Breathedreamgo » Aurovalley Ashram

Aurovalley Ashram: A haven of peace and conscious living

Mariellen — Sun, 11 Apr 2010 10:40:44 +0000

Swamiji entering one of the gates of Aurovalley Ashram

A peaceful, safe yoga ashram in India

One evening at Aurovalley Ashram, I walked out of the circular white meditation hall and into the verdant Rishidwar valley soaked in a mauve sunset. The air was filled with devotion. Devotional chants came from both the nearby sadhu’s ashram on the Ganga and from the Kumbh Mela 12 kms down the valley, in Haridwar. Even from the ashram grounds, I could see the lights of Kumbh Mela temples blazing on the hill tops around the sacred city. Many varieties of birds added their songs of love to the devotional mix, as did the warm breeze that blew down from the Himalayan foothills.

coming out of the meditation hall at sunset

I was surrounded completely by nature – by the trees, flowers and birds on the ashram grounds, and the meadows and mist-covered Shivalik Hills of Rajaji National Park that surround the ashram and run alongside the Ganga, India’s most sacred river. I truly felt I was in a paradise created by, and devoted to, the love of the divine.

The next morning after breakfast, I cycled to a peaceful local Hindu temple, and from there to a spot near the ashram gate where I could walk down a rocky path to the Ganga. At the foot of the path, on the river, is a tiny temple and ghat (steps). Although it was only about 9:30 am, it was already very hot and sunny.

The glorious Ganga near Aurovalley Ashram

I sat in the cool shade of the temple watching the rolling blue-green river and listening to the water gurgle happily over a shoal. The Ganga here is luminous, it seems lit from within, and just watching it induces a refreshing feeling of peace and contentment. After some time, a sadhu (holy man) in saffron orange robes came by and dunked himself in the river. After washing himself, he proceeded to wash his orange kurtah and robes, and scrub his brass vessel with mud to clean it.

The ghat on the Ganga

At this place, the Ganga travels through a national park and there are almost no people, no buildings here – only pristine nature. On the other side of the river are the mountains and jungles of the park – which, I am told, are home to elephants, king cobras and panthers. To see this sadhu performing his ablutions in this setting, is to see an ancient ritual that has been played out countless times by countless sadhus stretching back thousands of years: It is both commonplace and sublime.

For me it is all part of the remarkable magic of Aurovalley Ashram.

I am writing this on the white marble terrace in front of my airy room at Aurovalley Ashram. I love it here, it is probably my favourite place on earth. I have tried before to describe the peace of this place. There are some such places on earth where nature and man conspire to create havens of solitude and beauty. Aurovalley is one such place.

the guest house terrace

There is a subtle but powerful energy here that is both peaceful and healing. I have described before how I first came to this ashram on the advice of my friend Kailash, who has been coming here for many years. Soon after arriving I fell into a deep, restful, loving sleep. I slept for only about half an hour but it felt like the best sleep of my life. It was as if loving maternal arms held me as I slept. I woke and felt something I had never felt in my adult life: I felt I was at home.

Aurovalley is my spiritual home. It has everything I need to recover, heal, grow, create, do my inner work and commune with the divine. The ashram is between Rishikesh and Haridwar, but both of those sacred cities feel like three-ring circuses compared to here. It is set in the countryside, about three kilometres from the nearest village, surrounded by meadows that are ringed by Rajaji National Park. It is not only surrounded by nature, it is a celebration of nature. The ashram grounds are filled with gardens and trees, flowers and birds – it is a garden of eden, a paradise, carefully nurtured and maintained by founder Swami Brahmdev (Swamiji) and the loving people who live and work here.

inside the circular meditation hall

I love Aurovalley for the peaceful energy and nature-oriented environment, but that’s not all. I also love the intelligently designed buildings, spaces and daily programme. My room is a simple design, all in white, and air and sunlight flow through unimpeded. It is elegant in its cleanliness and simplicity. I love meditating in the white marble circular meditation hall. Normally, I cannot achieve a deep meditation without asana practice, but in this hall there is so much help, so much deep energy that meditation is actually easy and I have had some remarkably profound insightful and healing experiences.

Swamiji at satsang, answering our questions with love and humour

I love satsang (Sanskrit for “search for truth”) with Swamiji. He sits every morning from 11:30 until 1 pm, lunch time, under a grove of trees outside the library and answers questions, which is the time-honoured method of spiritual instruction in India. Swamiji teaches sadhaks (people who stay at the ashram) to increase their conscious awareness and aspire to live in full faith of the divine. He is a disciple of the teachings of Sri Aurobindo and The Mother. Sri Aurobindo’s non-fiction masterwork is The Integral Yoga — which posits that All Life is Yoga. (His fiction masterwork is the epic mystical poem Savitiri.)

You cannot “do” yoga

But this is not the usual yoga you find at North American yoga studios. Swamiji says, “Millions of people are saying they are doing yoga, but what they are doing has nothing to do with yoga. They are doing some kind of exercises and other things. Yoga means to become One, and to become One is to be centred, to be a balanced person, a conscious person. It is not an outer thing, it is an internal thing. No one can see you are doing yoga. If anybody sees that you are doing yoga, this is not yoga. Yoga us a very secret internal process; it is a way of living with a very high understanding, with clarity. Yoga is not a subject of doing. Yoga is not to do. Yoga is an attitude. You never see a yogi doing yoga.”

the vegetable garden

The ashram takes care of all needs, including the physical: there is a daily asana class in the newly built and sun-filled yoga hall, three delicious vegetarian meals a day in the communal dining hall (some of the produce comes from the ashram’s organic garden), a library, Internet café, a store that sells books by and about Sri Aurobindo and The Mother (and lovely Auroshika products such as mala beads, oils and incense) and a new Ayurveda clinic. The clinic is staffed by a Colombian allopathic doctor who trained in Ayurveda at a university in Gujurat. She offers complete pancha karma treatment.

For me, the other main highlight of Aurovalley Ashram is its proximity to Ganga Ma, the Ganges River, mother river of India. It is only a short walk through a meadow to the river, which in this place is in a completely natural environment.

sunrise on the Ganga on morning of auspicious bathing day

Spirituality means simplicity

Upstream from here is Rishikesh and downstream is Haridwar. This year the Maha Kumbh Mela is taking place in Haridwar and it is attracting millions of devotees. The Maha Kumbh Mela is the biggest gathering of humanity on earth. On a recent major bathing day, I went down to the Ganga at sunrise and was for some time the only person on the small ghats (steps) down to the river. It was chilly and I wasn’t sure I wanted to go in the cool water. But something bigger than me impelled me and I found myself carried by a wave of energy into the river. Coming up, I felt such exhilaration. It is very hard to explain. I was joined soon after by four Brahmin men, and we each did our puja and took our dip in silence and separateness. It was lovely, peaceful and deeply moving.

As the sun came up, it tinged the sky and glossy surface of the water an iridescent rosy pink. It was a beautiful scene, primordial in its pristine beauty, and the Hindu ritual to honour the river is ancient, too. I felt such reverence for nature; and such reverence from nature. Indeed, I feel these are the times when I feel closest to the divine

Meanwhile, downstream in Haridwar there were probably literally millions streaming into the Ganga at that same moment. I could hear the chants blaring from loudspeakers 12 kms away. I know some people love the intense energy of such a big crowd and all the attendant music, chanting, pujas, swamis, babas and the like, but I was very content with my peaceful bath.

Life at the ashram offers the rare opportunity for a very quiet, simple existence, centred around inner reflection. Lots of time for reading, writing, walking in nature, meditating. I find that I am healing on a deep level just by being here and participating in the ashram lifestyle. Every moment is an opportunity to live consciously and to grow in understanding. A carving at the entrance to the ancient oracle of Delphi said “know thyself” and that, too, could be the motto of this ashram. In this day and age it is so amazing to find a place like this that completely supports someone who wants to “know thyself” and therefore become a better person and contribute to a better world.

“Know thyself” is a way of life

But lest you think being at Aurovalley is an escape from life, or from yourself; or that it offers a naïve and unrealistic “peace and love” panacea, you have only to read some of the *inspirational* signs that are placed around the ashram grounds to discover that this ashram is quite the opposite. In fact, because Swamiji is so clear, honest and rigorous in his thinking and approach; and because the ashram provides so few distractions, there is no escape from yourself here. It is the perfect place to confront yourself and discover how you are: how you think, how you judge, how you avoid, how you evade, etc.

Swamiji is one of the most honest people I know. Some people may find his honesty bracing, but after years of Gestalt therapy I am ready for it and I find it refreshing. For example, I asked him about the concepts of samadhi, nirvana, moksha and enlightenment and he replied that they are, “varieties of ignorance.” He doesn’t agree with the idea of renouncing life or living in a cave in the Himalayas. Life is for living he says. It is to experience, to grow, to move, to change. We live in a garden and we are all gardeners. Our job is to make the garden beautiful – and we do this by living with fearless courage AND consciousness. He says, “Live in the world, but do not let the world live in you.”

Another example: I asked Swamiji why people go to the Kumbh Mela. He said, “People have within them a need for entertainment.” Of course, he went on the explain that nature has many ways to move and change people; and people have created many ways, too, such as amusements like the Kumbh Mela, movies, etc. I exclaimed, “Is going to a movie the same as the Kumbh Mela?!” and he replied, with lightness, “Well, if it’s a very good movie,” and everyone laughed.

When asked about pain or difficulties, Swamiji says that we do not have difficulties – we have only our own rigid natures. Pain he calls a filter, and suffering a gift – they are both teachers. It seems almost everything Swamiji says has the same message: that we are here to learn, change, move and grow, and that it is nature’s, or the divine’s, way to teach us, with whatever means possible. The more positive we are in our response to life, the more conscious we become, the faster we learn.

Harmony is the hallmark of consciousness

Almost every morning satsang is eye-opening (perhaps I should say third-eye opening!). Recently, he talked at length about healing, and about how nature is filled with healing forces. He made a very persuasive argument for positive thinking and conscious healing as the best *doctor.* In fact, he said “no doctor, no illness.” He teaches that we become what we think. If we think we are healthy, we will be. If we think we are sick, we will be.

two children who live at the ashram

There are many wonderful people who work hard and contribute to making this such a clean, well-maintained and conscious place, but it is primarily the vision of Swamiji, who came here more than 20 years ago when it was just a jungle, and who slowly built it into what it is today – a sanctuary of conscious living. If harmony is the hallmark of consciousness, as Swamiji remarked during satsang, then Aurovalley must be a highly conscious place indeed.

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Sri Aurobindo: Teacher, poet, mystic, yogi

Mariellen — Mon, 28 Dec 2009 19:24:47 +0000

When I am in India, I always make time to go to Aurovalley Ashram. I consider it to be my spiritual home and I have written extensively about it on my original travel blog. I have written about what a peaceful place it is, a veritable garden-of-eden, surrounded by meadows, ringed by the mist-covered Shivalik Hills and situated near a lovely, uninhabited stretch of the Ganges River. I have written about my teacher, Swami Brahmdev (Swamiji) and the activities of the ashram. I have written about the profound effect this place has had on me. But I have never written about Sri Aurobindo, the man whose name is given to the ashram. So, I would like to dedicate this post to Sri Aurobindo (August 15, 1872 – December 5, 1950).

To see is to know

I know Sri Aurobindo primarily through his photo. In the circular, marble meditation hall at the ashram, there are two enormous portrait photos, hanging side-by-side. On the left is The Mother and on the right is Sri Aurobindo. The Mother, born Mirra Alfassa in Paris in 1878, was Sri Aurobindo’s spiritual partner (and her story is fascinating and inspiring — I will have to write about her in another post.) They are both elderly in the elegantly composed black-and-white photos. Compassion lives on their gentle faces and love streams from their eyes. I can feel healing energy merely by standing in front of them and by meditating in their presence. They seem to carry the archetypal and universal energy of Mother and Father. I feel mother’s love and acceptance from The Mother and I feel lifted towards my higher aspirations by Sri Aurobindo. As I have lost my own earthly parents, they have, in a way, taken over the job.

Though I have only started to read a tiny selection of their vast published writings, I feel I know them in my own way, through experiencing darshan with them. Darshan (which is a Sanskrit word meaning ‘sight’) is the Hindu practise of beholding a deity, revered person or sacred object. It basically means that you look at the object of your reverence, and receive blessings in return. Darshan is one of the main forms of Hindu worship. I think it’s a lovely, deceptively simple concept that is grounded in the eastern idea that the object of a spiritual life is the evolution of consciousness and realizing the true nature of reality and the self.

All life is yoga

The other way I know about the teachings of Sri Aurobindo and The Mother is by listening to my teacher, Swami Brahmdev, during his daily satsang at the ashram. At the ashram, there is a huge painted sign that reads: “All life is yoga,” and this sums up the teachings of Integral Yoga, the yoga of Sri Aurobindo. It is a testament to his genius that his teaching can be summed up in such a short and simple slogan.

Sri Aurobindo was a philosopher, political activist, a mystic, a spiritual leader, a poet, a yogi and a teacher. He is very well known in India and considered a towering figure of the 20th century, but not as well known outside of India — which is ironic because of all the great spiritual figures of the last 100 years or so in India, he was probably one of those most familiar with the west. Originally from Calcutta, he was educated in England, and came back to India to join the freedom movement before dedicating himself totally to a spiritual life. He spoke and wrote in several languages, composed the epic 24,000-line poem Savitri, in English, founded a spiritual community in Pondicherry and of course contributed many profound philosophical and spiritual ideas, including the comprehensive theory of integral yoga.

The post is only a very brief introduction to Sri Aurobindo and doesn’t even begin to express the essence of his teachings, but I hope it will inspire you to want to learn more. I feel that his ideas, like so many that Indian wisdom offers, are particularly in need at this time in man’s evolution (see Sharing India’s wisdom with the world).

“To hope for a true change of human life without a change of human nature is an irrational and unspiritual proposition.” – Sri Aurobindo

I’ll end with a quote from the Sri Aurobindo Studies blog: “Sri Aurobindo’s integral yoga has enormous implications for the time we find ourselves in. As we systematically destroy the basis of life on the planet, and wall off one another through ultimate fragmentation, we are left with the stark contrast of choosing between survival and destruction, life and death, growth or decline. Sri Aurobindo recognizes the necessity of the individual within the context of the collectivity, universality and the transcendent consciousness of Oneness. The individual is the nexus or hub of the evolutionary urge, but not separate from nor at the expense of the life of the cosmic whole. “

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My India list

Mariellen — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 02:44:43 +0000

My India list: top places, events and festivals I want to see

I believe in magic. How else can you explain that the more I travel in India, the longer the list of places I want to go gets?! I was inspired to write this list by Mighty Girl’s Mighty Life List, so here goes. Here’s my list at the time of this writing (and I am sure I am missing several things …):

Top 10

see sunrise over the Himalayas from Tiger Hill, near Darjeeling
watch the start of the monsoon in Trivandrum
attend the Pushkar Camel Festival
climb Mount Arunachala
see a tiger! — perhaps in Kanha National Park, the place that inspired Kipling to write Jungle Book
watch Indian classical dance at sunset in front of the temples during the Khajuraho Dance Festival
stay in tea gardens in Darjeeling, Assam and the Nilgiri Hills
have tea at the Taj Mahal Hotel in Mumbai
stay at the Tollygunge Club in Kolkata and watch the Kali Puja
go on Char Dham pilgrimage to source of the Ganga (Ganges River)

And the list continues …

be in Jaisalmer for the Desert Festival
visit Gandh’s ashrams: Sabarmati and Sevagram
take part in Ganesh Chaturthi in Mumbai
see the Brahmaputra River in Assam
visit the Ellora and Ajanta Caves
hike in Ladakh
be in Mathura for Janmashtami
take a boat cruise through the Sunderbans
join the Chariot Festival in Puri
hike in Sikkim
stay at Lake Palace Hotel in Udaipur
see the Republic Day Parade in Delhi
~~spend some time writing in Bundi, where Kipling wrote~~
undertake 10-day Vipassana retreat near Jaipur
brief stop in the world’s wettest place, Cherapungi
see Dal Lake, Srinagar
stay at a spice garden in Kerala
visit the spice market in Old Delhi
finally go to Akshardham in Delhi
see the sun set and the moon rise at Kanyakumari (happens only two days per year)
attend Jaipur Literature Festival

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Finding spirituality on trip to India

Mariellen — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 14:49:35 +0000

The soul of the world

I enjoyed reading Christine Garvin’s article, Can You Develop Your Spirituality Without Visiting India? on Brave New Traveler (part of the Matador Travel Network).Of course, I whole-heartedly agree that finding or increasing your spiritual awareness is not about location. Spirituality is an attitude and an understanding. You can find it, learn it or increase it anywhere and anytime. In fact, the lessons often come from the unlikeliest people and places. You don’t even have to go to a temple, church, mosque, gurdwara, mediation centre, ashram, monastery or what have you. Once you begin to see the world from a spiritual perspective, you may never need a formal teacher again.

Yoga is my spiritual path and my teacher, Swami Brahmdev (known to his students as Swamiji) of Aurovalley Ashram said there are two conceptions of yoga. The one that is popularized in the west is that yoga is something you do. According to Swamiji, however, “Yoga is established in your understanding and attitude; it is a way of life. Yoga is living with a yogic attitude – naturally and with simplicity. When that attitude is born, you are a yogi, no matter where you are.”

But I take exception to the Brave New Traveler article subhead “Forget flying halfway around the world to find happiness.” I encourage you to fly to India — or sail or walk or go by camel if you must! — if you feel the urge. I felt a compelling desire to go to India about five years ago, and to say I’m glad I went is the biggest understatement of my life. Going to India was the best thing I ever did. I am writing a book about all the gifts I have received from three trips there.

Everyone’s path is different and for me, India is my spiritual home. The “advances” I made on my spiritual path while traveling and studying yoga in India for 11 months may have taken me a lifetime here in Canada. I recently wrote an article for a Canadian travel magazine, India is Yoga, that addresses the question: why go to India for yoga? I asked three Indian yoga teachers, including Swamiji, for their opinions, and their answers are worth reading if you are interested in the subject.

It is my experience that, generally, India has a milieu or energy that I find very spiritually conducive; whereas I feel the opposite is true in my home town, Toronto. I am not saying you can’t have a spiritual experience in Toronto or that you are guaranteed to have one in India, of course. As I said, a lot of it is attitude. I go to India with the attitude that I am going to learn, and I do. Just learning to go with the flow of train delays and crowds and sights of appalling poverty can really open you up, if you let it.

Until you experience India, and yoga in India, you probably won’t be able to understand just how different it is over there, as compared to here. God is ever-present in India. God is celebrated, worshipped and invoked in road-side shrines, massive temple complexes, at tiny altars in many stores and in the prayer rooms in most homes; and in the thousands of sacred places — rivers, mountains, tress — and places associated with sacred events, such as Krishna’s birth or the battle of Kurukshetra. All of India is a living, breathing sacred place that is alive with history, myth and the stories of the epics and the gods.

And of course it is not just that the people are religious. They are also, for the most part, very spiritual. My own experience is that the people of India are kind, helpful, open and much more content and — dare I say it? — happy than we are in the materially affluent west.

To people of a certain temperament, like me, all of this makes a big impact.

Joseph Campbell would say that if you are a seeker, if you are on a quest, at some point, you must leave your community. There are certain predictable steps or stages in the hero’s journey, and leaving your community to go in search of treasure — your holy grail — is one of them. It doesn’t mean you have to go to India, of course. A pilgrimage is a very personal thing.

But by going to India, you are at the very least bound to gain some perspective, which I think many westerners could benefit from — as only about 8% of the world lives as luxuriously as we middle-class westerners do. (I wrote more about this in my post, Life is perfect. Or, as the Globe and Mail ads say, “It’s not just news. It’s a wake up call from the other side of the world.”)

It probably all comes down to your attitude. I often say that India is like the cave that Yoda sends Luke into. Luke asks, “What will I find in there?” and Yoda answers, “Only what you bring with you.”

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India is Yoga

Mariellen — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 14:15:02 +0000

Originally published in Dreamscapes magazine.

View of the majestic Himalayas from Anand Prakash Yoga Ashram

As I sit writing this on the balcony of my room at the Anand Prakash Yoga Ashram in Rishikesh, India, the melodious sound of people singing kirtan (devotional songs and chants) floats up from the yoga hall below. From here, I have a breath-taking view of the imposing foothills of the Himalayas and I can feel the invigorating mountain air as it sweeps into this serene valley, through which the jewel-green Ganga (Ganges) River flows. It is easy to see why legend refers to the Himalaya range as Dev Bhoomi, land of the gods.

Rishikesh is a small and relatively (by Indian standards) peaceful town that meanders along the narrow valley on both sides of the Ganga, connected by two impressive suspension bridges, Laxman Jhula and Ram Jhula, which are open for pedestrian traffic, bicycles and motorcycles only. Seers – rishis – and sages have been gathering here, at this picturesque spot on the Ganges, since before recorded history to prayer, chant and meditate. Indian pilgrims and foreign yoga students alike flock here to stay in one of the town’s many ashrams and soak up the devotional vibes. It is often referred to as the yoga capital of the world.

“Yogis have been coming here for long time, and they created vibrations in their bodies that have gone into the Ganga water, trees, stones,” says Yogi Vishvketu (Vishva) who, along with his Canadian-born wife, Chetana Panwar, founded the Anand Prakash Yoga Ashram in Rishikesh two years ago. “People who come here feel it immediately. I have seen people coming here from all over the world. They experience immediate healing and they change on all levels, mental, physical, emotional and spiritual.”

To Vishva, who has trained since the age of eight to become a yogi, and who holds a Phd in yoga from the university in nearby Haridwar, this is one of the main reasons why yoga students are drawn to Rishikesh. The other is the opportunity to be exposed to the whole philosophy of yoga. “Our intention in creating this ashram is to give westerners a safe and clean environment in India to experience both the beautiful, magical energy of Rishikesh and to heal themselves by following the Indian yogic system. We chant, perform rituals, sing kirtan, observe yogic diet and lifestyle and give people the whole picture of yoga.”

For me, the highlight of staying at Anand Prakash is the 6 a.m. yoga class with Vishva in the rooftop yoga hall. As we move, chant and meditate under the guidance of this bliss-master (Vishva is the happiest person I have ever met!), the sun rises from behind the mountains and bathes the room in a golden glow.

The first time I visited Aurovalley Ashram, about 10 kilometres south of Rishikesh, I took a short nap soon after arriving and fell into the most restful sleep of my life. I felt the profoundly peaceful energy of this garden ashram almost immediately and knew it was my spiritual home.

Several hand-painted signs on the ashram grounds proclaim, “All life is yoga.” This is the philosophy of Sri Aurobindo, one of the great Indian thinkers of the 20th century, reduced to its essence. Aurovalley was founded 30 years ago by Swami Brahmdev (Swamiji), a disciple of Sri Aurobindo and The Mother’s teachings. It is a garden ashram, surrounded immediately by meadows and, in the distance, by the mist-covered hills of Rajaji National Park. Nature is ever-present at Aurovalley in the form of fragrant tropical flowers, fluttering butterflies, colourful songbirds, fruit-laden trees, gardens and glorious sunsets. Regular visitors extol the ashram’s healing benefits.

Swamiji explains there are two conceptions of yoga. The one that is popularized in the west is that yoga is something you do. According to Swamiji, however, “Yoga is established in your understanding and attitude; it is a way of life. Yoga is living with a yogic attitude – naturally and with simplicity. When that attitude is born, you are a yogi, no matter where you are.”

Swamiji doesn’t lecture or teach. Every day he sits outside the ashram library building, under a mango tree, and people gather to ask questions. Does one need to go to India to learn to be a yogi? “If you want to buy vegetables where will you go,” he answers, with lightness, and a twinkle in his eye. “India is a university for the world to understand more and collect more information on this subject.”

The International Sivananda Yoga Vedanta Centers is a nonprofit organization founded by Swami Vishnu-devananda. He established the first Sivananda Yoga Vedanta Center in Montreal, Canada, in 1959 and there are now close to 80 Sivananda ashrams and yoga centres around the world. Mani Chaitanya, director of the Sivananda centre in New Delhi is a tall, slim soft-spoken man who chooses his words very carefully. The Sivananda centre is an oasis of calm in a very hectic city, and it is where I practice yoga when I am in New Delhi.

“Yoga practitioners are naturally curious to discover the roots of yoga,” he says. “In India, people can discover a spiritual way of understanding life. They can experience a new lifestyle and incorporate it into their own practice.”

Mani explains that Sivananda offers westerners a systematic method for learning the traditional yogic lifestyle and balancing it with the demands of modern life. “It’s a unique structure that is easy and effective to practice in daily life. You can learn to manage a spiritual life that doesn’t take you away from where you are.”

Sivananda is a worldwide network, a gateway to yoga for westerners, and the same method is followed in all locations. One its main attractions is that the ashrams are located in peaceful places, away from city life. The Neyyar Dam location in Kerala, south India, for example, is set in a lush tropical paradise surrounded by sacred mountains. The ashram offers yoga holidays as well as various levels of teacher training programs.

Many people come from all over the world to study and practice yoga in India. And while there are countless methods and styles; teachers and ashrams, they are all streams leading to and from the same ocean of yogic wisdom.

Navjeet Kaur Mackie is a yoga teacher from Mississauga, currently living in Nova Scotia. She studied yoga in North America before heading off to India in 2007 to deepen her practice and understanding of this ancient tradition.

“India is yoga,” Navjeet says. “India is where I found the very essence of yoga, and discovered that yoga is not only a practice on the mat, but a way of life. Even though yoga is everywhere in India, Rishikesh is where I practiced my physical yoga the most. The feeling that you get when you visit Rishikesh is one of peace and serenity, but still infused with the typical Indian charm. I would recommend India to anyone and everyone who has found themselves on the yoga path.”

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Catch this point!

Mariellen — Fri, 22 May 2009 16:57:36 +0000

When my teacher, Swamiji (Swami Brahmdev of Aurovalley Ashram, Rishidwar, India), says something during satsang that he wants to underline, he says, “catch this point.” It’s a great example of a non-native English speaker using the language in a particularly creative and effective way.

I have been back in Canada about six weeks since my latest trip to India, where, among other things, I spent time at Aurovalley Ashram — my favourite place on earth — learning the wisdom of integral yoga and feeling inspired by Swamiji’s complete commitment to transformation of consciousness.

So I am now home, facing a difficult life situation, and trying to “catch this point.” I am trying to process, integrate and put it into action everything I learned from my recent two-and-half-months in India. In some ways the journey begins when you get home. You realize what you’ve learned, how much you’ve changed, and how differently you now see the world.

The main points I am trying to catch are;
1. I am largely, if not exclusively, the creator of the difficult situation I now find myself in. The fact that some of the decisions I made that led me to this place were largely unconscious, and driven by fear and/or grief, does not let me off the hook. I am responsible for my life.
2. The “answer” to my dilemma will not come from outside; it must come from within, from an increase in my conscious awareness.
3. This situation, though it is causing me to suffer, is a gift; it is a chance to learn, to grow to become more aware. The appropriate — and most positive, useful — response is to be grateful for this opportunity.

In other words, instead of buying and downing the expensive ice cream bar last night, I came home and lay on the floor and did some deep, conscious breathing. I allowed myself to breathe into my fear and anxiety. Then I fell asleep and dreamt I was trying to cross a busy street with no streetlights or barriers of any kind, and cars were rushing towards me in the gathering dark with their headlights off. Almost halfway across, I ran back to the safety of the curb. It seems like as good a metaphor for the activities of the subconscious as any!

Awareness is the key

Every good teacher I have ever known teaches awareness. Last night I saw a man wearing a T-shirt that read “There is nothing that beer can’t fix.” My T-shirt would read, “There is nothing that awareness can’t fix.”

As always, I did a lot of healing and becoming more aware when I was in India. For one thing, I have a new awareness of myself as a middle-class person. I realize I was born a card-carrying member of middle-class Canada. It’s like being in an exclusive club — a bubble. You get a lot of benefits along with a deeply etched worldview about how things should be. You expect a lot from society and the world at large, and use your status as bubble insider to protect you from the harsh realities of life.

But my travels in India, the recession and my own current life situation have served to pop the bubble — or at least, make it a lot more transparent. It’s very hard for me to actually imagine what it’s like to face the world without a family, three good meals a day, a safe and comfortable home, a credit line, a university degree — all of the props of middle-class life. Like so many others, I have been essentially living beyond my means, certain in the assumption that my middle-class world will support and rescue me. And this is something I now have to face.

Life outside the bubble

But what do people do when they don’t carry the middle-class card and don’t have all of its exclusive privileges? How do they live with no recourse to credit or hope of landing a well-paying job?

It’s not easy to travel in a place like India where you have to confront poverty, social inequality and disparity. It’s not easy to be a “conscious tourist.” It’s not easy to not let it affect you. In fact, I would feel a lot worse if it DIDN’T affect me. I am glad it is changing me and making me more conscious and I hope more compassionate, empathetic and responsible. That’s the reason I go to India, really. I learn as much about the process of self-discovery from travel in India as I do from studying yoga at the ashram with my guru. And that’s as it should be.

And I’m not the only one who thinks awareness is the key.

I am looking forward to reading a new book by Austin, Texas-based author Shelley Seale called The Weight of Silence: The Invisible Children of India. Shelley and I met online, and I participated in an online Q&A she did last week with the Voluntary Traveler on Facebook. You can read the transcript here.

Shelley has traveled extensively in India, researching her book and volunteering at orphanages run by The Miracle Foundation. With this book, she hopes to give voice to the many children in India who are homeless, abandoned, orphaned, poor or in some other way lost between the cracks of society.

Someone asked Shelley what can we do? She answered: “There are many things that people can do, from really small and easy to the big things. I think sometimes these problems seem overwhelming, insurmountable really, because they seem so huge and anything we could do seems a drop in the bucket. But Mother Theresa once said that each of us might just be one drop in the ocean, but if that one drop wasn’t there, it would be missed.

We can’t all abandon our entire lives to go work in the slums of Calcutta, but there are lots of little things that are easy to do, and if enough people did them, would make an incredible difference.

The first step is awareness, and everyone who is on this discussion or reads it is already there, and I thank you. It’s a huge thing, just right off the bat, for ordinary people who aren’t affected by these things directly to simply CARE. And spread that awareness on to other people.”

Another project I learned about recently on the Internet that also stresses awareness was started by Amanda Koster. Salaam Garage “leads trips that combine cultural immersion travel with citizen journalists (that means you) collaborating with NGOs around the world.” She is leading a trip to Jaipur, Rajasthan, India in September. It’s a great idea.

Thank you for reading. Please visit Breathedreamgo or stop by my Facebook page at Breathedreamgo.