Archive for the ‘ashram’ Tag
review:Sivananda TTC in Austria
Filed under: TTC, ashram, diary, religion, teaching, yoga | Tags: asana, ashram, sivananda yoga, teacher training, yoga
Leave a Comment Can you really learn yoga in Austria ? During my stays in India I have been terrible ill and that is the reason why I went to the yoga teacher training in Austria. Sleeping on health mattresses and eating food featured in the Michelin guide proved to be a winner. If you are looking for ascetic living and military discipline you have come to the wrong place. What you will find is open minded teachers in a picturesque setting .
staff versus students. According to Swami Atmaramananda football is part of the vedic lifestyle photo: Alessandro Califano
The teachers, swamis are approachable at all times and there is room in the schedule for your personal questions. If this is your first time in an ashram, a religious hermitage you maybe find the theory part of the course abstract and hard to grasp. This is not a course to deepen your Sadhana, personal practice but rather to deepen your knowledge around yoga philosophy. Each day you are to hand in a handwritten summary and by the end of the course there is a 3,5 hour exam.
Different experts in Astrology, Philosophy and Cranial Sacral Massage
Sri Venugopal Goswami reading from the Srimad Bhagavatam. photo: Katalin Kurko
gave guest lectures. The most scientific one was Dr. Annika Waldmann, nutritionist lectures on the health benefits of a vegetarian diet. In the breaks there was a chance to get personal counselling/treatment from, an astrologer, a physiotherapist and a massage
therapist. I got a very good treatment from a physiotherapist specialised in yoga.
One evening there is a movie night and we get to see Swami Vishnu-devananda, “The Flying Guru” and when the swamis talk about him they come alive. They talk about his flight over the Berlin wall and the great preparation that went int
o the project. The essence of the teaching is that we are ambassadors of peace.
The yoga lectures are taught in a way that suits me perfect. The teacher walk around during class and give the students help/corrections to find the right alignment.
The only issue I have with this way of teaching yoga is the chanting in sanskrit in the beginning and at the end of the class. Swedish and Sanskrit are miles apart and it reminds me of the time when the church had all the prayers in Latin. Why not start the yoga lesson with words that an ordinary citizen can understand ? Words in his own language that have the same meaning.
swami Keshavananda is demonstrating Neti - nasal cleansing. photo: Alessandro Califanos
Without people dedicating their life to serve others this education would not exist. The swamis have made the choice that the whole world is their family and when you see what Swami Vishnu-devananda did during his lifetime you get a clear proof what dedication and love can accomplish.
Sivanda yoga and why I like it
Filed under: TTC, ashram, meditation, religion, yoga | Tags: ashram, meditation, sivananda yoga, teacher training, yoga
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the Italian group performing during the talent show. Theme: A tamasic yoga teacher and his class ( who wants his students to worship him ). photo: Katalin Kurko
Sivananda yoga is a complete form of yoga which contains everything you need to go on a deep spiritual journey. Ultimately you will get the realisation that we all are one and all religions leads to the same goal. It is possible for every person to become an instrument for God, whichever god you have an inclination to follow . Maybe you will not become a saint in this lifetime but this form of yoga contains a step by step approach to become a more humble and non violent person.
Maybe you have noticed that hatha-yoga as practiced in the west has a tendency to become dry and it feels like something is missing. The missing part is the spiritual/religious part. Through yoga it is possible to transcend the physical limitations and become enlightened. Sivananda yoga teaches chanting, philosophy as well as physical postures. There is a strong emphasis to make the asanas in an anatomical correct manner and the teacher corrects your posture in a very hands on approach.
here comes a short description on the different practices we do:
chanting/mantra - is something you cannot understand completely on a logical level. It is something you have to experience. Example: You sit in a meditation posture with your eyes closed and repeat the word Om. The vibration is going very deep into your existence. Since I am sceptical person I see it is like a scientific research. What kinds of emotions comes up when I chant “Om Namo Narayana” for example. Can it really be so dangerous to chant for world peace ? 
asanas - is to physically prepare the body for sitting in a meditation posture. Getting rid of tension. there is are many books available for asanas and it is already very well known in the west
pranayama - is to clear the nerves in the body through breathing exercises and prepares the body for true meditation. The ability to focus is greatly enhanced.
meditation- is to sit in a meditation posture and first focus on the posture and notice the body from inside. Then focus on the natural flow of the breath. The goal is to make the mind one pointed . When stillness is reached we can get to the bottom of the lake. The lake represents our subconsiousness and when the waves stop we transcend time and space.
karma yoga – is to do practical work like sweeping floors, cooking etc. The goal is to do this without expectation. Selfless service to the benefit of others.
the mystical journey continues
Filed under: TTC, ashram, diary, religion, teaching, yoga | Tags: ashram, journey, meditation, retreat, sivananda yoga, teacher training, yoga
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photo: Katalin Kurko
This path of yoga is something that feels true on a deeper level. Finally I get answers to many of my questions. We had evening lectures with an Indian philosopher this week . After a long day of lectures I reach a state which is close to dreaming and I see very vivid pictures in my head.
Part of the lecture was something like this:
… A woman goes to hairdresser for 3 hours. She comes home and her kid comes up to her and drag in her hair. It is alright ! the mother have love for the child. In the same way our love for god makes us accept all the things around us even the things that are not so pleasant …
The focus is clearly on Vedanta and hinduism but there is also room for other religion. Sivananda, The founder of this yoga tradition wrote a prayer which includes Jesus , Buddha, Muhammad, Krishna etc. and he described these people as very good teachers on the spiritual path. The teacher on this level has realized the underlying truth about reality and now he spend his time to communicate this teaching to his fellow man.
the main goal of this school is not to make us yoga teachers but to make us into messengers for peace throughout the world ! a messenger who understand the difference between being a spiritual seeker and a religious fanatic
Review: Teacher Training Course in Rikhia Peeth , India
Filed under: ashram, review, yoga | Tags: ashram, india, satyananda, teacher training
Comments (1) 
One of the students showing more advanced practices that he learnt elsewhere. photo: Michael Howden
Bihar School of Yoga offers an intense 3 weeks workshop for people interested in teaching yoga. To be honest it felt more like a pilgrimage than participating in a course. For 11 years I practised yoga with the help of books containing teaching from Satyananda and I had teachers in Sweden and Denmark who got their teaching directly or indirectly from Satyananda. I had a strong urge to see this man with my own eyes. What really struck me is how different this place is from the ashrams in Sweden. We sit on the floor when we eat, we are surrounded by people from the village when we sing kirtans, we participate in serving food to kids from the village. The school in India is so closely connected to the surrounding. The singing and seminars in the evening is open to anyone and having kids climbing on you when you sit in a meditation pose was a new experience to me. Kids are spontaneous and seeing them dance classical Indian themes on the stage was such a joy. Some of the women on our course were teaching Computer Science and English to the kids from the surrounding area. One evening a young girl told the story of how life was in this area before the yoga school came. My heart melted when I heard about how people used to live for days without food in this area and now they got
Almost every evening we sang together. Here children from the village are performing a classical Indian Dance. photo: Michael Howden
education through the yoga school and they can make a living on the crafts they learned when working for the yoga school. People from the village came into the school during my stay and they worked hard with different tasks in the gardens etc.
I learned from this course that yoga is very closely related to helping your fellow man in every way you can.
I got the chance to talk to Swami Satsangi and Swami Satyananda himself gave a lecture/speech for us one day. Satsangi made the strongest impression on me with her speech about how greed is something we have to accept within ourselves since it is the reason why we are alive. Acceptance and awareness seems to be the keywords in this tradition.
I have to admit that I had a flu during this course which I should have gone to a doctor with much earlier. The climate itself is very different from where I grew up and yoga is not a cure for everything I have to point out. The hygiene in the ashram is very good and I drank the tap water all the way through the course and off course my stomach was unbalanced once in a while and I ate tablets daily to keep the bacteria in shape in the stomach. On the negative side I am not a big fan of polished rice and we got this daily and usually 2-3 times a day.
During the course the very colourfull "holi" festival took place all over India and even inside the ashram people threw colour on each other this day. Photo : Michael Howden
I recommend this course to people who have been practicing yoga for many years and feel the urge to take the next step and begin teaching. I started teaching myself in a small scale straight after the course and I feel this is an important turning point in my life. You get the essentials for teaching on a beginners level and you get to lead 4 lectures in the course.
What i realise now 1,5 months after the course is that an essential part of the yoga teaching course is missing. The missing link is your own Sadhana. I notice a big difference in my own life when I do my schedule consisting of The Plough, the Bridge, the Headstand etc. After 3 weeks of neck movements, shoulder joint rotations etc. I felt a big urge to go back to my own sadhana which there was no space and time for in Rikhia Peeth. When I started to teach in a small scale I realised that when I spend 2 hours preparing a lecture and then 45 minutes on giving the lecture I felt happy that I made it but also very drained from creativity and energy in the evening. The balance between your own practice and your teaching is important and as they say in the aeroplanes ”if you are in a plane together with a small child you first put on the oxygen to yourself in case of an emergency” . You are of no help to others if you are in bad shape !
In the beginning of the course I did my own practice/sadhana in my room and this was not a good place to do asanas I quickly realised. I was lucky enough to have my own room, most people where 2 persons in this space, but even then there was very little space for doing headstand for example. Then the addition of people talking to late in the night and slamming doors etc.
Another thing which irritated me a bit was that there are no requirements for participating on this course. Some people had only done asana and pranayama for a few month and there was no real exam as such. Sure you get a certificate that you are a yoga teacher after this course but it is no way a guarantee that you have a deep knowledge of Yoga. I find this a bit strange since most serious yoga teacher courses with the Satyananda School in Europe run for 2-3 years where you have regular stays in an Ashram. The reason for this is maybe that there already exist a lot of university programs on yoga in India in case you want to go in depth with the asanas and the pranayama.
When i read the books by Satyananda on hatha yoga i got the impression that the Bihar School of Yoga is not connected to a specific religion but this is something I have to reconsider. On the course we read from the Bhagavad Gita and other scriptures and we used mantras. My personal view is that you can find knowledge and wisdom in the Qur’an, the Bible and Norse mythology as well. I am bit fed up with the Superstition around Sanskrit. I say superstition because there is no conclusive evidence that the vibrations from talking sanskrit is really doing anything. Sure it is fine with me if we had at least sung something in English when the course is said to be conducted in English. As the course is now it feels like it is mostly catering towards Indian people.
In general I found it really hard to get knowledge around this course and the price was 4 times more when I actually arrived on site compared to what was said on telephone. I pay 4 times more because i am not an Indian ! This is a problem for several reasons since you have to bring cash to the ashram and it is quite complicated and time consuming to get a permision to go to a cash machine.
I try to write this review as critical as possible and i have to add that I met a lot of wonderful people on this course and there were a lot of fun !
Books I really recommend for the serious sadhaka are Asana Pranayama Mudra Bandha , Prana Pranayama Prana Vidya, Kundalini Tantra, A Systematic Course in the Ancient Tantric Techniques of Yoga and Kriya
yoga teacher training in Rikhia peeth , India – Part 1
Filed under: ashram, diary, meditation, review, yoga | Tags: ashram, india, satyananda, teacher training, yoga
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I arrive in Delhi and thought I was going to be prepared since this is my second visit. Imediately I have a taxi driver grabbing my arm and trying to sell me a ride. I offer some advice to a doctor student from Kenya who is in Delhi for his first time and we decide to share a prepaid taxi. I remember thinking ” what am I doing here ?” during the intense and totally unsafe ride into town. Now I remember Indian traffic. Honking , honking and then some more honking. I decide to scout the New Delhi train station to see how it is organised. I am really close to fall for a scam at my arrival and I dodge it by taking aim at a military guy in uniform and insisting on talking with him. In the tourist office I talk to a guy from United States and I am so happy having another westerner to talk to right now. We decide to have lunch together and decide to go to a place called The banana Leaf. almost every Indian person who wants to talk to us on the street is offering us help on finding the tourist office. From Lonely Planet I know this is a common scam to get you to visit a travel agent where “the street seller” get commission. An Indian guy gets really confused when I offer to show him the nearest tourist office
the information boards is not updating in the train station and I have to walk around quite a bit with my big back pack to get on the right train. Well on board I am so happy that I bough a first class ticket and I really enjoy the silence and polite atmosphere. The train journey is smooth and one of the passengers which I talked to the previous day starts to do yoga in the morning. I think he does it to show me since he yesterday referred to himself as a master of yoga.
I arrive in Deoghar and the athmosphere is different here and people are not so aggresive in selling you things. Several times I notice that they do not even take any extra money because you are a westerner. But a thing that makes it a bit more complicated is that very few people know a little bit of english and I am the only westerner werever I go. The whole lesson in trust is completed when I arrive at the ashram and there is no sign in English. I have arrived at the right place and everybody is friendly. I arrive early and a man named “Pragia” is showing me my room. He is from Denmark and have been in the ashram for 8 years. The room is basic and clean. there are blankets and pillows availible so bringing a sleeping bag was not really nescessary.
IT efficiency contradicts spiritual awakening ?
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: ashram, Bihar, BSY, e-mail, india, IT, outsourcing, satyananda, yoga
Comments (1) I am very excited to get to the yoga ashram and already before the plane have even left the airport I have learned some valuable lessons in patience and how to react to the unknown. With a smile on your face and politeness you can get very far and this is something I will try to have with me all the way trough this journey ! May I be humble even in situations where I feel nervous and scared.
After several days of trying to call Bihar School of Yoga, BSY, in Rikhia I feel that my patience is very well tested at this point in time and I have not even arrived in India yet. My rational intellectual westernised mind wants the latest IT solutions all the time. First of all they have decided to not use e-mail, a technology that has been standardised since 1982 . What is the reason for this ? OK yesterday I sent a fax or rather I tried to send a fax to the Bihar School of Yoga head quarter. The lady in the Secretary position for all the courses kindly said that the fax will arrive next week due to the fax arriving at another place. Next week ? I have already arrived at the ashram by next week. Then she told me she could do nothing about helping me to deliver this information to the right person since the course is with another institution. The problem when I call the right institution is that usually there is nobody picking up the phone. If somebody answers the line it can be broken in a matter of seconds or minutes without warning and then I am stuck with not getting through again. English is not my first language and using the Spelling alphabet takes time over a bad line and I am usually in the middle of stating who I am and I have not even got to the subject when the line is broken. Please, Internet was built to sustain a nuclear war so please let me send an e-mail ! At the same time it could be like a quest to teach me how to trust my gut feeling and have trust in the fact that there are a lot of friendly and helpfull people in India and me with all my consumer products is a spoiled brat. I have the possibility to buy vaccination most Indians can not afford and I can travel in first class on the train. I want to turn this around and also think about what I can offer on my journey. I should take every opportunity to pay a bit extra for something that feels great in the heart and will help the rest of the world to have the luxury I have been born into. Maybe I can give some of my knowledge about IT to them ? Or at least I would like to to do that. The luxury of IT makes it possible for me to practice yoga several hours every day and spend just a few minutes on fixing a lot of tasks that used to be time consuming in the past. I rather sit in lotus position than stand in line at the post office to pay my bills.
I was very suprised in a good way that Satyananda himself is writing a blog , Satyananda’s Blog
My advice for somebody who want to travel to the BSY centre would be to plan at least some months ahead if you live on another continent like I do. Write them a letter in ordinary mail, and make a copy of this, including the following information:
- your arrival time at the course centre and your departure time (check out with train schedules at the Indian Railway homepage to make sure there is a train going at the weekday you want to travel. Information on train traveling in India. For the 3 week yoga teaching course they want you to be at the course centre at noon the day before the official start date)
- which course you apply for and which dates it will take place and at what location
- all kinds of contact information to you like e-mail, telephone and an ordinary post address
- specific questions you want to have answered regarding what to bring etc. in your return mail
In general make sure to get down all the information you would think is hard to deliver on a telephone line with the above restrictions. Include an envelope for the answers with your full address and with enough stamps to pay for the journey back to you. At the same time fax them the same information to the fax numbers given and not the ones saying both fax/telephone. Then after aprox 3 weeks, the time taken for a normal letter to arrive is pretty long and easy to forget, call them. Remember this is probably another time zone from where you live so please try to match their office hours. The office hours at the rikhia office is between 10:00-16:00 for example and will be between 5:30 – 11:30 in Denmark. use time and date if you are lazy like me to find out what the time is right now in Delhi. Check that your information have arrived and if you have a confirmation on the course ? The confirmation it self will take some days when your mail/fax have arrived so estimate for this.
Before I even contacted Bihar School of Yoga the first time I considered using a service like Your Man in India
to contact them. Now with some experience of outsourcing to India I think I made the right decision to avoid it. That would have added more confusion and more delay probably. If you already have a well established contact in India you can probably send them the application letter as an e-mail and ask them to print it out and send it to BSY. To get a contact person/assistant who is reliable with an outsourcing company like Your Man in India or Brickwork India will take weeks if you are a new customer or at least that is my experience and then you have the additional waiting time on e-mails from them once you are a customer.
I hope you got some valuable information out of this post and my intention with this post was to show you how it works from my experience so that you can avoid the pitfalls and have a really pleasant travel to the extremely beautiful country that is India. I will get back with more information after my course is over and if it is even half as a good as the incredible books they have published in this place I am well pleased.
Review: Yoga Teacher training in the North of Sweden
Filed under: ashram, meditation, review, yoga | Tags: 2007, ashram, review, sivananda yoga, teacher training, yoga
Leave a Comment Satyananda Yoga Sweden offers a 2 years yoga teaching training course. First i think it is misleading to say it is a 2 years course since the amount of teaching is just 2 months roughly.
The price is 80.8 Euro each day you stay in the Ashram ant the total for the course is 4672,364 Euro (58 days at the ashram). Just for the fun of it I made the comparison between the prices in India and in Sweden
Course in Yogic Studies – Four Months in Bihar Yoga Bharati, Munger, India is 1,200 Euro
4 Months at the Satyananda Ashram in Sweden would cost roughly 9720 Euro ( 120 days times 80.8 euro ).
The teacher training started with a week of introduction and we all got together in this big house in Bollnas, Sweden and cooked food together and off course did yoga. We had discussions as part of the schedule and the teaching training was only on theoretical level during this week. No hands on classes where you hold lectures to each other. They were clear to point out that the teaching was not supposed to be curing illness but rather to give relaxation and relieve stress. I felt in general that i was doing postures which would be great if I was 80 years old and had sever problems with my back. I was sitting in the padmasana posture one day and our main teacher told me that this posture is not good for the knees. This was a big suprise to me since I know people in India sit in this posture for months in a row. In general i did not feel that I was learning anything new regarding yoga and regarding the actual teaching part I was very alarmed that we did not actually held any lectures to each other. All of this was a bit alarming since I was paying 484 Euro for this week and I actually lost income because I was away from work. Maybe I am bit hard here but if it is an introduction week you should at least get a taste on how it is to teach to a group of people. We got copies from the Asana, Pranayama, Mudra , Bandha book and in general they were referring to different books by Satyananda. During this week I felt that I was doing practices that maybe are good if you are a total beginner but I for sure missed my daily program which I usually do at home.
The staff were friendly and the course was held in a very nice old swedish building. A lot of friendly people in the group and in general it was a very nice atmosphere in this place.
To sum up I think this is a great course for beginner since they can learn from the classes and they are happy with the level. If you want to go deep with your personal sadhana or want to become a full blown yoga teacher on all levels I think there are much better courses availible.
I do not write a full review of it because I only took part in the introduction week and I never enlisted for the full teaching course.
more info: satyananda yoga sweden (text in Swedish)
ashram life in the middle of the swedish forrest.
Filed under: ashram, meditation, yoga | Tags: 2000, ashram, journey, meditation, retreat, sweden, yoga
Leave a Comment I think I have stayed with the Scandinavian Yoga and Meditation School through the years because they deliver a down to earth version of yoga. After my first session with them on a health exhibition in Gothenburg my whole body was totally relaxed and this was a new experience for me. After some evening classes and a trip to India I decided to give their 3-months course at Haa Course Center in the south of Sweden a go.
I had never been to their coursecenter before and I thought it was going to be like a vacation with a little bit of yoga in between. The following weeks of hard physical labour and a lot of physical yoga was not something I had expected. After years in front of a computer it was a great relief to work with the WHOLE body.
I have to admit that in some ways this is the toughest thing I have done in my life. Not because of the physical work but because of the deep confrontation with what is really me. In the long silent period a lot of thoughts surfaced who I had suppressed in my daily life for a long time. I was grateful for the heavy labour such as wood chopping and lifting stones which I enlisted for as much as I could. It was like training in an old school gym. I had doubts during the course and as the course intensified I really had to struggle.
If I should summarise this course it would be that it really focused my thinking and it brought clarity to my mind. I started to study at university shortly after this course and My first year of study was with really good grades. I felt totally focused on the studies and I think the course was the reason for this.
this is what you get at a course in Haa course centre
- a lot of yoga
- teachers who are very focused and most of the time friendly
- good value for money
- good discipline in the yoga room and on the course
Review: The North of India and my sprint for enlightment
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: 1998, ashram, himalaya, india, review, sivananda, yoga, yogi
Leave a Comment I had been doing some evening courses with the Scandinavian School of Yoga and I had been fed the western view on yoga. What struck me in India was the strong colours, the smell in the air and the poverty that was so obvious. In all this poverty people were smiling in a friendly way and yoga seemed to be so many different things. I felt like a little ant and I was scared by all the people who tried to get me to stop in the streets and with the lonely planet in my hand I wanted to get to my target and reach enlightenment. Like every swede I wanted the train to be on time and I wanted the toilets to be clean.
My plan was to get to yoga niketan ashram and stay there for a while. Once there the place reminded me more of a prison camp with guards by the entrance and strict discipline all the way through. This was what I thought yoga should be. I struggled with my body and I was wet like from a shower after each session. One day we had ants and a lot of small animals in the bathroom and a women came from the managers house with what looked like an old DDT spraycan . After a little while all the small insects were dead and we did not dare to enter the room that day. For a reason I cannot describe with logic I was not happy with this place and from some other yoga practitioners we heard about a place called sivananda yoga kutir and we decided to give it a try.
The guy who greeted us in an informal and relaxed way at sivananda yoga kutir was the swami and he had a friendly sparkle in his eyes. It felt more like visiting a friend than being in a ashram. We really enjoyed the daily asanas and the walks in the countryside. The singing in the evening were spontaneous and a boy from the village was singing as loud as he could and I felt encouraged to sing and started to like it more and more. I felt like I could be myself in this place and I was really tempted to stay longer when the day to depart to Sweden came closer.
meditation at yoga kutir
Sivananda Kutir, Himalayas
At an early age I got interested in Buddhism and the prince who left his kingdom in the search for truth. How can I apply this story to my own life ? to be able to sit I took up the study of yoga. Is there a contradiction between yoga and science ? Sure we can get a theoretical understanding through books, but without the experience we are stuck. Why is it so hard to practice non-violence when the mosquito is landing on my neck ?