Nithya Yoga🔗

Yoga is not about physical fitness alone. It is also about preparing the body for realizing the aim of uniting body, mind and spirit. Nithya Yoga is the technique designed in the body language of sage Patanjali for this uniting.

Patanjali, the father of the ancient science of yoga, says at the very start of his Yoga sūtra, the foundational scripture of yoga:

yogaḥ citta vritti nirodhaḥ

He says, ‘Yoga is the cessation of the mind.’ Understand, it doesn’t mean that yoga ends with the cessation of mind, rather that yoga begins where the mind ends! Actually, yoga never ends, it can only start. It is a continuous happening.

To understand how yoga is a continuous happening, we need to understand this important truth: whatever is happening is auspicious. Be very clear, every experience raises your consciousness and makes you more mature. Even losing your wealth gives you some maturity. Losing your health gives you some understanding. When you are able to internalize this truth, you suddenly see life as a wonderful happening every moment.

A small story: There was once a ship sailing in the ocean. Suddenly, the captain of the ship saw bright lights ahead and rushed back to warn that ship to move out of the way. He quickly announced, 'Please divert your course fifteen degrees north to avoid a collision.' A voice spoke back, 'We recommend that you divert your course fifteen degrees south to avoid a collision.'

Now the captain of the ship got angry and replied in a proud and threatening way, 'This is the largest ship in the country. We are accompanied by three destroyers, defense equipment and many support ships. I demand that you change your course fifteen degrees north or counter-measures will be undertaken to ensure the safety of this ship.'

The voice replied in a straight tone, 'We are a lighthouse!'

Understand, Existence is happening continuously and guiding you also so that whatever happens to you happens in the best possible way. Just fall in tune with it, that is the best course! Yoga is a path to fall in tune, just like tuning a radio to a higher frequency. The word 'yoga' literally means 'uniting'.

Patanjali is the founder of the yoga system. He was the first master who created a clear, scientific, logical system to reproduce the experience of enlightenment.

Patanjali was the first master, or I can say the 'spiritual navigator', who created the map and gave complete directions to enlightenment. He created clear-cut directions, step by step formulae to reproduce the experience of enlightenment. Just as scientists create a formula to reproduce the understanding of the outer world phenomena, Patanjali created a beautiful formula, a technology, to reproduce the understanding of the inner world, of enlightenment.

I had the great fortune to be around a living master of yoga, Yogīraj Yogananda Puri, also called Raghupati Yogī. He had mastered the whole science of yoga as discovered by Patanjali. He had mastered all aspects of yoga including the physical aspect of bending the body into various postures called āsanā or Hatha Yoga, working with prāṇā or the life energy, working with the mind, working with visualization power, working with emotions and other dimensions of yoga. He had a deep insight into the core truths of yoga.

Only the person who has experienced the consciousness of Patanjali can bring Patanjali back to life. I had the great fortune to be with such a master who had experienced that consciousness or the inner space of Patanjali.

He had amazing strength and unimaginable physical power that he expressed so casually. He would tie an iron rope around his chest and exhale completely, then he would inhale, and the iron rope would break into pieces!

Usually a logical mind cannot accept or understand that all this is possible, but this great yogī made everything possible. I had the good fortune to be around him and see him levitating, not once but several times. He would inhale deeply and hold the breath. The moment he did that, the body would lift from the ground like an inflated balloon!

From the age of three to thirteen, I had the fortune to be at his feet, under his guidance and care. Every day from morning until noon for at least four to five hours a day, he would make me do all the traditional yogic techniques like various āsanā, neti and dhauti where I would have to swallow a long cloth to clean the intestines and the internal system!

On some days, Raghupati Yogī would ask me to sit still and be very peaceful, to meditate on stillness, peace and tranquility. Then after ten minutes, he would suddenly tell me to stand up and run around the entire temple as fast as I could!

He would make me bend this way and that way. In the temple where he would teach me yoga, there were twenty to thirty pillars. He would make me climb every stone pillar and come down. And I had to use only one hand to climb the pillars and come down! I would ask him why he was making me climb all the pillars, because I couldn't find any books or any sūtra saying climbing pillars was a part of yoga!

He said a beautiful thing, 'For whatever purpose you bend your body or move your body, that memory and idea will become completely inserted or completely recorded in your body and mind.'

It was a very shocking revelation! He said, with any intention that you move your body, bend your body, or make your body active, that intention, that purpose, will be recorded into your body. That saṁskāra will start expressing in your body.

Today, especially in the West, there has been too much of connecting diseases and āsanā (postures of yoga) as in for this disease, you have to do that āsanā, for this problem you have to do that technique. Understand, doing āsanā for solving a disease is not the purpose of yoga! When you think of a disease and do yoga with that thought in your mind, you are actually pushing the imprint of the thought of that disease into your system!

Raghupati Yogī says, any āsanā practiced, or any physical movement practiced for some purpose or with some intention, will create that effect in your body. He says that this is possible even with ordinary sitting. If you strongly believe that by sitting you will have health and you sit for health, you will see health simply happening in you!

Understand, your body itself is made out of your memory. Your mind, what you think of as you, makes up the building blocks of your body.

Every memory is recorded in your muscles. So when you change the memories, you can simply change your system also. Your system can and will respond to the memory you create. This is how the transformation in the body-mind happens through Nithya Yoga. The inner space is cleaned first so the mind falls in tune. Then the body follows as the physical movement is done with the intention. The intention gets inserted into the very muscle memory and cellular intelligence.

'We are what our perceptions are. As are our perceptions, so become our actions. As are our actions, so becomes our destiny.' This is not a quote from the Upaniṣad, but from 'The Biology of Belief', a book by Dr Bruce Lipton, a cellular biologist who has presented a new theory on how cells behave. We have been taught by society that we behave the way our genes are designed. Dr Lipton, after his research, says the opposite - our genes are designed through the way we behave!

There have been many recorded incidents of the ability of intention and visualization actually resulting in the intention becoming physical reality itself! For example, people have cured their own fatal diseases like cancer or overcome tremendous physical handicaps by pushing their limits and going beyond what they thought was their capacity. These things have happened through the power of intention which transforms basic cellular memory.

This ancient truth is now being proven with the support of modern scientific findings. It has been found that whatever we think deeply and continuously has a profound effect on us - physically, mentally and spiritually.

Nithya Yoga is my offering to the world. It is the science, the formula, that will give others the same experience of enlightenment which happened in me.

The purpose of Nithya Yoga is simple - to experience and express bliss. With Nithya Yoga, the capacity to experience bliss will just explode in your inner space. The capacity to radiate bliss will start happening in your body.

As of now, your system may not be prepared to stay in that enlightened space, to radiate that same experience continuously. Nithya Yoga prepares your body to experience and stay in and radiate the inner bliss, the eternal bliss continuously.

Through Nithya Yoga, I am training seekers not only to experience the bliss, but also to stabilize the experience in them, and to radiate that experience continuously in their life. The purpose of Nithya Yoga is to help people unclutch and experience eternal bliss. People may also find that physical healing results as a byproduct or side-effect. But be clear that yoga is for much more than physical health, which is just one benefit of yoga. The emotional benefits are also tremendous but these are also more like byproducts!

In the same way, meditation is not just for mental well being. Mental well-being is just one side-effect happening through meditation. The goal of Nithya Yoga is making your whole life, every activity and every movement transformed into yoga, into bliss.

Nithya Yoga is conducted today worldwide. Every session of Nithya Yoga deepens the uniting of the body-mind-spirit by bringing together all the eight limbs of Patanjali's Ashtanga yoga, by including all the elements like āsanā, prāṇāyāma, mudrā etc.

Nithya Yoga is not about adding more movements to your life. It is about adding more life to your movements.

If you are present, if you are aware, and if you are totally in the moment while doing anything, it is yoga – Nithya Yoga.

Paramahamsa Nityānanda is the living enlightened master of this millennium. With a worldwide movement for meditation and inner bliss, Nityānanda offers solutions for anything from everyday stress to enlightenment.

With a strong footing in the vedic tradition and embracing all world religions as paths to the ultimate Truth, Nityānanda draws people from around the world crossing all societal, cultural, language, age and gender barriers, to be a part of a grand civilization living enlightenment.

Nityānanda Mission is known as Life Bliss Foundation in the USA and Nithyananda Dhyanapeetam in other countries around the world. The ashrams and centers set up worldwide offer quantum spirituality where material and spiritual worlds merge and create blissful living.

The services provided by the organization include meditation, yoga, free energy healing through the Nitya Spiritual Healing system, free education to youth, promoting art and culture, satsang (spiritual gatherings), specialized programs for corporates, prisons etc, free medical camps including specialized eye, dental and gynecological treatment, complementary medicines from āyurvedā, siddha and homeopathy, free meals at all ashrams worldwide, a holistic system of education for children through an in-house gurukul,and residential life skills training programs for youth.

Nityānandā’s mission aims to initiate at least one hundred thousand people into ‘living enlightenment’, empowering them to live a conflict-free life in the inner and outer worlds, expressing their ultimate potential every moment.

In his own words, ‘When you start living enlightenment, you automatically raise the human consciousness around you. Living enlightenment holds the key to global peace and inner bliss. Every individual should be a pioneer in this transition of human consciousness to divine consciousness.’

Life Solutions & Meditation Workshops: Programs uniquely designed for corporate personnel, individuals, children, students and young adults, and the physically or mentally challenged. The training and technologies that Nithyananda offers in these programs give people the tools they need to create successful lives in the midst of global challenges.

Nithya Yoga: Nityānanda is reviving Patanjali's authentic system of Yoga. 'Nithya Yoga' revolutionizes our understanding of the true purpose of yoga, which is the integration and transformation of the individual at all levels - body, mind and being. Individuals specifically trained in this system offer classes in centers, universities, prisons and yoga studios around the world.

Medical Camps: Free treatment and therapies for the needy with allopathy, homeopathy, āyurvedā, acupuncture, gynecology, ophthalmology diagnosis and surgery, blood donation camps and more.

Rural Education: Rural Indian schools receive support through donation of new building blocks, uniforms, educational materials and meditation programs free of charge.

Life Bliss Technology: A 3-months/ two year life skills training program offered as a residential course to young adults under the direct guidance of Nityānandā. Participants learn skills for practical and successful living rooted in the science of enlightenment. They graduate as dynamic leaders in their respective businesses and communities with great spiritual strength.

Life Bliss Engineering: A three months residential course offered to youth for developing a yogic body and a Vedic mind, thus enabling them to live enlightenment. Conduted under the direct guidance of Paramahamsa, this program is a lifetime opportunity to live with an enlightened master in the energy field.

The Nithyananda Order: Spiritual aspirants are ordained as sanyāsis, brahmacāris and brahmacāriṇis and undergo years of intensive training in the sciences of yoga, meditation, traditional pūjā, the Sanskrit language and vedic chanting, all of which form the basis of blissful and successful living. They administer the mission's multifarious activities at the ashrams and centers worldwide, thus serving Paramahamsa’s global vision for the positive transformation of humanity.

Nithyananda Gurukul: A modern scientific approach to education combined with the vedic system of learning. The Gurukul protects and develops the innate intelligence of the children, thus enabling them to mature and excel without repression, fear or peer pressure, as wonderful energies of love and compassion.

Promotion of Vedic Culture and Tradition: The ashrams, temples and worldwide centers of the mission actively raise individual awareness and train people in the arts and sciences of the Indian cultural tradition. They are spiritual laboratories providing ongoing research and learning of the diverse facets of the rich vedic culture, thus creating a new appreciation for these ancient traditions.

Formal Membership in Meditation Therapy (FIMT): A three month correspondence program to become a meditation teacher.

A cakra-based meditation program that relaxes and energizes the seven major cakra or subtle energy centers in the body. It gives clear intellectual and experiential understanding of various emotions such as greed, fear, worry, attention-need, stress, jealousy, ego and discontentment.

A meditation program that creates the space to detach from ingrained and unconscious emotions like guilt, pleasure and pain. It is a gateway to a new life that is driven by natural intelligence and spontaneous enthusiasm.

An enlightenment intensive program for sincere seekers offering yoga, powerful teachings, meditation, initiation and more. This program is an intense experience to prepare the body-mind system to hold and radiate the experience of 'living enlightenment'.

An experiential meditation program sowing in you the seed of living enlightenment. It empowers you with the energy to align your actions with your intentions so you move with success and inner bliss.

Over 500 powerful video clips of Nithyananda's talks are available for free online at www.youtube.com/LifeBlissFoundation

Visit www.nithyanandagalleria.com and www.lifeblissgalleria.com to purchase galleria items including books, DVDs, CDs and energized items and jewelry.

Bengaluru, Karnataka

(Spiritual headquarters and Nityānanda Vedic Temple) Nithyanandapuri, Off Mysore Road, Bidadi, Bengaluru - 562 109 Karnataka, INDIA Ph.: +91 +80 27202801 / +91 92430 48957 Email: [email protected] URL:www.nithyananda.org

Los Angeles, USA

A practical guide to powerful meditation techniques and the secrets of yoga, this book also provides a rare enlightened insight into the inner workings of the mind, why meditation is needed and what is the original purpose of yoga.