“How do you live your yoga practice? Start small. Make a commitment. Follow through. Keep doing it until it works for you. Test it out – don’t just do a practice in your room. Try it in real-life situations. You can bring the practices into whatever you do – cooking, gardening, driving your car, working, being with people. An ordinary life infused with practice becomes a meaningful life.”

With these encouraging words, Swami Radhananda invites us into her latest book, Living the Practice.

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Click on read more for the news from Vancouver, Calgary and Kelowna. Click here for how you can “get involved,” too! We look forward to hearing updates on events  (Photos are also great!)

From Swami Jyotihananda at Radha Vancouver:

We have just had such a lovely satsang. After talking about the Ashram book launch that I attended last week, I suggested we focus on the chapter, “Steps to Freedom” (p. 49). We had a kundalini chart out and passed Living the Practice around with each person reading a few paragraphs. Then we chanted Om Namah Sivaya to overcome obstacles and each of us talked about what came up. Two young women who have just moved to the area were both touched by the process. One was preparing for an important presentation at work the next day and she said the reading helped her overcome her fear. Another woman who had just taken big risks in her life felt the reading confirmed everything she has been doing. Offering this conversation at satsang was a beautiful way to enter into Living the Practice.

From Utpala at Radha Centre Calgary:

Last evening we held our first LTP Book Club meeting. There were eight of us gathered over tea and cookies. After deciding as a group how to proceed one person chose the chapter, “The Story of Your Life.” (p. 41) We took turns reading, then did the exercises at the end. It worked wonderfully. Each of us gained a new understanding about her own story. For me this is providing a good base for offering a workshop or leading a conversation with a different group.

Elizabeth MacLeod at Radha Kelowna

Elizabeth has forwarded a great outline for a 1/2 day workshop that she will be offering later this month based on “The Four Powers of Divine Mother.” (p. 197) Teachers can access her approved outline on the teachers page URL. Food for thought!

Thank you! We’re looking forward to hearing more!

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The pages that felt most alive to me were those written by Swami Radhananda, spiritual director of Yasodhara Ashram. She wrote a column for each issue.  When my subscription copy arrived in the mail, I turned first to her words. Sitting in my disorganized kitchen, or on the front porch in the sunshine, I would feel a calm descend over me as I read her reflections filled with practical wisdom and relevance to every day life.

The columns Swami Radhananda wrote for the magazine from 1999-2009 are the foundation of an exciting new title released this month from Timeless Books: Living the Practice, Collected Writings on the Transformative Potential of Yoga.  The book reflects a great gathering of experience, accumulated during Swami Radhananda’s thirty years as a yoga teacher.

Swami Radhananda was a mother and educator named Mary-Ann McDougall when she moved to Yasodhara Ashram in 1991 to pursue the in-depth study of yoga that culminated in her taking sanyas in 1994.  During her many years as a householder yogini before that, she had developed a unique understanding of how to incorporate her spiritual practice into daily life.  Living the Practice resonates with the wonder of small, seemingly ordinary objects: a well-used tea pot, a ripening apricot, a rose bush that has ceased to bloom, a swarm of bees.  Under her guidance, these objects become portals into how the mind, body and spirit function.

While many in North America identify Hatha poses as the essence of yoga, for Swami Radhananda the physical practice is “a beginning step,” a good place to start because of its potential to show concrete results.  Once a Hatha practice has been established, what follows is “the Western challenge” – to cultivate an expansion and stillness that can then permeate the acts of daily life.  Living the Practice is both an example and a guide for this process.

The yoga beyond Hatha presented here encompasses many topics, including the “myth” of perfection, the purpose of dispelling illusions, the value of silence, the need to come back to harmony in family and community, and the joy of cultivating a “sky-like mind.”  She encourages practice not just in a studio, in a private room at home or a temple, but out in the world – at a business meeting, while driving in traffic, cooking or gardening.

Eastern spiritual concepts of devotion, Kundalini, breath control and mantra are also presented in an accessible way, allowing anyone who reads this book to think differently about what the words “yoga practice” might mean.  The real purpose of yoga, Swami Radhananda reminds us, is to recognize one’s essential nature, to clarify one’s ideals and find the unique path to liberation.  “Life really is what we make of it,” she writes. “There will always be another step.  Be ready to explore and take a risk. It is a worthwhile and exciting journey to freedom.”

Eileen Delehanty Pearkes lives in Nelson, B.C. and is the author of  The Glass Seed (Timeless Books: 2007)

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Reviewed by Cathy Anne Pachnowski, University of Alberta

Carried by a Promise – A Life Transformed Through Yoga is a simply and elegantly written memoir of a woman. She starts the intimate and forth- right account of her spiritual journey in 1977 as Mary-Ann McDougall, a wife, mother and school teacher living in Lethbridge, Alberta. She completes it in 1995 as Swami Radhananada, the President and Spiritual Director of Yasodhara Ashram Society and the successor to her own spiritual teacher, Swami Sivananda Radha (also a woman, known as Swami Radha), living at the Ashram in Kootenay Bay, British Columbia.

Yasodhara Ashram is a yoga retreat and study centre in the Kootenays. As Swami Radhananada demonstrates in Carried by a Promise, this uniquely Canadian approach to yoga is much more expansive than the stereotypic yoga classes that connote merely doing physical exercises to become more physi- cally fit, flexible and relaxed.

This approach to yoga incorporates individual students discovering their own insights through spiritual practices and written reflection. Swami Rad- hananada is intrigued as she first learns one of the foundational practices in this yogic tradition, the Divine Light Invocation (see The Divine Light Invocation 2001), a standing meditation that promotes constructive use of imagination:

Closing my eyes, it is quiet beyond quietness, bright beyond brightness. … We invoke light and it fills us, making itself part of me, the whole space, and everybody in it. The dark, dingy church basement is transformed.

So this is yoga – it must be something extraordinary! (page 15)

She then provides an account of her own experience that is, indeed, extraordinary. On one level, this is the story of an ordinary woman overcom- ing personal challenges to devote herself to her guru, achieve a more purpose- ful life, and accept a position of leadership in doing so. At another level, this advanced spiritual teacher is encouraging the reader to take responsibility for her or his own journey of evolution through yogic practices.

Swami Rahananda follows directly in the footsteps of Swami Radha, who wrote Kundalini Yoga for the West (2004) . The Kundalini book is a classic, highly respected yoga text which contains a series of exercises, questions and reflections to help students gain their own insights about their own minds. The extensive research for the Kundalini book and the practice of Kundalini Yoga as Swami Radha conducted it was an integral part of her promise to her own guru, who was a male yoga master – Swami Sivananada of Rishikesh, In- dia. In the 1950s, long before women were seen as capable spiritual teachers in their own right, he initiated Swami Radha into sanyas (renunciation). He asked her to update the ancient yogic teachings and make them accessible to the western mind. This is the lineage from which Swami Radhananda comes as she describes her experience of a workshop based on the Kundalini book: The cakras look complex, with many-headed gods and goddesses and fierce weapons; the mantras seem esoteric, sprinkled with Sanskrit. I decide to fol-

low what Swami Radha’s guru, Swami Sivananda, did to clear the air and his mind – chant Om loudly three times. Then I will write… I … just (let) whatever is there come through. (page 45)

This description encapsulates this paradoxically simple Canadian approach to Kundalini Yoga. The approach is empowering because each student taps into her or his own inner wisdom, guided by personal symbolism, memories and thought associations.

The approach to yoga described in Carried by a Promise does include the physical poses or asanas; once again, the emphasis is on each student under- standing her or his personal symbolism. Students observe their minds as they do the poses and write about what arises (see The Hidden Language of Hatha Yoga (1987) and The Inner Life of Asanas (2007)). Swami Radhananda teaches by example by sharing her insights that arise doing the Eagle and Corpse poses, amongst others. She relates her observations to her daily life and the workings of her own mind, demonstrating the practical value of this yogic tradition.

Both Swami Radha and Swami Radhananda also used another form of yoga, dream yoga, to inform their lives. In Realities of the Dreaming Mind (1994) Swami Radha presented a method of working with one’s personal symbolism to investigate one’s dreams. Swami Radhananda in turn uses this methodology to illustrate its usefulness in her own life, commenting that her dreams show her many different facets of herself: “They help me make choices and question whether the way I am acting is the way I really want to be.” (page 23).

Carried by a Promise presents a compelling and expansive approach to the ancient discipline of yoga. This female yoga master in a western Canadian set- ting offers a valuable contribution to the body of yogic literature. Although there are numerous western spiritual leaders of American, French, British, and other nationalities in various eastern traditions (see The Book of Enlight- ened Masters: Western Teachers in Eastern Traditions, Rawlinson, 1997), there

Carried by a Promise is an excellent resource for courses in Women’s Studies and Eastern Philosophy, and for anyone open to expanding their concepts and broadening their understanding on many levels.

DOWNLOAD Cathy-Anne’s full review (via PDF)

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The afternoon began with Swami Radhananda sharing some insights about her writing process, which was followed by small-group discussions.  Hosts invited people to pick-up a cup of tea, some cookies, and make their way into cozy nooks in Mandala House.  Each group spent an hour reading the chapter and discussing what ever stood out to them.  We ended the afternoon coming back together and sharing a summary of our conversations.

It was a sweet start to a great book.  To continue the conversation and get involved, you can visit the Get Involved section of this website, where you’ll find all you need to host your own conversation.

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About 500 copies made their way from Burnaby to the Ashram and another 500 to Spokane.  The books are beautifully  printed on 100% post consumer waste paper and are 100% carbon neutral.  As of May 1st, books will be available for purchase on this website, at your local bookstore, and on amazon.com.

To continue the celebration, the Ashram will be hosting an official book launch on April 29th at 2pm.  That afternoon, we will offer a reading and group discussion followed by tea.  We hope you’ll be able to join us.

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Following the recent Kundalini & Dreams Teacher Certification, Swami Radhananda gave a satsang talk about her first experiences of the Kundalini system while taking a course led by Swami Radha, called “The Path of Liberation.” In this video, she reads from her upcoming book of memoirs and invites us to go in, open the symbols and bring them to life for ourselves.

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Swami Radhananda talks about her experience on the book tours this year and transition at the Ashram.

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Swami Radhananda reads from her memoir, Carried by a Promise. This excerpt describes her last meetings with her guru, Swami Radha, and reflections on service and surrender.

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Swami Radhananda reads from her new book, Carried by a Promise. Here she describes her first visit to Yasodhara Ashram and meeting her guru, Swami Radha

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