Isha Yoga: A Unique Tool for Spiritual Development
Isha Yoga is a type of yoga developed and designed by Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev, the founder of Isha Foundation and the Isha Yoga Center in Coimbatore, India. It centers around a set of practices that involve meditation, asanas, dynamic breathing techniques and energy processes known as kriyas.
Isha Yoga offers an opportunity whereby the individual seeker can release physical, emotional, mental, and energy blocks and achieve a state of inner harmony and balance. Through a variety of practices and programs, it offers an experiential path to spiritual development.
Taught and transmitted as a science of well-being, people from all walks of life practice Isha Yoga. It has nothing to do with religion, nor does it promote any particular belief system or philosophy. It is simply a path and an inner technology to know one’s true self for any and all who are willing.
Inner Engineering is the beginning class in which participants learn a 20-minute per day practice called Shambhavi Maha Mudra. This is an ancient and powerful kriya that has never before been offered to the public. The class is an experience in personal development and offers participants an opportunity for inner growth and exploration through forthright discussions and guided meditations. Inner Engineering starts participants off on a great adventure to experience and explore their own higher potential.
Inner Engineering is now being offered in an online format. Click the link below to learn more.
Hatha Yoga training is also available in the US and various centers in India. Surya Namaskar (sun salutation) is taught along with a series of yoga postures or asanas meant to strengthen body and mind. Isha takes a different approach to Hatha Yoga training, transmitting it in such a way that after the class, participants are able to continue with the practices at home on their own.
Isha Foundation also offers seekers more advanced programs and practices for those wishing to delve more deeply into their own spirituality. These include initiation into Shoonya meditation, and Shakti Chalana Kriya, a powerful process designed to enhance the flow of vital energy throughout the system.
Bhava Spandana, also known as BSP, is a 3-day advanced residential program offered at the ashram in India and at IIIS (Isha Institute of Inner Sciences) in McMinnville, Tennessee. The program is meant to push the boundaries of ordinary perception from the physical to the non-physical. BSP is like an invitation to walk through the door and over the threshold into the divine, to get a glimpse of a world of “love, light and laughter” and limitless joy.
Samyama is an advanced 7-day residential program currently only offered at the ashram in India where participants have the opportunity to spend the entire week in silence and long meditations with Sadhguru. Samyama is a rare opportunity to break through the bonds of karma to ultimate freedom and bliss, and to experience states of Samadhi in the presence of a living master. As Sadhguru explains, Samyama is a heightened state of consciousness “…where you are fully aware that you are not the body, you are not the mind, and you are not the world”.
Isha Yoga programs are held throughout the US and abroad. For the latest program schedule and to find out if there are classes in your area, please click here.
Isha Foundation is a non-profit humanitarian organization devoted to the development of human potential and well-being. Under Sadhguru’s guidance, the foundation conducts a variety of yoga programs and humanitarian projects such as Action For Rural Rejuvenation, an initiative to empower the rural people of South India; Project Green Hands, Isha Foundation’s ecological initiative; and Isha Vidhya, a project to provide education to rural children in India. Run completely by thousands of volunteers throughout the world, the main Isha Yoga Center is located in Coimbatore, India, at the foothills of the beautiful Velliangiri Mountains.
Isha Institute of Inner Sciences (IIIS) is the US center located on 1200 acres in the mountains of McMinnville, Tennessee. Currently under development, it will offer the opportunity for advanced yoga programs to be conducted in the United States. Find out more about IIIS here.
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