Wherein lies the secret?

Foremost among ancient yoga texts is Patanjali’s Yogasutra, a text consisting of 195 terse aphorisms, or pithy sayings. Yogasutra, along with traditional commentaries on it, explains the practice of meditation and the psychology of yoga in detail.

What is common among these three? In all these three (mindfulness, absorption, and contemplation), you bring your attention to an experience or subject, and you sustain your attention on it, by your choice.

Ayurveda is a limb of Yoga. Ayurvedic medicine is made using a combination of natural plant products, such as roots, stems, leaves, flowers or fruits of plants, then transformed through a specific process of cooking. The same basic principles of medicinal preparation are applied in the preparation of food.

We have seen that the root cause of sickness is an absence of awareness. Used properly, pranayama can be an effective means to bring about the needed awareness. It is important to remember that the goal of Yoga is freedom, whether it be freedom from disease or freedom from...

This is about the vital role that breath plays in maintaining and restoring our state of well-being and Inner Ecological Balance or Svastha. In the ancient texts, breath was given a special status because it was understood as the link between the body, mind and the external world.

A mudra is a kind of “seal” in that its purpose is to seal a thought in our mind. Yoga mudra is also called cin mudra or jnana mudra. There is a well-known story behind this mudra. Siva, representing the Divine, once took the form of a boy of...

The prana or the breath is like a horse. The mind is the rider. If the rider does not have a sure touch or is inattentive, the horse may become restless and throw the rider off, especially when attempting an advanced manoeuvre. So it is with the mind in...

There are very few videos of my teacher, the great yogi Sri Krishnamacharya. The only video we have of him demonstrating physical yoga practices is from 1938. It is a black and white film that many of you may have seen on YouTube.

The basic element of mindfulness is very simple: you purposefully bring your attention to an experience in the present and notice it without reactions or judgment.

Krishnamacharya used to say that hatha yoga is pranayama. This is how the classical hatha yoga texts, such as the Hatha Yoga Pradipika, present the pathway of hatha yoga.