Heart Yoga

***WINNER, 2010 Spirituality & Practice Best Spiritual Book Award – Yoga In Heart Yoga, renowned spiritual writer and Sacred Activist Andrew Harvey and longtime yoga teacher Karuna Erickson present a vision of hatha yoga practice that links ancient spiritual traditions to contemporary life. Including excerpts of poetic sacred writing from mystical sages through the ages, the book reminds readers that the purpose of yoga is not to improve one's physical health or even to achieve peace of mind (although these results may be achieved along the way), but to reach a state of unity with the divine, the goal of mystics from all traditions. With detailed descriptions and photographs of fifty yoga poses and their alchemical effects on the body and consciousness, Heart Yoga presents yoga as a simple meditative practice that enables the practitioner to dwell in the heart and experience the bliss of union with the sacred power underlying all of life. The book explains how to prepare for Heart Yoga and describes the “Five Great Joys” that are part of the path. Included are the authors' own compelling stories of their individual journeys along the path of yoga: stories of suffering, transcendence, and joy that both inspire and enlighten.

Truth is not something we have to seek out. It is not something that is absent and far away, requiring great effort to find. Truth is present within you as the Life that is you. In Yoga of Heart, Los Angeles-based yoga instructor Mark Whitwell takes us back to the time when yoga was first developed--to the shamanic past of the Upanishads, when yoga was practiced as a means of acknowledging, enjoying, and participating in the very source of Life. Whitwell explores the deeper tantric dimensions of hatha yoga--how yoga's purpose is to link the mind to the wonder of our own condition. He shows how hatha yoga is participation in life's polarities already in union--through the male surrender to the female principle. Yoga of Heart shows how we can forge that union of polarities within our body: above and below, front and back, left and right, male and female. Yoga of Heart focuses especially on clearing the energy centers and meridians, fostering dynamic health and allowing practitioners to create a deeper intimacy with both their partners and the energetic life forces in the universe.

This beautifully designed new edition includes more than forty illustrated yoga postures, providing a practical guide for connecting to the divine within. I bring you the gift of the ages, your birthright, with a heart filled with love for you. I give to you, as Jesus gave to me, the science of the sacred heart — how to activate the sacred seals, the light of God that lies dormant in humanity. Jesus graciously gave me an ancient practice using the science of prayer, which he used and understood. The formula he gave me for prayer is Sacred Heart Yoga, a personal resurrection into love. Sacred Heart Yoga provides a living opportunity to experience God come alive in every cell of your body. As you hear the voice of God bring you messages of love and wisdom, you will begin to feel and understand God’s love for you. Your body will become illuminated, your soul educated, and your frequency quickened as the light becomes more alive in you. May you have the pleasure of experiencing the divinity within you. Subjects Include Sacred Heart Yoga Lineage The Phenomenon of Activating the Seven Sacred Seals The Science of the Body The Law of Acceptance The Principles of Being

The first yoga text to outline a step-by-step sequence for developing a complete practice according to viniyoga--yoga adapted to the needs of the individual. • A contemporary classic by a world-renowned teacher. • This new edition adds thirty-two poems by Krishnamacharya that capture the essence of his teachings. Sri Tirumalai Krishnamacharya, who lived to be over 100 years old, was one of the greatest yogis of the modern era. Elements of Krishnamacharya's teaching have become well known around the world through the work of B. K. S. Iyengar, Pattabhi Jois, and Indra Devi, who all studied with Krishnamacharya. Krishnamacharya's son T. K. V. Desikachar lived and studied with his father all his life and now teaches the full spectrum of Krishnamacharya's yoga. Desikachar has based his method on Krishnamacharya's fundamental concept of viniyoga, which maintains that practices must be continually adapted to the individual's changing needs to achieve the maximum therapeutic value. In The Heart of Yoga Desikachar offers a distillation of his father's system as well as his own practical approach, which he describes as "a program for the spine at every level--physical, mental, and spiritual." This is the first yoga text to outline a step-by-step sequence for developing a complete practice according to the age-old principles of yoga. Desikachar discusses all the elements of yoga--poses and counterposes, conscious breathing, meditation, and philosophy--and shows how the yoga student may develop a practice tailored to his or her current state of health, age, occupation, and lifestyle. This is a revised edition of The Heart of Yoga.

A practical "how-to" guide for persons who want to learn how to meditate or practice yoga in a way that is consistent with their Christian faith.

Poems inspired by yoga, meditation and the natural world, by long-term practitioner and teacher of yoga.

An encyclopedia of yoga practice and practical yoga as well as of the philosophy and background of yoga.

The practice of Yoga is now being widely embraced by the West in an endless range of evolving formats, particularly with added movement components. It is therefore very timely that Osho with his razor-sharp insight, respect, and compassion for the individual, brings a wider understanding of the potential benefits of Yoga for contemporary people in these talks on the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali. Patanjali lived around 400BC and although Yoga was already in existence, he was able through his unique combination of logician, poet, and mystic, to present Yoga in a way that could be of help to all. And that continues to be true today. Osho describes Patanjali as a mathematician of the ultimate poetry; a mystic with a scientific mind, who analyzes and dissects as if in a lab, but his lab is one of the inner being. Patanjali has searched deeply into human energy and devised many techniques; he has found that in order to meditate, the body, mind, and being need to be healthy. His discovery that the body energy becomes whole with the chanting of om, the basic sound of existence, and his findings of the deep connection between breathing and thinking have been of great importance to generations of meditators. ?The body is your anchor, your ship which will lead you to the other shore. The body keeps the treasure, the seeds of the divine within you protected.? Osho