so I was still constantly “stretching” to the limits of my skill level and beyond in every session! There were times of not knowing the next instruction and making the students wait. There were times of trying to recall a new instruction and getting distracted as the students did not wait! Sometimes I had to close my eyes to avoid getting distracted from my mental searching and processing! (I got good at closing my eyes at the appropriate time.)
What made this situation tolerable was the encouragement from these motivated students. They can do the most important thing as a yoga student: look past the person leading the practice, look past the person who is in charge of passing along the teachings of the master. The real teacher is the Guru, Swami Sivananda, the enlightened one who inspired us all to take up this cause of yoga teaching for world peace and harmony.
The value of the person leading the class is that they give the students a connection with the master. These people had an unusual understanding and supported me as a result of their connection with Swami Sivanandaji. After every session, they thanked me and told me that my Japanese was better every day and to keep going. Going deeper into the experience, I realized that this stretching was only the beginning.
I was also dealing with the personalities of yoga staff members and yoga teachers in the center. The most important yoga practices are not done on a mat but rather in the Satsang (a gathering to meditate, chant, and study teachings of masters), and then applying the yoga teachings in daily life. Of course, leading a Satsang can be wonderful if one understands what is involved. First, there is a silent meditation (Raja Yoga or concentration) of 20 minutes, then chanting simple Sanskrit verses (Bhakti Yoga or devotion) for 20 minutes, and finally reading yoga philosophy and explaining it (Jnana Yoga or self-inquiry) for 20 minutes.
We had a course in Bhakti yoga, and I certainly did not want to just teach the students chanting. I wanted to go deeper into the reason for the Bhakti practices. This is the yoga of channeling our emotions into a positive force of devotion or selfless love. But how to explain it?
Many people enjoy the chanting and other “devotional” activities. During these times, we are challenged to “generate positive emotions.” In the course, I asked students to do the chanting as a daily practice if possible, but always to become “emotionally stable and positive.”
Here was a clear example of the idea that the “teacher learns more than the students.” I found that living and working in the spiritual community, not knowing the language, and working with people whom I did not know well, was my opportunity to practice generating positive emotions. So during the chanting and, more importantly, in daily life, I tried to remember to practice.
From this experience, I found that the people around us can provide a miracle, but we need to value them. In this case, it was the miracle of dedicated people who are volunteering full-time to present and share the yoga teachings. To this aim, I tried to value the people around me without having expectations. This enabled me to see the miracle and appreciate this amazing opportunity to align with these wonderful people and thereby grow and serve humanity.
So what is the best diet for health and peace? In my last blog, I wrote about how food follows the person’s mindset. A dull person will want to eat a diet that produces a dull state of mind. This diet is called “tamasic”, and it consists of foods that are stale, overripe, rotten, burned, have too much oil, are too heavy, and hard to digest. Although not actually food items, we can also include drinking alcohol, smoking cigarettes, using marijuana, and other drugs as tamasic.
Foods that overstimulate the mind are considered “rajasic”, and are liked by people who are passionate by nature. In this sense, “passionate” is used in a negative way to denote being driven to action by selfish desires. Although better than the dull state of the tamasic people, rajasic people are still considered somewhat limited because sometimes our passions bring us up and sometimes down. Rajasic foods include overly-spiced food, too much salt, too sour, too much hot spice, as well as any form of caffeine like coffee and black tea. Eating in a hurry can be considered rajasic as well.
The best diet for health and peace is a “sattvic” one. Fresh vegetables, legumes (beans), grains, high-quality oils (non-hydrogenated), and all dairy products like milk, yogurt, cheese, butter, ghee, etc. are considered sattvic. However, many people prefer to eat a “vegan” diet, which means also no dairy products, sometimes because of non-tolerance to milk, etc., and sometimes because of the mistreatment of cows in the modern dairy industry. Whatever your choice, you can improve your awareness of foods through Hatha Yoga, as I explained at length in my first blog on diet.
Blog 2 for Tokyo Center – 1 July, 2025 by Swami Pranavananda
Diet and the Three Gunas
I just had lunch at an Indian restaurant here in Tokyo near our Sivananda yoga center. The food was OK for taste, and they had some vegetarian options, but the overall quality of the food was relatively low compared to the simple vegetarian diet we follow in the yoga community. It is somewhat difficult to find good quality vegetarian food in Tokyo as we have to travel far and pay a lot, or, as we normally do here in the center, cook for ourselves. I think that we can do Tokyo and all of Japan a great service through the yoga teaching, part of which is about what is the best diet for health and peace.
The classical yoga practice makes us aware of the importance of a light, healthful, vegetarian diet, without foods that dull or overstimulate our minds. How can this be? How can practicing yoga postures, etc., make us want to eat vegetarian? It is not known in this modern world that people choose their foods based on the three gunas or qualities of nature, namely tamas (darkness, ignorance), rajas (passion), and sattva (purity). These qualities determine our place in life as a dull (tamasic), driven (rajasic), or peaceful (sattvic) person.
Tamasic people may have to do low-paying jobs, as they lack the ambition (rajas) to drive themselves to achieve more education and work with determination to succeed. Rajasic people are ready to focus on achieving a goal and impose on themselves discipline for personal gain. Sattvic people have realized the highest purpose of human existence and work for the good of all. Yogis view life as a progression from tamas to rajas to sattva, which yoga helps to accelerate.
Regular yoga practice automatically creates more sattva in our minds, bringing us clarity and harmony. This newfound treasure of health and happiness overrides our past negative habits and cravings for unsuitable items, especially wrong food choices. We find more success, both monetary and personal. We want to eat a pure diet, one that gives us strength and energy, but does not cloud (tamasic food) or drive (rajasic food) the mind. In the next blog, I will continue this topic to provide guidelines for a sattvic diet; however, I encourage you to do other yoga practices, postures, and breathing exercises (hatha yoga) as this will make changes in diet much easier and long-lasting.
Blog 1 for Tokyo Center – 1 July, 2025 by Swami Pranavananda
Yoga for Communication
What does yoga have to do with improving communication? You may not perceive a connection, and think that communication is only improved by taking more time to talk, studying psychology, seeing a therapist, looking into your childhood, reading books on the subject, and practicing non-violent communication with others as a training. Of course, all of the above will help, but there is one element missing: calmness.
Yoga is primarily a teaching of calmness, beginning with specific physical exercises that have been tested for centuries. Then, breathing exercises are employed as a more subtle approach. Finally, sitting for meditation and using a special calming sound called a mantra is used to offer some temporary relief from mental and emotional turmoil. But there is one more component the classical yoga system offers: positive thinking.
It seems like a lot of time and effort: exercise, breathing, meditation, and positive thinking. But please understand that true yogis are even busier than most of us! Yogis, meaning people who have achieved a high level of calmness, know the secret: positive thinking is practiced by acknowledging the connection between all things, and acting from that awareness.
The secret is becoming aware of our motivations. What are we attempting to achieve? Suppose we understand that life offers continual opportunities to practice calmness. In that case, we take a step back from only thinking about our achievements as what we create in the material world. We recognize that we also constantly influence the calmness of those around us and contribute to the well-being of the entire world with our selfless intentions.
Yoga teaches that we need two approaches to calmness: First, we can do the basic practices of postures, breathing, and sitting for meditation with a mantra. Second, we can view every moment of our life as a crucial contribution to the peace and happiness of all things. In yoga philosophy, you will find the words abhyasa (practice) and vairagya (detachment) to express this idea. In my next blog, you will find more on these two pillars of calmness!
Below is a human translation into Japanese for the people in Japan:
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