Shailesh Basani

Namaste, Hope you all are doing well and had a good summer break. I just returned from a short trip to India.  One of the reasons I took this trip was to meet some of my long lost buddies during our Silver Jubilee Meet at NIT, Warangal. During this trip, I had opportunity to visit many 'yoga' related places such as Ramakrishna Math, Bellur, Patanjali temple, Shri Shri Ravi Shankar Ashram etc.  I also had an opportunity to visit a few different colleges and schools and talk to students about many topics related to yoga/meditation, managing stress, leading a principle centered life with yamas/niyamas, focusing on quadrant-2 activities (Stephen Covey), applying four streams of yoga during all walks of your life, how to be successful in corporate life etc.  It was a wonderful feeling talking to all these students, conducting yoga classes, giving these messages, sponsoring yoga/meditation teachers and scholarships for schools students in my village etc. I captured som...

Namaste, Wish you all a very happy International Day of Yoga. Please take a moment on this day to express your gratitude to all your teachers and everyone else who had a profound impact on you in imparting all the yogic knowledge and lifestyle.  Let us remind ourselves that yoga is a lot more than physical postures and as Swami Vivekananda beautifully put it -  it can be work (Karma Yoga), worship (Bhakti Yoga), philosophy (Jnana Yoga) and/or psychic control (Raja Yoga, that’s where all your poses are :-)). My gratitude first goes to my dad and Yogasri NV Raghuram from who I had the opportunity to learn many things directly. There are several other gurus who also had profound impact on me through their publications, talks, recordings and messages and sincere thanks to all of them – Swami Vivekananda, Swami Sivananda, Swami Bodhananda Saraswati, BKS Iyengar, TKV Desikachar, Swami Brahmananda, Dr. MA Jayashree, Brahmasri Chaganti Koteswara Rao to name a few. Thanks to ...

Namaste everyone, Yoga Bharati Milpitas team wishes you all a very happy and healthy new year. We hope that you all are enjoying the winter break and spending some quality time with friends and family. This is the time many of us make important resolutions. Some of us are good at keeping them, but many of us aren’t and the resolutions start to wear off after a few weeks. We would like to just give some suggestions to keep up your ‘yoga practice’ resolution. We have been blessed over the last several years to have listened to many gurus about leading happy, healthy and peaceful lives. Many gurus provide these messages in their own beautiful way, based on their lineage, personal experiences and other aspects. One of the important aspects all of them talk about is the importance of ‘ Sadhana ’ or ‘a strict discipline of a routine practice’. Patanjali’s Ashtanga Yoga discusses in depth about Sadhana required to go from outward interactions (Yamas) to deep state of absorption (Sa...

Namaste, we started discussing the concept of vegetarianism in relation to the first yama – Ahimsa (Non-Violence). Should a yoga practitioner be vegetarian? There are different schools of thought on this, but, generally most gurus recommend a wholesome and nourishing vegetarian diet, which assists you in deepening your sadhana as you move towards meditation. You can find a lot of literature on the Internet arguing for and against a vegetarian diet in general. Our Guruji gives the following four important reasons on why one should choose a vegetarian diet: 1. An average vegetarian can survive (over lifetime) with 1.5 acres of land , while a non-vegetarian typically needs 12 to 15 acres of land . Why should I be such a big burden on this environment? Couple of facts to ponder: a) According to soil and water specialists at the University of California’s Agricultural Extension, it takes 5,214 gallons of water to produce one pound of beef , but only 23 gallons to produce a poun...

Namaste - we started studying Yamas, the first limb in Ashtanga Yoga, in our classes recently. Yamas are the great, mighty, universal vows unconditioned by place, time and class (religion) – PYS 2.31 . There is still a myth that ‘Yoga is religion’, while we can see that Patanjali begins yoga instruction stating that the first limb is universal in nature and beyond any religion. One of the first definitions of Yoga can be found in Vedas: “ Tam Yogam iti manyante stiram indriya dharanam ” - Controlling all of the senses, including the steadying of the mind, is known as yoga. The term ‘religion’ became popular only since 2000 years ago when Christianity came into existence, while Vedas existed for several hundreds of years prior to that. I recently had an opportunity to visit a beautiful yoga center that embodies this universal nature of yoga. This is Paramahansa Yogananda’s center. Paramahansa Yogananda brought yoga to the West in 1920s and has profoundly impacted lives of millions...

Namaste, we started studying about Patanjali’s Ashtanga Yoga concepts in our yoga class today.   Patanjali describes Ashtanga Yoga in second chapter called Sadhana Pada.  Ashta = Eight and Anga  = Limbs.  He gives systematic and progressive steps to start our journey from ‘Yamas’ towards deep absorption state called ‘Samadhi’. Yoga is primarily an inward journey, though most of the focus these days is primarily on asanas.  The first five steps together (Yama, Niyama, Asana, Pranayama and Pratyahara) is called Bahiranga (external) yoga and the last three steps (Dharana, Dhyana and Samadhi) together is called Antaranga (internal) yoga.  The first limb is called yama.  Patanjali says to begin our inward journey we should first improve our interactions with outside world, have a proper attitude towards everyone in this world, eliminate negativity about others and appreciate the beautiful world .  Only when we eliminate such negativit...

Patanajali suggests three different meditation techniques in this context to calm a distracted mind. Please note that there are several hundreds of meditation techniques and meditation should really be learnt from a trained teacher. Most of the meditation techniques revolve around fixing your concentration on an object, a mantra, your breath etc. We will look at the first of the three here. In sutra 1.36 ( visoka va jyotismati ), Patanjali asks us to concentrate on an object which is the innermost core of the heart, wherein alone the sorrowless, effulgent light glows. Meditating on this light helps you to cultivate feelings such as love and compassion. The idea here is similar to what some techniques teach as meditating on ‘Heart Chakra’. There is a lot of mystification on the term ‘Chakra’. Especially, it is hard to understand for many folks when a technique says ‘do this practice and appropriate chakra will open’. Our guruji gives a simple and logical explanation on this Chakr...