Teachings
Our guiding principles.
“Yoga leads us from ignorance to wisdom, from weakness to strength, from disharmony to harmony, from hatred to love, from want to fullness, from limitation to infinity, from diversity to unity, from imperfection to perfection.”
– Swami Sivananda in “Bliss Divine”
Yoga is the oldest system of personal development in the world. Originating in India many thousands of years ago, it is a complete science of life that encompasses body, mind, and spirit.
The ancient yogis developed a profound understanding of human nature and what it requires to live in harmony with the Self — and all that surrounds the Self.
They perceived the body as a vehicle, the mind as its driver, and the soul as its true human identity. They established that action, emotion, and intelligence are the three forces that propel this body-vehicle.
The yogis further established that for a person to be actualized and developed integrally, these three forces must be in balance. They advocate that the underlying purpose of all aspects of Yoga is to reunite the individual Self (the jiva), with the Absolute or pure consciousness (Brahman). The word Yoga itself literally means “joining.”
The yogis say that only the inability to discriminate between the real and the unreal prevents us from realizing our true nature. And that moving beyond that inability through Yoga helps us arrive at our true state, which liberates liberating the spirit from a sense of separation as well as the illusions of time, space, and causation.
The modern Yoga approach places most of its emphasis on physical postures, while classical Yoga also incorporates mental and spiritual components in practice.
Inspired by the classic teachings of Swami Sivananda, the Yogic approach that we teach adapts and expands upon the classical method of the four paths of Yoga.
