Carried by a Promise

What a week we had with Swami Rad­hananda and Swami Lal­i­tananda! It was so rich in teach­ing and learn­ing, walk­ing the path of self dis­cov­ery as well as such good fun and a shared jour­ney that will enrich our lives forever.

We explored just a lit­tle of what is uniquely Aus­tralian with the Swamis – met some of the local fauna, trod the ground of the ancient, saw the iconic archi­tec­ture and nat­ural beauty, shel­tered from the harsh sum­mer sun and ate the local del­i­ca­cies (minus the witch­ety grubs)!

For me per­son­ally how­ever, it was the warm embrace of these beau­ti­ful women who entered our lives so nat­u­rally and per­son­ally, chal­leng­ing us, teach­ing us, learn­ing with us, shar­ing their jour­neys of trans­for­ma­tion and growth. The oppor­tu­nity to retreat together for the week­end with a rich diver­sity of women and one young man, was a taster, for many, of the value of tak­ing time to fur­ther dis­cover our Essence, to grow our self aware­ness and to enjoy the Divine within us all.

I think there are a few seri­ously con­sid­er­ing the enor­mous value of cross­ing the Pacific divide and spend­ing time at Yasod­hara Ashram. We are priv­i­leged that Swamis Rad­hananda and Lal­i­tananda brought the Ashram to us Dow­nun­der; the week filled our lives with Light.

Namaste,
Julie Pinazza
Aus­tralia

Van­cou­ver yogi­nis and yogis were happy to wel­come Swami Rad­hananda and Swami Lal­i­tananda here on Octo­ber 22 & 23. There was a great turn out for both work­shops — an encour­ag­ing mix­ture of long time teach­ers, many trav­el­ing from Van­cou­ver Island for the week­end; a group of stu­dents new to RADHA who wanted to go deeper and expand their expe­ri­ence and under­stand­ing of our teach­ings; and a num­ber of long time RADHA stu­dents tak­ing the oppor­tu­nity to once again con­nect with their own inner wisdom. .

Swami Lal­i­tananda invited stu­dents to enter into the Inner Life of Asanas and lis­ten to the intel­li­gence of the body in a day of breath, relax­ation and lis­ten­ing to the mes­sages of the yoga asanas. There was lots of space to explore and expe­ri­ence the feel­ing of joy that was emerg­ing by the end of the day.

Swami Rad­hananda helped us to light up our lives as we focused and con­cen­trated on the Divine Light Invo­ca­tion, expe­ri­enc­ing the power of breath, ten­sion, relax­ation and our abil­ity to imag­ine the Light. As the day pro­gressed we moved more fully into an expe­ri­ence of Light that revealed and sus­tained and showed how we can con­tin­u­ally bring this beau­ti­ful prac­tice into daily life.

It was a ful­fill­ing time together — a time to con­nect with old friends and new and to know the feel­ing of com­mu­nity that arises when we prac­tice together.

Hari Om
Swami Jyotihananda