Isha Yoga Ashram Isha Yoga Ashram
Base of the Velliangiri Mountains
Tamil Nadu, India
July 27, 2018
Greetings from the jungles southern India 🙏
Most of humanity can trace its roots to southern India. In fact, anyone with ancestry outside of Africa has ancestry from Southern India. Scientists now say the first migrations of homo sapiens out of Africa traveled across the Arabian Peninsula and settled on the south Indian coast over 50,000 years ago.
Something else also has its roots in India, Yoga. Yoga, the science of achieving the ultimate in human happiness, bliss, and wellbeing, remains the foremost of India’s gifts to humanity. While the Sage Patangali, author of the eternal Yoga Sutras, lived roughly 3,000 years ago and is considered the father of modern yoga, the science of yoga existed long before Patangali graced the world with his concise yet exhaustive user’s manual. In a tradition of unbroken transmission from guru to disciple for untold thousands of years, Yoga has lived on as the very breath of the Divine itself with a living vibrancy generation to generation here in India. Now, we too in the West are to reaping the fruits of these yogis’ tireless labor.
In southern India, Adjyogi stands truly as a colossal figure. Adiyogi, here, is the revered as the first Guru, or Master, who achieved spiritual liberation for himself and then shared the yogic science of ultimate realization with humanity. Adiyogi is said to have roamed from the South Indian coast to the Himalayas in modern day Tibet over 10,000 years ago, sharing the nectar of yoga on his travels.
Interestingly, in the Hindu tradition, Adiyogi also considered the first human incarnation Lord Shiva. The Destroyer and Transformer.
Destroyer of Ignorance.
Aum Namah Shivaya
Conceptually, Shiva also represents the supreme unmanifest aspect of creation. The infinite and eternal no-thingness from which manifest creation arises….For the record, CERN has a statue of Shiva outside the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland….
While yoga certainly explores these physical and metaphysical aspects of Shiva, Adiyogi himself is considered to be simply a yogi and guru in the yogic tradition. He is one who showcased the highest human possibility, and the inner science credited to him remains of great pragmatic utility and utmost importance to all in the 21st century who yearn to reach his or her ultimate potential.
Adiyogi had neither sermons to preach nor philosophies to propagate nor worldviews to extol. He offered methodologies, technologies for inner transformation, to best facilitate the process of the individual human being exporting his or her full potential firsthand. Yoga is not a religion. It is simply a method.
Isha Yoga, offered and facilitated by Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev, is the 21st-century manifestation of Adiyogi’s eternal science. Isha means “the formless divine,” and Isha Yoga is intended to distill the essence of Adiyogi’s teaching in a way both accessible to the modern man or woman yet still true the methods’ original power.
Yoga has many branches and subtypes, each with profound teachings and each with a vibrant characterization of its own lineage. Isha offers itself as a direct lineage of the Adiyogi. While it defies the skepticism of the Western conditioned mind, this science of wellbeing extolled by Adiyogi has lived in an unbroken transmission here in Southern India for over 10,000 years. While my present understanding of the exact means of this process remains limited, my direct experience with Isha Yoga and Sadhguru over the past several months has been nothing short of mind-blowing and immensely transformative.
In the spirit of desire to go deeper with this tradition and with yoga overall, I have embarked from the familiar territory of my home, Nashville, Tennessee (rock on) to seek the eternal quest for inner Truth and ultimate wellbeing in the motherland the ancient ancestors, India. 🙏Thus, it is firmly in the lap of history and caress of the south Asian jungle, I find myself seated in the lotus posture at Isha Yoga Ashram, base of the Velliangiri Mountains, Tamil Nadu, India.
I am here to complete a 2,000 hour hatha yoga teacher training program. Hatha yoga refers to the yoga of physical postures, which is the form of yoga most of us are familiar with in the western. I will be here for over 5 months.
The word ashram means a hermitage or place for spiritual retreat, teaching, and practice. From my present perspective, the modern ashram can also be thought of a university or high tech laboratory (see CERN) where the inner sciences, rather than the external physical sciences, are taught and explored. As Sadhguru says, “Just as there is a physical science for engineering external wellbeing, so too is there a science for engineering inner wellbeing. This is what we call as Yoga.”
The Isha Yoga Ashram is nestled in a horseshoe-shaped valley cradled by the gorgeous Velliangiri Mountains to the north, south, and west which rise into the sky as cresting waves kissing the white silk clouds. Jungle wildlife and actively abounds outside the Asharam’s well-guarded walls. Elephants can occasionally be heard trumpeting in the distance.
The Ashram vibrates with a certain energetic electricity and buzzes with the activity and intensity of a small city. Across the spaces of the Ashram, Sadhaka’s (people striving on the spiritual path) practice various forms of hatha yoga (yoga of the physical body), kriya yoga (yoga of the inner energy system), and blissful meditation. Monks, male and female, with shaven heads glide angelically across the walkways whispering quietly among one another. Swamis, sporting the traditional orange robes, with gleaming eyes, equanimous faces, and physiques built like iron, stride regally about the property ensuring the Ashram runs as a well-oiled machine. (Don’t worry Mom. The celibacy vows of these well-oiled paths make them a nonstarter for your only son in this particular lifetime) Local men dressed in brahman attire and local women dressed in exuberant traditional gowns as colorful as the jungle herself, pay visits to the ashram daily to meditate and to make offerings.
I am here for 3 principal purposes:
1) Adventure. Curiosity. Unnamed yearning of the Soul.
2) Deep internal work. The challenge and discipline of completing this program, which includes training from 5am to 9 or 10pm 7 days a week, is the push I need at this phase of my spiritual journey.
3) Sharing the joy. My mission in life is to share the joy I’ve gained in my spiritual journey with others. This program offers the opportunity to gain knowledge and skills I can then use to systematically share and teach yoga in the United States. Yoga has been of immeasurable value to my spiritual journey, and I want to unlock this possibility for as many people as possible.
I appreciate all of the love and support I have received for taking this step in my journey. These next 5 months will push me to my absolute limit. Self-doubt and struggle remain daily bedfellows, but my eyes are pierced scorchingly towards the goal of ultimate Liberation.
Love. Light. Liberation.
Namaste
Alex 🙏🌹☯️
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