Sivananda Yoga & The Spiritual Path

By Shambhu

I have become a regular attendee at the San Francisco Sivananda Yoga Vedanta Center. Over the past five years I have been developing a morning routine so that I could live each day of my life from a spiritual base. I discovered that yoga fit in beautifully to my morning practice.

The people that I have come to know at the Center and the yoga that I have learned there have had a strong positive impact on my life. What I have learned has re-shaped my viewpoint of what yoga has to offer. It is a system that encompasses all aspects of life and can lead you as far and deeply into the spiritual path as you want to go. Some people only come for the asana classes but I chose to go deeper.

Swami Padmapadananda and the staff that run the Center are friendly and inviting people willing to spread the principles of yoga to anyone who comes to the Center. I feel so welcome that I feel as if the people I know there are my spiritual family. Because of this I have chosen to go deeper on the path and become a student of yoga at the Center. I decided to become initiated into japa meditation, take on a spiritual name which was given to me by Swami Padma, and donate time at the center.

Each Wednesday, I start my day with the 6:00 am satsang (silent meditation followed by kirtan chanting) I then take the 7:30am class and stay to donate time afterwards to help to do what is called karma yoga, which could any of the following: helping to clean the facility, helping out in the kitchen, or helping the Swami with working on the Prison Outreach Project, a program that was created to help spread yoga in the prison system.

I can really see through my experiences that there is a whole world of opportunity for me to dig deeper into the spirituality of yoga. This past summer I decided to attend a retreat at the center's affiliated ashram in Grass Valley. That retreat opened my eyes to the concept of taking the Teachers Training Course that they offer there to become a certified Sivananda yoga instructor. This concept resonated so deeply in me that it has become a major objective in my life. I think it would be an honor to pass on what I have learned so far to others and look forward to the opportunity to do that by becoming a teacher of this wonderful tradition.

Om Namah Shivaya,
Shambhu