Clarity, ease, spaciousness. Calm. Happiness. Joy. You need it — yoga provides. Any style of yoga provides these benefits, but Svaroopa^® yoga does it differently. Let’s explore the difference.

Rukmini remembers her first-ever yoga class, “I had done yoga at home with a used copy of Richard Hittleman’s Yoga: 28-Day Exercise Plan, so I was awed to encounter a group of acrobatic, athletic yogis wearing spandex and using towels on their mats to catch the sweat. I wanted a peaceful, quiet mind, and I found it – the intense physical effort made me focus on my body, so there was little room for other thoughts. The class pushed me to exhaustion, so then I was too tired to think. Ahh, peace…”

Svaroopa^® yoga provides a reliable experience of peace as well, but brings it about in an entirely different way. You don’t become exhausted; instead you are filled from your own Inner Source. You are “blissified,” In India, the land of its origin, the poses are only 10% of yoga’s technology. The other 90% is about your mind and getting beyond your mind, to experience svaroopa, your ever-blissful Divine Essence. Body-centered practice goes by the generic hatha yoga. The West offers many brand names, including Svaroopa^® yoga.

The generic hatha has two translations, literal and mystical. Literally “effort-filled,” it is even translated as “forceful” and “violent.” It doesn’t mean you should hurt yourself! It means you can propel yourself towards enlightenment through rigorous self-effort. You can push yourself. Hatha yoga is DIY (Do It Yourself).

Contrast this with 90% of the yogis in India. They are sitting: sitting to listen to their Guru expound on the teachings, sitting to contemplate the teachings they’ve heard, sitting in meditation, sitting to watch the sunrise or sunset, sitting as they participate in traditional ceremonies, sitting and waiting for their own Divinity to fill into the stillness they’ve created in their mind.

Hatha yogis keep busy. They don’t sit and watch the sunrise; they do Sun Salutations. They don’t listen to teachings or contemplate them; they practice the poses and try to make their body measure up. They don’t regulate their breath in order to quiet their mind; they pump their breath in order to sustain continual movement. They don’t create stillness in their mind; they keep moving.

Swami Nirmalananda describes a yoga therapy conference she attended, “I arrived fresh from a yoga retreat in India. I’d been sitting for long sweet hours of meditation and traditional ceremonies. I joined 2,000 other yoga teachers and yoga therapists for the first plenary session, a full two hours of PowerPoint presentations by medical researchers, showing how they proved that yoga works. I arrived a little late so I sat in the back of the hall and watched the drama play out.

“Within 30 minutes, the 2,000 yoga teachers and therapists were squirming in their seats. They couldn’t pay attention to the presenters. They were wiggly, noisy and distracting. After another 30 minutes, the moderator announced, ‘I know it’s hard for you to sit, so we’re adding in a break after our next presenter.’ I was shocked. They couldn’t sit! They think yoga is about movement.”

Yoga has been growing in the West since 1893, so much that yogis now compete for championships and even Gold Medals. Google it; yoga is a sport. This is a different direction than the sages intended. Hatha yoga is described in the texts as efforting practice, a way to apply yourself physically, but for progress toward Enlightenment, not towards mastering a pose or perfecting your body. Ultimately your physical mastery gives you the ability to apply yourself to more subtle and interior practices.

Let’s look at the second meaning of hatha, the mystical meaning, found in every Sanskrit word. The syllables ha and tha name the energies that flow along the two sides of your spine: ha — along the right side of your spine; tha — along your left. When you open and balance these two flows, the energy shifts and flows through the center of your spine. In the beginning, this flow is prana, your body’s own healing power. Grace invokes a stronger flow: the transformative power of Consciousness, the power of your own upliftment. This is Kundalini. This is the Svaroopa^® yoga difference.

In this mystical meaning, hatha doesn’t mean effort-filled or forceful. You won’t get any spinal release if you’re forcing. You have to ease off. You have already experienced the difference: working, pushing and trying in a pose compared to propping, softening and settling into the precise angles. More change happens when you effort less. When you combine precision with compassion, something happens. This is Grace, the power of inward expansion.

To summarize, hatha has two meanings:

• Effort-filled or forceful, meaning your progress towards Enlightenment is self-propelled through first cultivating physical mastery, then applying your highly developed will to subtle practices.
• Opening and balancing the energies flowing along the two sides of your spine, so the flow of Consciousness can arise from tail to top, revealing your own Divinity to you.

One is a path of self-effort, and the other is a path of Grace – two radically different paths.

Svaroopa^® yoga is a path of Grace. Everyone else is on the other path. In Rukmini’s first yoga class, the movements of those athletic, acrobatic yogis were graceful. But the Grace of Svaroopa yoga is completely different. Swami’s beloved Guru, Baba Muktananda, gave her Shaktipat initiation, awakening the dormant energy called Kundalini. Kundalini is your own Divinity in a seed form that grows and blossoms within. That transmission created Svaroopa^® yoga and enlivens it today.

Swami Nirmalananda says, “After Baba sent me back to America, I could see that my students were not getting the openings that the poses are meant to provide, the openings I knew so deeply and so intimately. So I taught variations, using angles to target their spinal tensions, providing the core opening that is now named Svaroopa^®yoga. It surprised me when people started getting Shaktipat. Now I realize that I was carrying my Guru’s gift of Grace to the next generation. Over the last two decades, I have watched a few teachers take the poses out to teach under a different name. While the poses are still enjoyable, their students don’t get Shaktipat. That flow of Grace doesn’t enliven their teaching or their students’ practice.”

Yet Svaroopa^® yoga is a hatha yoga, so there still is self-effort involved. This is a path of both self-effort and Grace. Self-effort is very important: you must apply yourself to the practices. Yet, on a path of Grace, you have to remember to make space for something more to happen.

Patanjali pairs self-effort and surrender in Yoga Sutras 1.12, promising that your churning mind will be stilled by abhyasa and vairagya. Abhyasa is persistent practice. Vairagya is surrender, a profound letting-go. Patanjali puts the two together: self-effort and surrender. Why?

• Self-effort is very important; you must persist in order to accomplish anything. But self-effort alone makes you prideful and arrogant, or you become mean and self-punishing.
• Surrender is essential. In Svaroopa^® yoga, we surrender to svaroopa, your own Divine Self, which is found through Grace, the gift of Freedom. Yet surrender alone makes you into a doormat, without any clarity or will, and leaves you stranded in helplessness.

You must have both: self-effort and surrender. You already know about self-effort, so we teach surrender in every class. When Rukmini tried out her first Svaroopa^® yoga class, she was used to doing Shavasana in other styles of yoga — flat-on-your-back, flat-on-your-mat, 90-seconds of ticking clock at the end of class. She grudgingly accepted two zeds and a roll under her knees. And that final Shavasana was a revelation! She says, “It felt like coming home. I felt a deep comfort and ease in my body, a calm and peace in my mind. I felt bliss.”

The surrender and Grace are there in the final Shavasana; they are in every pose.Svaroopa^® yoga arose out of Grace. It’s suffused with Grace in the same way that ice is made out of water. How can you take the water out of the ice?

Svaroopa^® yoga is unique, a hatha yoga that’s full of Grace. You put forth effort. You make time to attend a class or have a private session. Or you practice Ujjayi Pranayama, do the Magic Four, meditate, or you do it all. Grace supports you every step of the way. But where are you going? There’s really nowhere to go. You’re not travelling to your Self because you already ARE the Self. You already ARE Consciousness-itself. Do more yoga.

To listen to a recording of Swamiji reading this month’s contemplation article, click here.

“Vulture-asana.” You’ve probably heard a Svaroopa^® yoga teacher use this apt and funny phrase to describe how you look with your head pushed forward of your torso. Swami Nirmalananda coined this phrase to describe how most of us “wear” our heads. If you haven’t heard it before, picture a vulture with its wings tucked in, shoulders hunched up, its head and beak pushed forward. This is how most people live in their body.

When your head is pushed forward, you’re living in the future, disconnected from your body and your heart. Your head is forward because of your neck tension, which is caused by the compression in your chest. Of course the tension begins at your tailbone, but you’re increasing it, from top-to-tail, by living in vulture-asana.

When you align your head with your spine, everything changes. You’re more fully embodied, living in the present moment. Your breath is easier, your heart is more open and you’re more blissful. You’re living your life with a whole new quality and presence of being. You are becoming your own Self — svaroopa.

Why do most people live in vulture asana? Until it’s pointed out, you’re probably not aware of it. Until someone realigns your head and neck for you, it’s just where you “wear” your head. While you can learn to move your head and neck back in line with your spine, your habitual spinal tensions push it forward again within seconds. Those tensions begin with the tucking of your tailbone. This is why, in Svaroopa^® yoga, we always release your spinal muscles from the base upward. It’s organic. When your tailbone lengthens, your sacrum lengthens and widens, which also smooths your hip-line and makes your clothes fit better. Next your lumbar vertebrae (through your waist area) lift and decompress, which lifts and opens through your ribcage, heart and lungs. Now the mound in your upper back begins to disappear. Your collarbones widen, your shoulder blades slide down your back, your neck lifts and your head floats on top of your neck. The back of your head is in line with the back of your rib cage. The weight of your head is balanced on the top of your spine.

This spinal release also makes you able to be embodied, thereby living in the present moment. Your body is always in the present moment; it’s here now. It’s not back in yesterday or off somewhere in the future. But when your head is pushed forward, your mind tends to fly off. Your mind gets entangled in planning, fantasizing and worrying, or it gets lost in recriminations, blame and guilt.

A yogic mind functions in a completely different way. One of the easiest ways to find out what a yogic mind is like is to simply go to a class, have a yoga therapy session or do your own practice. When your spine lifts, opens and realigns, tail-to-top, you enjoy a taste of what a yogic mind is like. Spacious. Easy. Peaceful. Attentive. Unlimited capacity. You are present in your body, present in the present moment, present in your own Presence.

Unfortunately you grab back at those familiar thoughts. You have to push your head forward to be able to do it, tightening all the way down to your tailbone — top-to-tail. Of course, your thoughts also trigger tailbone tension, which then climbs your spine — tail-to-top. It’s a double whammy!

Svaroopa^® yoga helps you repattern both body and mind. In certain poses, your teacher may help you soften your neck and head down toward the floor, giving what we call a “Medulla Stroke” to help you release your neck tensions. Your spinal release now tracks from the top of your spine downward. This is a different direction than what we usually talk about: this is top-to-tail instead of tail-to-top. You can tighten from the top downward as well as from the bottom up, and the release happens in both directions. Both releases have always been part of Svaroopa^® yoga.

Rukmini describes giving a new student a Medulla Stroke in Lunge. Afterwards the student said, “You came over and touched my neck. My thought was, ‘This won’t do anything.’ Then my whole body relaxed!” She was amazed and delighted. She had had her first experience of “Support Equals Release,” one of our primary teaching principles. That little support made her able to release tensions from top-to-tail and from tail-to-top, all at the same time.

Pose adjustments are very important. One of the key features of Svaroopa yoga, we give adjustments that ease your body into angles it might not find for years, if ever. This speeds up your process of opening. It makes it easier. Our teachers do hundreds of hours of intensive training to be able to identify which adjustments will take you the next step.

In a seated pose, standing pose or backbend, we ease your head into line with your spine with a “Vise-Grip” or a “Vulcan-Grip” head adjustment. Once you’ve experienced this a few times, your teacher directs you to find the alignment for yourself, saying, “You may need to ease the sides of your neck slowly back, so that the back of your head is in line with the back of your back, and your ears align over your shoulders.” You could even do that now!

The openings you get from the physical alignment and release of tension offer more: opening up the flow of your life energy, with the most powerful flow being through your spine. When your teacher aligns your head, that current is no longer getting blocked in your heart and stuck at your neck. It flows all the way up into your brain. Your brain becomes saturated with the bliss of your own Being. It becomes permeated with Consciousness. The effect is immediate: you feel more present, peaceful, calm and clear. You feel happier!

This has a second, longer-lasting effect: Consciousness leaves an imprint on your brain, a Bliss-Print. Swami Nirmalananda describes it as your mind getting dipped in consciousness the way an Easter egg gets dipped in dye. Just as the egg becomes progressively more vibrant in color, your mind becomes progressively more saturated and illuminated with the light of your own Essence. Every dip has an effect; every dip counts.

This is why daily practice is so important. Every spinal sequence you do, every meditation, dip by dip, you are transforming your mind. These transformations are named “parinaama” in Sanskrit. In the Yoga Sutras, Patanjali describes a series of significant parinaamas your mind undergoes as it becomes progressively permeated by Consciousness.

Your brain grows new synapses. Researchers have begun mapping meditators’ brains and identifying real differences. Your brain on bliss is very different than your brain on anger, anxiety, and fear. Slowly but surely, the new synapses grow in number; you like them better because they’re bliss synapses! Now your old synapses, though familiar, are not so comfortable. You outgrow them, like a child outgrows their favorite pair of pants. They were comfortable and familiar but faded and worn. You got bigger. Now it’s time for new pants. It’s time for a new way to wear your head!

When you bring your head in line with your spine, your spine supports your head the way it’s designed to. Yet the support is so much more than merely physical. This tail-to-top and top-to-tail alignment creates an opening to Grace, which supports your access to a deeper dimension within. The recent group on the trip to India shared what was happening for them (see their blogs). They placed themselves in an external environment that powerfully reflects Consciousness, making changes from the outside-in. Grace was undeniable. It’s so sweet, so profound and so important to place yourself in an environment like this, whether it’s a pilgrimage to India or a Weekend Workshop, Teacher Training, yoga retreat or Half Day Workshop with your local teacher.

Yet even in an immersion, the experience of your Self does not come from the outside. It arises within you. Every time you align your head with your spine, you align your self with your Self. You align yourself with Grace, the force of revelation, the inner arising that awakens your knowing of your own Self. Do more yoga!