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:
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 through taking more time to talk, study psychology, see a therapist, look into your childhood, read books on the subject, and practice 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? If we understand that life offers continual opportunities to practice calmness, then we take a step back from only thinking about our achievements as what we create in the material world. We realize that we are also constantly influencing the calmness of those around us and supporting 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!
Does our suffering have any use to us? And where does suffering come from? According to the Raja Sutras, all of our suffering comes from five main sources. They are ignorance, pleasure, aversion, the ego, and the fear of death. When we begin to investigate these qualities in ourselves we can more clearly understand our path towards liberation.
During her international Satsang on Nov. 15, Swami Sitaramananda introduces the ancient teachings of Maharishi Patanjali to help us understand why we suffer.
The Five Kleshas
The concept today is about understanding the root causes of our suffering. When we understand this we can continue to invest the right amount of energy in the right place. Because when you know the root causes of your suffering you can begin to heal by cultivating an intelligent approach to your sadhana practices. These teachings come from Patanjali Maharishi, who wrote the Raja Yoga Sutras over 2000 years ago. Patanjali says there are five causes of suffering, and the misery that has not yet manifested should be avoided. If you have a certain cause of suffering and you carry on to do certain things out of ignorance, then you will suffer. The misery that has not yet manifested needs to be avoided. This means you need to go to the root cause of the suffering and do the right thing to avoid any future suffering.
The Sanskrit term kleshas means cause of affliction, or poisons. Klesha number one is avidya or spiritual ignorance. When you start on your spiritual journey in order to be enlightened, the more light you will have coming in your mind. And this will make you wiser. You’ll be able to go into the root cause of all suffering. Avidya is the main cause of suffering. The other four reasons come from Avidya. The second klesha is called asmita or egoism. With asmita you don’t know who you are. So you believe that you are this personality called the ego or the ahamkara.
The third Klesha is Raga. Raga is translated as attachment. Because of our attachments we suffer.
Number four, Dvesha means repulsion, and is the opposite of Raga. Raga means you attach to something you like, and Dvesha means you run away from something. So the two together, Raga and Dvesha means your likes and dislikes, your array of love and hate.
And the fifth klesha is called Abhinivesha which means your will to live, or in other words, your fear of death. These are the five main causes of suffering according to Patanjali. It’s important we understand them well.
Forgetting Ourselves
Avidya is forgetting our true nature as the immortal, unchanging pure consciousness called the Atman. We make the mistake of taking the perishable, impure, external world and appearance for that which is real, true, permanent, and eternal. Avidya means not understanding our true nature as Sat-chit-ananda Atman. Instead, we mistake our body and mind to be ourselves. We do not know the difference between that which will bring pain, and that which will bring immortality. We are unaware of the truth, and that is called Avidya or ignorance. And this is the root cause of all the afflictions. So, if the root cause of all our afflictions is Avidya, the way to cure our afflictions is through self-knowledge.
We need to understand the teachings of Vedanta, which is a yoga philosophy that teaches us about the nature of the self. Vedanta teaches us about self-healing, self-realization, and the nature of liberation or enlightenment. When we suffer from our own negativity, we are suffering from our perceived imperfections in our mind. We may have low confidence, low self-esteem, insecurities, or anxiety. In this case we need to go to the root of the problem and ask ourselves the questions, ‘who am I?’ ‘Am I these impressions in my mind or my habitual thinking?’ ‘Am I my past?’ ‘Am I my pain?’ ‘Am I my past mistake?’ You need to ask these questions about your perceptions from the mind that perpetuate this false idea of yourself.
Detaching from the Body
The problem is we identify with the body and the mind. We believe that we are this body, and describe ourselves with terms like 30-years-old, male, female, pretty, or ugly. We think we are this vehicle. And this is the first mistake. The body and the mind is like a car, with the purpose being to experience life. The vehicle is a vehicle of self-knowledge. You are born in a body with a mind to experience the fruit results of your karma in order for you to wake up and learn the lesson of ‘who am I.’ So, the body and the mind are your vehicle.
It’s like you drive a car, and you say, ‘I’m a Honda. I’m Japanese. I’m 10 years old. I’m red from the outside. And I’m worth $10,000.’ You make the mistake of identifying with your vehicle. You use your vehicle to go from one place to another. This body and this mind are your vehicles in order for you to experience this life. You experience this life the best you can. The vehicle is very sharp and powerful and has lots of skills and equipment so that you can experience this life.
So you need to understand that you made a mistake. You need to detach from this false identification with the vehicle so you can recognize who you are. This body and mind vehicle that you are born into is there for you to wake up. For you to experience life and to know that it is not yourself, and to know that this experience is the condition of your thinking. You can change your thinking and you can progress to have a better idea of who you truly are.
In Vedanta, your true nature is known as sat-chit-ananda. It means who you are is more than this body. We come for a short time to experience something in this body, but your life is more than this body. You are unlimited. You come for a short time to explain something in this body. Sat-chit means you are immortal, it means you are your own knowledge, you are the source of all knowledge.
Ananda means bliss. That means the true nature of yourself is that bliss absolute. So this is something that we need to remember. Otherwise we experience objects of the senses and we believe that these objects can give us the happiness we want. But it’s impossible, you can possess all these objects you desire, but you will not be happy because they are just objects.
You are the power, you are the existence, and you are the truth. The problem is we constantly have an illusion projecting a different idea outside of us and we run after these illusions and think that we can get some happiness from them. This is Avidya or spiritual ignorance. We need to wake up from avidya and understand our body and mind are only our vehicles. In order to understand this, you need to have some level of detachment.
The body is ours only to be used by the mind. You have to know that the core of your consciousness is not your mind or body, but that you are the immortal spirit. This knowledge requires continual training of the mind to be a more detached person.
Turning Inward
You have three bodies: the physical body, the astral body, and the causal body. The three bodies help us to understand ourselves properly.
The physical body is the envelope of food. What you eat becomes the body. In the astral body you have you have a layer called prana. Prana is your vital energy and your aura in the subtle body. Then you have the mind with emotions and a subconscious. And then you have your intellect and your ego. All this is in the astral body. And what this means is that the mind is a very subtle tool for you to experience life. And your mind experiences pleasure and pain. When you experience pleasure and pain, pleasure is limited and pain is limited. You have to know that there is something unlimited that is beyond the pleasure and pain.
You experience pleasure and you take that to be the truth, but when it ends you suffer. And when you suffer, you have to turn inward. Then you will find a place of peace, the unlimited peace that is within yourself. This is how you learn. Pain is also limited but the mind will swing between pain and pleasure. We’ll talk about this swinging nature later on.
The experience of pain and pleasure helps to guide you to the truth within yourself. You withdraw yourself and you recognize yourself, that’s the reason why you are equipped with the body and mind. Then you can recognize yourself, and that is called the process of waking up or self-realization. We need to cultivate this true knowledge by practicing self-remembrance. You forget yourself in the objects of the senses, and your mind says you are the ego but you need to detach and reflect on your true self. Remembering your true self happens when you do sadhana or your spiritual practice like yoga or meditation. These practices help you remember the truth of who you are.
We need to truly understand the cause of our problem. Usually when we have problems we always blame something external. You think if an object gives you happiness now, and it does not give you happiness later, something must be wrong with the object. But you don’t see that it’s your mind that projects an illusion upon the object expecting it to perform how you want it. The object will never behave exactly how you want. Permanent happiness is not possible from an object. You need to turn your attention inward to find the lasting happiness that is within you.
For example, you think that if the body is very pretty and youthful that it will give you happiness. Eventually the body will get old or an accident can happen. The body is relative. You try to make it perfect, but it can never be perfect. Some people spend so much time and money to make the body perfect. But the body is not new, it cannot be perfect. It changes every moment. You have to detach and use the body wisely. The true nature of the body is to grow, get old, and eventually self-destruct. You know that the nature of the body is to grow old, so don’t put all your energy in the body. Instead, put your energy in living your life meaningfully by doing your sadhana practice so you can recognize your mistake in thinking.
We function out of our mistaken identity. We cannot see beyond our thinking. It’s similar to thinking the sun does not exist when a cloud is blocking our view. If we only pay attention to the cloud, then we only see the external. We will only see the external appearance when we don’t do any kind of practice according to yoga or Vedanta.
Vedanta’s Teachings
Vedanta gives you a practice of meditation and self-inquiry. So even if the clouds are there and you don’t see the sun, you can know within that the sun is there. This is called self-remembrance. Even through the ups and downs in your life, when everything seems to be changing, you know that the sun is behind it all. The light is there behind your changing life. You have to remember the teachings and the words of the scripture. You have to hear the teachings from the guru again and again so that you keep a healthy idea of who you are. And you have to reflect. Nobody can reflect for you because people looking from the outside will just give you the false idea of who you are. Millions of dollars are spent for beauty supplies every year. You spend so much money to try to make yourself beautiful. All this spent on the body instead of spending money to go to a yoga class or go to yoga retreat. Go to a yoga retreat and I will talk to you about who you are.
So you have this false concept of who you are. People don’t like you. You feel lonely and you’re thinking ‘oh, because I’m not pretty enough, people don’t like me.’ And again you go to a beauty parlor to make yourself look nicer to create that aura of beauty, but inside you are empty. So when this happens you need to put more energy into the practices that make you feel full. When you feel complete, you feel you know who you are. You feel strong.
The outside is bound by nature. The body is bound by nature, it can regrow and change. When people buy a perfect apple for me, I refuse to eat it. Because in nature, there is no perfect apple. It’s perfect because it’s made naturally. But manmade perfection is different. People now do all kinds of things to fruit and food to make it perfect. But that perfection is artificial.
Seek the truth of perfection within you. Don’t try to have perfection outside. Nature is changing all the time. There are no two leaves that look the same. No day on earth will look the same. The sunlight from day to day will change. And no flower will ever be an exact replica of another flower. Similarly, no person looks exactly the same. Everything is changing. That is the true nature of the universe, the true nature of maya, and the nature of the world. So learn to accept your body for what it is – it’s a part of nature. And remember that at the core of yourself, there is an unchanging spirit. That unchanging consciousness that is creating this and is the source of everything.
Reflecting on the Scriptures
I cannot explain to you the true nature of the self in this short discussion. I teach all day long and there many different courses. Please, I encourage you to take a course if you’re serious about developing your knowledge and understanding. There’s no way I can explain the self in this short discussion. You need to make an effort for self-knowledge.
Number one, you have to listen to the Scripture. Then you have to think about yourself. The scriptures say the body is only your vehicle. So go around and think about this every day. Think to yourself, ‘in which way is my body a vehicle, I am not the body, so then who am I?’ You have to take the effort to think, because I cannot think for you. And then think deeply about the teaching of the truth in Scriptures. They say that you are the immortal spirit. You are the Satchidananda atman so think about it. Otherwise you buy a newspaper and you think all kinds of things that is not really the truth. So try to find self-knowledge in order for you to wake up from the ignorance. This is the first teaching.
Identifying with the Ego
The second lesson is when you don’t know who you are, so you start to believe what you are not to be. That is called egoism. You believe that your limited self is who you are. You think your body, mind, and personality is who you are. This is the second cause of suffering, the ego. The ego is called the self-arrogating principle of the mind.
In our mind, we have the ahamkara, that means you have to assert and affirm who you are in your mind in order for you to experience life well. You came here to experience life and to wake up and know that it is limited. It’s not the truth. Therefore the ego is a necessary instrument for your enlightenment and for waking up. Because if you don’t have the ego, you don’t have the personality. You may believe you’re Elizabeth Taylor or the queen or something. If you think like this you’ll never learn about yourself. You have to learn from your lessons. The lessons that come with your life, personality, and ego. But don’t think that the ego is yourself – this is the teaching.
You need to have the ego, so there’s nothing wrong with self-confidence and going through your life as an integrated personality experiencing your life. It’s good that you are clear in mind and you know your personal experience and what is wrong for you and what is good.
But egoism comes from the idea that you get attached to this idea of who you are. You become attached to this personality of who you are. The moment you get attached to it, then you cannot see who you are not. You are more unlimited, powerful, and complete than your personality, because the personality is limited. So that’s why you constantly feel incomplete, because you identify with your personality. And when you compare yourself to others you will feel incomplete.
So this is one of the causes of suffering, when you identify with your ego. And when you attach to your own way or your own desire, your own action will create pain because it’s not possible to get everything that you desire because its illusory, it comes from your mistaken identification of your limited self. And from there comes problems. The ego can bring a lot of negative emotions – the problem of selfishness, egoism, anxiety, pride, arrogance, using others, anger, jealousy. The ego brings a lot of problems if you believe the ego to be yourself. Thats why we say the second cause of suffering is the ego.
Know who you are, then the ego becomes small, then you will learn whatever lesson you need to learn. Don’t believe that you are this false ego which is your instrument only. When the ego becomes thinner and thinner, you know inside who you are. With the personality, you still have to function in this world, but you do not believe that it is yourself. So this is a very important lesson. You have to repeatedly ask yourself the question, ‘Who am I?’ And then you have to come to the better version of yourself – an ego that is more sattvic, is more open, has more compassion, and is more enlightened. You’re trying to get out of the tamasic ego. The rajasic ego always thinks, ‘mine mine mine.’ The rajasic ego always says, ‘me, mine, me, mine, look at me, look at me.’
So this is how suffering occurs. So if you can come to the sattvic ego it means you have a greater sense of self, but you are not denying the greater truth. And you are not asserting your difference with others. You assert your limited personality with others. You don’t assert this. You use this but you don’t assert this. This is not you.
So you are able to be flexible, to be adaptable, to be compassionate, and to understand more than what your ego can come up with. This is the second cause of suffering. We need to think a lot about this so you can wake up your own ego. So be humble. To work through your ego, you need to learn humility, flexibility, adaptability, and compassion.
The Swinging of the Mind
The third and fourth causes of suffering are to be understood together. Let’s call them raga and dvega. These are the likes and dislikes and the swinging of the mind. They cause the mind to swing from one side to another. The mind always has the tendency to swing to whatever it likes, and to run away from whatever it dislikes.
Why does the mind swing? If your mind is calm, then you’ll be able to see yourself. It’s like when a lake is calm, then you can see through the movement of the lake, and you can see your true reflection of yourself as beautiful. But why can’t you calm the mind? It’s always swinging and some people swing more than others. Some people are more calm than others, and some people just want to swing in opposite directions all the time. Because of the swinging you are not peaceful. Patanjali asked, ‘why does the mind swing? Why does the mind have this raga or attachment?’ Raga’s definition is an attraction in that which dwells on pleasure. That means that we had an experience of pleasure before, so we want to repeat this experience of pleasure, but pleasures are ending all the time because the true nature of pleasure is not to last forever. We have this experience in our mind of pleasure and we want to go back to this experience. We have these impulses within us of attraction, always learning and remembering this experience of pleasure and always wanting to repeat it. We become attracted like glue to this experience of pleasure.
Let’s say you have the experience of ice cream. Oh, so good! Right? So you want to repeat it. Every day you go around looking for some ice cream that will give you that experience of pleasure. So then the opposite happens – after three ice creams then you have stomach pain. Aversion means that which you don’t like. Aversion is that which attempts to avoid pain. After you experience pleasure from the ice cream, you will then experience pain. You may have diarrhea or stomach pain from the ice cream, and now you have an aversion of ice cream. The moment you hear the word ‘ice cream’ you run away. Why? Because you have the experience of pain in the past and you want to avoid pain.
So aversion, or dislikes, is made up of pain and things that cause discomfort. They don’t last, they’re precarious. You get attached to things that are precarious and when they change, then you have an experience of pain.
And then you dislike this thing that gives you pain. Some people have the experience of being hurt in a relationship and they decide to close off and they don’t want any relationship anymore. And they think that all men or all women give them pain, and they run away and become isolated. They’re the phenomena of people that become so hurt they become isolated. They don’t want to experience the pain anymore. They don’t want to experience anything anymore and they close off. They become depressed and they think they want to die like this in isolation and depression.
You have to know the right way of dealing with the ups and downs of attraction and repulsion. The mind always going towards what it likes, and running away from dislikes. So, you have to know why is it like this? It’s because of ignorance. You cannot see yourself and only see objects, and objects are limited in nature. The senses are always looking for objects. When the senses are glued to the object then you have the experience of calmness, you have the experience of the mind stopping its swinging. The mind stops swinging because the senses are glued to the object. At that time you have the experience of happiness that comes from within. When your mind stops for a moment, then you feel the experience of bliss. But then you wrongly attribute your happiness to the possession of the object. The object doesn’t give you happiness.
It is bliss absolute, the truth within that gives you happiness when the mind stops moving. But then the mind will move to the opposite direction. And this move to the opposite is painful. So once again, you’ll fall into the trap of believing that the object gives you pain.
You are all the time looking for the bliss absolute within you, because we are all the time looking for ourselves. We are all the time looking for ourselves, but we wrongly attribute the happiness or the unhappiness with the objects. We attribute happiness to the object, or pain to the object. But we do not recognize this because we are moving in the external, sensual world of objects, and seeking for happiness in that world of objects is impossible. You have to turn your gaze inward through yoga and meditation. The teachings can guide you to limit the effects of raga and dvesha. They can help you to stop running away from pain and to stop chasing happiness in objects. The answer is to withdraw. Don’t blame the external objects. They are whatever they are. If you want to go deep into the cause of the suffering created by your constantly swinging mind then you need to withdraw your mind and turn inward. Don’t spend all your life blaming. People spend all their life blaming something that creates pain to them.
Don’t spend all your life running towards something better and better. These are illusions. The more that you chase after the next best thing, the more you’ll continue to find yourself seeking happiness externally. You don’t need to have 100,000 experiences of pleasure, or 100,000 experiences of pain in order for you to realize that it’s possible to find peace. So turn within and understand the cause of the suffering. Try to calm your mind from all these illusions of happiness and pain. Try to find yourself. Turn within and you will find yourself.
Freeing Yourself from Attachments
Sometimes you dislike these yoga techniques because they’ve made you turn within and you realize you’re always running externally, trying to find happiness in the external world. So you dislike the yoga techniques, you dislike withdrawing of the senses, you dislike asana, pranayama, meditation, repeating a mantra, you dislike these things, or you can try a little but you never go deeper. So therefore, you never go to the other side which is a place of peace within you. You keep falling into the illusion of the central objects that gave you happiness or pain. So you are attached.
Attachment is a big problem in life. We are attached to our emotions, we are attached to our passions, we want to reproduce so we attach to our to action, to work, we are attached to the ego, we are attached to things or situations and thinking that they will last forever. We attach to the object of our senses. The nature of our mind is attachment. So, you need to contemplate on the nature of our attachment and know that it is not the way to happiness.
We are attached to relationships. We are attached to what we dislike. And continue disliking it, because we are attached to this feeling. We are attached to our misery. Even when the memory and misery is felt, you are still attached to it. You are attached to the idea of being a victim. You are lost in the attachment basically, attachment is the description of your life. So you need to learn to detach. In karma yoga, you do the action and let go of the result. We can detach from emotions too. Love but don’t be attached. The detachment that you learn in meditation leads you to let go of the thoughts. When you sit in meditation, you have to learn to withdraw and detach and let go of these thoughts so you can go straight into the experience of something beyond the mind. In Jnana yoga, you detach by asking yourself if this is real or illusory, and then you try to stay away from that which is changing.
So remember the five main causes of suffering. The first is ignorance, the second is ego, the third is attachment, and the fourth is running away. Remember, running toward and running away, these are the swinging’s of the mind. And the fifth cause of suffering is called fear of death.
Connect to yourself and feel alive
Patanjali goes quite deep and says the cause of suffering is life itself. Fear of death means your attachment to this life. And you’re afraid of something you don’t know. You are afraid of the unknown. You believe this life in this body to be the only life. So you are afraid of death. This is a common fear. We are quite afraid of death, because we are very attached to life in the body and our personality. Because we think that if we die then our whole self is gone. We fear the ‘I’ or our personality will disappear.
So you see this is the root cause a lot of wrong thinking. We need to learn by reading the scripture and thinking through meditation and yoga. Eventually, you will have the direct experience that you are more than the physical body. I remember my first experience of meditation. It was not a long time ago, about 40 years ago. I was meditating for the first or second time, and I came out of the meditation and I said ‘I’m not afraid of death.’ Why? Because then you have the true experience that you are existing and something is very vibrant and alive inside of you. And you come back to this physical reality and you know that you experienced something better not worse. You see, people are afraid of death because they think that it will eliminate what they have. That is why they are attached to it. And this attachment will turn them to the place of nothingness.
So they are very afraid of it, but you have to contemplate on that. The subtle is not worse than the gross. You live in the gross manifestation of body and mind and your sense of self that is limited. But if you go to the subtle and you experience your consciousness, you’ll find its more expanded and enriching. And it’s in that space where you feel very good. Then you come back to the gross and you accept that you still have to live in the material world because that’s why you are born, but at the same time you’re not afraid of death anymore. People that experience a near-death experience die and come back unafraid of death. They become huge, dutiful, and good people because they have a greater perspective of who they are.
So Swami Vishnu said if you live this life but don’t recognize your true nature, then that is called death. And some people are like this. They live this life in this body and mind, but they don’t know who they are. They’re so disconnected from themselves. They’re so depressed, so it’s like death. It’s not better you live life attached to the body and the mind. If you live like this, you have no connection with your soul. So you’re like death. You have no feeling or inspiration. People that understand the spirit know they are alive, and they are life. So the definition of life and death is that if you are getting connected to yourself, and if you are in connection with yourself, then you are alive.
When you’re not in connection with yourself then you are dead. Then you will you start to become depressed. Depression is like that, they want to die. And some people are suicidal. Some people want to die because they want to escape. They want to escape the fact that they are not feeling alive. Instead of feeling the need to terminate your life out of ignorance, they need to take more time to be more serious with sadhana practice. So you have to be very serious with your practice. If you don’t feel good, you do a set of asana. That is a proper way to feel better. Then you feel alive right away. You’re connecting with yourself right away. So then if you feel your emotions go up and down, you go do a set of pranayama. If you calm your mind and emotions down you feel alive right away. So life always is a truth. Life is your life. Life is eternal.
But because you identify with the veils, you think that you are not alive. But life is there, life is beautiful. Life is alive. So try to be alive. But don’t identify with the body, because the more you identify with the body the more you will want physical immortality, and the more you’re dead. Can you find immortality in the body? No, it’s impossible. The body is born. It’s an instrument only. It’s not meant to last forever. You lasts forever. You are the owner of the vehicle. You are the boss of the vehicle. You are the boss of your life. You are immortal. But the body is not. Your instrument is not meant to last forever.
Ponder the five causes of suffering so you’re not in the illusion of happiness when you are not truly happy, when you don’t know what true happiness is. You are not buying into the idea of who I am, when you don’t know who you are. You’re not buying into the idea of this thing. You may think, ‘is this object likeable? I hate this person.’ And you’re not buying into this idea that this person is the source of my happiness, you’re not attaching to a person. Anything external you are not buying into because you go inward, and you become more detached to whatever is around you. And then you find something that shows more truth.
Letting go of attachments to objects doesn’t mean abandoning a relationship, or losing the object, or feeling insecure. This is wrong thinking. If you have a bigger picture of who you are, and you understand that you are with the person in order for you to learn a lesson about who you are, then you will cherish the person even more. You’ll be able to love this person even more because a person is your own self. You have to see that love is not attachment.
And remember, the self is not the ego. So please do contemplate on the nature of your suffering. Stop the blaming, stop being the victim, because you cannot be a victim forever. If a mistake has happened, or somebody did something wrong to you, you need to let it go. If you’re a victim forever, then you’ll lose your life. Your life is for you to experience. You can learn from this negative experience. There’s something you need to learn from it, that’s why it happened to you. It’s no accident. So don’t blame but look inside and learn your lesson. Don’t play the victim, and become the master of your life and come out free. All of Vedanta’s teachings are for you to come out free. You’ll come out strong, with a perspective of right thinking about yourself and about your life.
Swami Sitaramananda leads an International Satsang every Wednesday at 3 pm (PST). During the Satsang we will meditate, chant, and listen to Swami Sita speak on a new topic each week. Join the mailing list to get updates on the international satsangs.
Today we have a very serious topic, the topic of Karmic Disease. So, you know, people have diseases and sometimes it’s not explainable. We don’t understand why they have the diseases. So, first you need to understand the meaning of the word karma. Karma means simply the universal law of cause and effect, action and reaction. The word Karma means action, and karma applies to physical action, but also to mental action. I mean, you don’t do anything, but you think about it. And when you think about it, you create the mental karma, and the reason why we are born in this particular condition is because of our karma. So, there is no accident that we are born in a certain family in certain circumstances, a certain country and our life goes a certain way.
It’s all because of our karma. So, karma doesn’t mean just an action, but also the result of an action, the consequences of an action. Yeah, it is the same as the action, it’s about the same nature and the same force. But if you understand that life is not only one life, but a series of lives and you have the Soul Life, a very long Soul Life, and when you are born and you forget, you know, the previous lives. So, the present life is the result of thoughts and actions you have done in the past.
And it’s not continuous sometimes. You reap the result of this action, of this thinking, in the past life, right away in this life. But sometimes it is the result of past thoughts in previous lives that comes out now. So these different actions are intermingling with each other. As it’s not a vertical line, you know, everything is not just one after the other. So that’s why you don’t quite understand sometimes, things happen all of a sudden, and you don’t know why.
But you understand the law of karma, the law of karma is that there is nothing that happens by accident. Okay. So you are born in a certain family, a rich family, a poor family, a violent family, a very depressed family, whether you were loved as a child or not. But why is the action, what happened in your childhood, is very important to influence the rest of your life? Because you reap the result of your past actions, your karma when you were young. So it determines the balance of your life okay. So, whatever happens when people are young influences the rest of their life, because of the karma that comes from the past. The whole world runs on that idea of karma, the idea of the seed, and from the seed you put in the ground the tree comes out. Okay, and the tree will create the seed. So it’s a chain of cause and effect that is continuous. So, no event can occur without having a definite positive cause. Sometimes you see the cause and sometimes you don’t see the cause.
There are three laws that come under the concept of karma. The first is the law of action and reaction. Any action will have a similar reaction. The second is compensation, which means in the distribution of the karma, there is an intelligence that is behind, so that makes everything balanced out. And in the distribution of the karmic result, there is the idea of punishment of a wrong action that is being considered as well. So, if somebody does a wrong action, then they will reap the reaction, by the Divine Law. Nobody punishes the person, it’s their own action that gives the result back and it’s very important when we talk about comic disease to understand that point.
Okay, the third is equal force and similar nature, equal force and similar nature. For example, if you break somebody’s leg, then in one lifetime you are walking around and the tree falls down and breaks your leg. This might not be a person breaking your leg, but your leg is being broken. So you experience the result of the karma of your breaking the leg of somebody. So nobody is being punished by God. It is just the result of your action. It is like a punishment.
Okay, and sometimes the opposite happens. Sometimes you receive things that you do not work for in this life. Some good thing happens to you. It’s because of the past life. Suppose that somebody gives you money. You do not have to work so hard, but somebody gives you money. Maybe because in your last life you donated a lot. So in this life, you will receive money. Okay, so Swami Sivananda says that the law of karma operates with unceasing precision and scientific accuracy. Because we don’t know so do you think oh, it’s haphazard, but it’s very, very clear.
So, is it clear? Everything is in harmony, but it operates by invisible hands behind, but it is the consequence of your own action and nobody is at fault. So, once you understand that then you would prevent it. I mean you will try to live a good life controlling your thoughts. So, you prevent negative things from happening by actively pursuing good thoughts. The law of compensation keeps everything in harmony. Swami Sivananda gave the example that if there is heat in one country, it will be cold in some other country, because of the law of compensation. If there are some bad people somewhere then there will be some saintly people also. That’s compensation.
So the law of compensation is part of the law of karma. Retribution means that every wrong action or crime brings its own punishment. It’s the same as the law of action and reaction, or more of an idea that you would suffer with pain, from the result of your bad action. So, in fact, you think wrongly that you did something to somebody like you robbed somebody. But it’s not that you are robbing somebody, you’re robbing yourself. Because you rob somebody, and then you will be losing something another time and it is by your own action. So when you lose something, it’s not that somebody is robbing you, but because you robbed somebody before. So now you’ve been robbed. So basically, you are robbing yourself. You receive the pain of losing because of robbery. So you did it to yourself.
If you hurt somebody, then you’ll be hurt. So that’s the way the law of karma works. If you hurt somebody, you think that you hurt somebody, but that same action comes back to you, it hurts you. So, in fact, it is you that hurt yourself okay, you suffer from your own action. And the root cause of karma is the desire in your mind when you do not recognize that you are this fulfilled self and you go look for happiness somewhere else. Your mind is not centered in the self but your mind is thinking of different things, from this desire of the mind, due to ignorance, and that’s how you create karma.
So desire produces karma. You work very hard to satisfy the desire. And sometimes you don’t finish in this life and in the next life you will be born in order to continue your efforts to satisfy the desire. So if you don’t want to constantly be born to satisfy desire and then desire another thing and satisfy that desire, again and again, because desire is insatiable, then you can stop the wheel of karma by practicing desirelessness, by remembering the Self, then you become satisfied and content and desireless. Okay.
There are three kinds of karma, just to remind you: The karma of the past that is in your subconscious mind, the current karma, the karma of the present, in which you experience pleasure or pain, and the karma of the future, when you react to the current karma, when you like something, you dislike something, then that will create the future karma. So, therefore, this life is about experiencing the karma of the past, and not reacting. Always be grateful, thankful. Do what you need to do, but always remember the self not to react. Because the reaction will create new karma.
So, now, how much do you want to know the causes of the karma? You can deduce, let’s say you have the karma of violence, then you have to understand because in the past, I have committed violence. And you don’t know, you don’t remember. But now you have the karma of violence. You know, sometimes violence when you were young, you were beaten up when you were young, you were abused when you were young. It’s your own karma. So, the idea is that some people want to know exactly what happened in the past. But it doesn’t really matter what happened in the past, because the current situation, if you understand the current situation, is enough. Yeah. And then you, you would think very well of the current situation, the way you work out the karma is you accept it, you accept your life. There is a sentence that says, I pray that I will change what I need to change, what I can change, and accept what I cannot change, and I will know the difference between the two.
So, your karma of the past cannot be changed, but you have to experience it. And when you experience it, try to expand your life in the most positive manner. Because if not, that creates new karma for the future. So even though we explained that there is a karma of the past and the karma of the future, in fact it is the present. Because what happened in the present comes from the past, and what happened in the present and the way how you act and react will create the future.
So that’s why in the present, if you can meditate and be very aware in the present then it will not reproduce in the future Okay, so, you imagine that the way you will experience karma is often tied with some kind of pain, some kind of shame, some kind of difficulty and you do not know why it happened but you inherit it. So, somebody would be born in a very strong body, some body will be born in a very weak body, is sick at birth, somebody is very healthy and somebody is having some kind of congenital disease so, all these are due to karma okay. Now, think about this. So, I mean Sivananda gave you the whole long list in his book Karma and Disease. There is a summary here I’m going to give you.
And it might scare you but it’s something that you need to learn because we forget that our action can have a consequence and the consequence can come in the form of disease okay, that you cannot explain why so many people have disease and cannot explain why and let’s say that you eat wrong food and you have disease of the stomach okay. So, the karma of eating wrong food will give you the immediate result which is stomach pain. When I say that you are born already with some kind of weakness in the digestive system and whatever you eat, you know you have a problem. So, there is a cause that comes even before this life and you are born with certain weaknesses. Some people are born with weakness of the lungs. Some people are born with weakness of the digestion, some people are born with weakness of the mind and the brain. Some people are born with weakness in the circulation and the heart. Some people are born handicapped with a body that has a crooked spine that is not straight, the legs that are very weak or the arms are very weak. Some people are born completely handicapped, yeah, the nose is crooked or, who knows what, a skin condition since they were young.
So all this has some origin of wrong actions in the past. Okay, so I’m going to give you the list now. So you can remember more or less Okay. So let’s say in this life, this person always has mental pain, mental pain and agony, some difficulty, all the time feeling somebody is after them, trying to harm them. You can say they are paranoiac. They feel like somebody is after them all the time. And they suffer from mental pain. They don’t have joy, they don’t have happiness. So if the person suffers all the time from mental agony and mental pain, Swami Sivananda said that it is because in a past life, we don’t know when, in some life from before, the person insulted other people and broke his promises. And he created a lot of disappointment for other people. You insult people sometimes in public and you can take something from the comfort of people, you know, their home or their property. So, then in one life you will suffer from mental pain all the time.
Some people are born with the tendency toward asthma which means a respiratory problem, inflammation of the lungs, different kinds of disease, bronchitis, pneumonia, some kind of lung disease. So, he said because in the past life the karma, the action, the wrong action, was to block up a hole of a rat or snake, making them unable to breathe. Yeah. So, anything that you have done to somebody that creates suffocation like even the fish. Sometimes you take them out of the water they cannot breathe and you make them unable to breathe and then die. Yeah, that action will create lung disease for you in the next life.
So, we must have done something like that because so many people have COVID. And COVID is touching the respiratory system and you cannot breathe, you cough and your lungs are affected. And some people have snake bites. Why do you have snake bites or scorpion bites? Swami Sivananda said because you have injured somebody with poison before so now you have a snake bite which is poisonous. So it’s always like this, you see this more or less the same nature. If somebody has a disease called Elephantiasis which is a painful and disgusting disease, that disfigmakes you disfigured, changes your form, it is from the problem of the lymph that makes the body swell, abnormal swelling and some kind of attack by parasites, it’s because you have oppressed others and you keep people in slavery and you become very proud that you abuse other people.
So, now you have a disease that is always very painful and the body is disformed, okay, because you have too much pride from before. Before you made people suffer, so now you have to suffer. Yeah. And you have to be humble because your body is disfigured. So, if you have tuberculosis, it is because
you were a miser, you were a money lender and you made people become very poor and suffer from starvation. You charged people a lot of money so now you suffer from tuberculosis.
If you suffer from leprosy, it is because, Swami Sivananda said, you led an impure life, you indulged with prostitutes so now you get leprosy. I didn’t say that. Swami Sivananda gave a long list. I’m just giving it to you. If you suffer from epilepsy in which you are shaking all the time, losing your mind and shaking, why? Because before you were very proud of your physical strength, you misuse your power by oppressing and fighting with other people.
If you get an eye disease, what do you think? What did you do? You looked at things wrongly. So, what that means is that you have envied all the people’s wealth or property. You have a lustful eye over other people’s women, you have a lot of sensual indulgence. So, now this life you cannot see. You have an eye problem. You can also have skin infection or you can all of a sudden while you are cooking something the hot water boils and then you get burned. You get burned because you have burned somebody’s house that creates maybe somebody’s death from before okay. So, skin, you create a fire that affects the skin of somebody and now you would suffer from skin infection, hot boiling. It is the same.
If you have a digestive problem, or gastritis, which means a stomach problem, it is because you have poisoned other people with bad food. Maybe you have a hotel and you give bad food and you make people have stomach problems. So, this lifetime you will also have stomach problems. If you have bad itches, your skin itches because, it is said, that you were hypocritical, you were lying about yourself. You said that you were a good person, but you many times mistreated other people, beat people by speaking harshly, treated little children badly, then you will often have itches and skin disease.
If you get ear pain, a painful humming sound in the ear, ear inflamation, if you have ear problems, it is because you have indulged in gossip. What is gossip? Talking badly about other people behind their back. You abuse other people verbally. You insult other people and you hear very obscene songs. So, then you have ear problems later on, inflammation in the ear. If you have autoimmune disorder, I mean your immune system attacks the healthy cells in your body, Swami Sivananda said it is because one lifetime you were the son that disobeyed the father and dragged the father to court. And when you do something wrong to your own father, then your own immune system will attack your healthy cells.
If you have a neuro psychiatric condition that gives you rheumatic fever, it is because you have twisted the truth in past lives. If you are a victim every time there is an epidemic and you have some severe relapse and complication it’s because you robbed people from their possessions and you shoot poor people. Now you look around and see that many people do that, robbing people and shooting people. So all these things would have consequences and they will suffer another time.
If you get cancer, gastric ulcers of the stomach, Swami Sivananda explained that because you have burned sacred books and destroyed spiritual literature. You don’t want people to study and elevate themselves. You burn the books, so now you get gastric ulcers and cancer.
And sometimes people have insanity, they become crazy, or impotent. I mean, they cannot have children. Then it could be that in a past life, they were priests that didn’t keep up the sadhana. Again, he talks about asthma, gas suffocation, cannot breathe, tumor in the brain, some kind of rheumatism and hunchback. It is because you were a capitalist that extracted labor from workers and paid them very low wages. If you get chronic diarrhea, dyspepsia, which means indigestion problems, abdominal discomfort and suffer from malnutrition, anemia and not enough food, it is because you have acted in deception. If you have hair that is falling and loss of skin color in patches, some teeth problems, it is because you have cheated people. You sell fruits and vegetables that are old, some rice that is old, you ask a high price and you make them look fresh, but you know they are not. You cheat people.
If you are obese in an incurable manner, or have a stomach tumor, it is because you were indulging in the black market to make a lot of profit from other people. Sometimes you have boils on the head and the shoulder, you have eczema, because you do backbiting. Sometimes you have some severe disease of the mouth, inflammation of the gum, because you were not feeding the guests when they came, very hungry and you’re not feeding the guests. So, you have some gum disease after that.
If you get a chronic headache afflicted with loss of memory, it is because you said falsehoods in court. Scientists that invent destructive bombs and create a lot of innocent people’s death, they can have a lot of incurable diseases and they can be born as insects and then they will be burned to ashes, the trees are being burned in the forest and then they’re being burned. If you are a doctor and you treat people wrongly and you charge a lot of money and give people fake medicines, then you have problems giving birth.
If you have emotional disturbances, you have fatigue all the time, you have headache all the time, irritability all the time, you’re born undeveloped, or a premature birth, very weak, very weak at birth. Because he said that this is because you have indulged in immoral acts in a past life. You drink intoxicants and alcohol. So this life you become very fatigued, very sick.
If you torture people in prison you will be born crippled and paralized, chronic nervous pain and rheumatism. If you talk about good people, but wrongly, you insult the saints in the Scripture, then you have cancer of the tongue. If you have dropsy which means building up fluid in the body or septic fever, it is because you were an officer who misused public money, produced false receipts, misused the money of the public.
If you have inflammation of the kidney, you have heart pain, chronic tooth pain, it is because you were a parent that beat the children, a husband that beat his wife, you committed some kind of violence. If you have paralysis and trembling of the limbs sometimes, you were a servant and you pretended to work and you ruined the boss or the master. Sometimes you get liver disease, vomiting, chronic diarrhea or blindness because you deceived other people, you act as if you are holy but to get money. You might have infection of the nose and the throat, inflammation of the tissue of the lungs and the chest because you were abusing your children that are spiritual. Okay, so that’s enough. It’s very precise.
So, when you have a disease like this, what do you do? You have to accept any kind of karma. And then you do the best you can. So the same story is as if your dress is being burned. Okay. So what do you do? First thing you need to do is to deal with the fire danger to your body. What do you need to do? You need to run to a body of water or a pond and jump in to save yourself. You have no time to sit there and ask where the fire came from, how serious is a 500 degree heat. So you have some condition in the body and in the mind and in your life, the difficulty must always come from some karma. Okay, at that time, don’t waste time trying to figure out, you know, what I did in my past life so that this condition happened. You know, you try to be a good person as much as you can all the time and you try to, you know, alleviate your condition as you can and sometimes you cannot alleviate your condition, because that karma has to be experienced, then you need to accept it and you become a good person.
So that’s the way you deal with karma. You have strengths and weaknesses in your body, strengths and weaknesses in your mind. So all this will create consequences and you will behave in a certain way that is not necessarily good. So you have to realize that it is the result of past karma. And you have to realize that now you need to be doing good things.
If somebody insults you, you still have to do good things because it comes from your own karma from the past, it’s not anyone’s fault. Yeah, but if you react to the karma, then it keeps reproducing the same thing. So that in general is the same teaching of how to deal with karma. And karma and disease means that when you have any condition, any disease in the body, it is time for you to stop. It’s time for you to stop and to slow down, pause here and to think and not to blame, not to be negative. Accept, surrender and try to do the best you can.
Okay, any questions? You can ask me, “If I have this disease, what did I do in my past life?” Well you have to meditate and use those principles. Whatever happens is always because you have to learn something and the nature of that thing, that disease or that pain corresponds to what you have done that created that pain in the past for somebody so now the result comes back to you. So if you don’t want to reproduce that then you need to take this opportunity to be very careful what you do and what you think.
So, if you have a particular body pain it is the same principle. If you have pain somewhere it must have come from something and oftentimes body pain comes from mental action, wrong thinking, creates the body pain. Everyone has strengths and weaknesses. So you need to think. I have lung weakness. Yeah, so when I was young, I was very young, I didn’t do anything yet. I was very young, but I had a lung problem. So the only time in my whole life that I had to go to the hospital was when I was young, and I have some lung problems. I don’t know exactly what it was, some weakness in the lungs so it must be from karma from the past that affects the lungs. So, the weakness of the body is the lungs, the lungs are a seat of emotion, the lungs are the sadness, grief. So, it must be that I have created grief for somebody before. Or I have something that I don’t understand and dislike that creates grief to me in this life. So the weakness is the grief condition. So what I have to do knowing that I have to always try to make people happy to bring joy to other people. Okay, now if you look at the list of Swami Sivananda then the lung disease, it can come from you made somebody die from suffocation or you blocked the hole of a rat or a snake so then you know and you try not to do that.
For example, Shambhu, now he’s doing abhyanga for other people, he works on the skin of other people and he puts the oil on people and helps them with their skin. And in this list here, if you have skin infection it is because you created fires that burn people so now he’s doing this job all the time, taking care of other people’s skin. We can laugh at this. We don’t believe in this but you need to think now that nothing comes by accident in this world. That’s the main thing you need to understand. Nothing is by accident. We might not understand the reason. Yeah. But we need to be very careful not to do anything wrong, negative, because it comes back to us another time for sure in this form or that form, it will come back to us. So always do good things for other people. Say good things about other people, don’t say bad things. Don’t say negative things. You know, be sattvic, be careful what you say and do. Okay. So thank you.
Swami Sitaramananda is a senior acharya of the International Sivananda Yoga Vedanta Centers and is director of the Sivananda Ashram Vedanta 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 teacher of the Sivananda Yoga Health Educator Training (SYHET) program, an 800-hour program on yoga therapy, accredited by the International Association of Yoga Therapists (IAYT).
Swami Sitaramananda is the author of “Essentials of Yoga Practice and Philosophy” (translated in Chinese, Japanese, Vietnamese, and Russian), “Positive Thinking Manual”, “Karma Yoga Manual”, “Meditation Manual”, “Swamiji Said, a collection of teachings by Swami Vishnu” in His Own Words. She is responsible for the Vietnamese translation of “Completed Illustrated Book of Yoga” (CIBY) and “Meditation & Mantras” by Swami Vishnu. Many of her video & audio lectures on Yoga life, philosophy, and psychology as well as articles and webinars can be found on this website.
Swami Sita is an ardent supporter of the integration of the Vedic sciences such as Vastu, Jyotish, Ayurveda, Yoga and Vedanta. She is an international teacher of the Sivananda Yoga Teachers’ Training Courses and Advanced Yoga teachers’ Training courses, as well as Meditation and Vedanta & Silence Courses both in Sivananda Ashrams in Vietnam and in Grass Valley, CA.
Like most websites, we use cookies for various features according to our policy. We hope that’s okay with you – if not, please feel free to disable cookies in your browser.
