MyLifeYoga

Ashtanga yoga is the closest feeling to being HOME that I have ever experienced. This challenging yet infinitely rewarding style of yoga has changed my life in so many unforeseen ways for the last thirteen years and continues to do so every time I step on my yoga mat. How can ashtanga yoga be such a tool for transformation? I’m not really sure myself, because for me, yoga is all about Spirit, and therefore isn’t to be fully understood by the rational mind, but is a feeling to be experienced.

I began ashtanga yoga while working as an exercise physiologist and a personal trainer. I had been practicing more gentle styles of yoga for two years previously and was making very little progress in my practice. Fifteen years of compulsive cardiovascular and weight training exercise had left my body and my being, in what I now feel was a crippled state of existence. I had created so many imbalances in my body from conventional exercise and was paying the price of tight muscles, injured knees and an unfulfilled sense of Self. Therefore, I took a great leap into the unknown and let go of my controlling mind, which had dictated my exercise behavior for half my life and decided to do a pilot study on myself, by just practicing Ashtanga yoga, without any other form of exercise for one month. After all, if I was going to exercise for two hours a day, I wanted to be doing something I enjoyed and was meaningful to my personal and spiritual growth. In that defining moment I was liberated from my previous gym mentally, which was the best choice I have ever made concerning my health and longevity. I haven’t been to a gym in eleven years! As a health professional, I whole-heartedly believe that Ashtanga yoga is the most effective and thorough form of yoga, exercise, weight management, addiction recovery, physical therapy and psychotherapy. It truly is magical! Continue reading →

James Lynn was a brilliant and successful self-made millionaire who came from an extremely humble background. Though successful he felt a spiritual vacuum inside. Then he met Paramahamsa Yogananda in 1932 and his life changed. His story so far has been desribed in an earlier post.

These were not easy times. In the 1930’s the great depression had commenced and it would continue on for the next 15 years to become one of the largest worldwide economic meltdowns in human history. Yogananda found the going tough and he was sustained mainly by a monthly stipend coming from his father in India. Yogananda had met many wealthy patrons before but he was uncompromising that any support that they provide should come without any strings attached.

In James Lynn, however, Yogananda found a worthy disciple. James was completely receptive and a quick learner. Yogananda later said, “When students ask me why James Lynn was able to make such rapid progress, I reply: ‘He knows how to listen.’”

Within a few years of their first meeting, James Lynn had taken over the financial burden of running the Self Realization Fellowship from the shoulders of Paramahamsa Yogananda. This was a great blessing as Yogananda was able to focus exclusively on his spiritual work. Paramahamsa visited India because his guru beckoned him. He tied up loose ends there and returned back to author the bestselling “Autobiography of an Yogi” and other bestselling books. These books have gone on to become spiritual classics and have altered the course of human thought. They have accelerated the flow of yoga to the west and throughout the world.

Of course the great depression was no match to slow James Lynn down. In 1938 he expanded into the oil business. Within a few years the oil business had expanded so much that profits from the highly profitable insurance business formed just a small percentage of his total income. One would think that given the daunting economic environment it would take titanic effort to just keep afloat. Yet James Lynn’s businesses thrived and he expanded into new fields. And what is even more remarkable is that while he was doing all this he made phenomenal progress in his meditation practice under the guidance of Paramahamsa Yogananda.

How did he do this? Continue reading →