The program’s title of “Inner Engineering” holds few clues to the experiential nature of the weekend. Many participants were drawn to the event after encountering Isha Foundation founder and renowned humanitarian Sadhguru Vasudev on the web. His YouTube channel videos cover a range of myriad topics from stress, addictions, relationships and success, the body and health, to spirituality and the path of a spiritual seeker, always synthesizing witty jokes with piercing observations and flawless, often mind-bending logic.
Other attendees, who traveled from around the San Francisco Bay Area as well as across the country, had heard of Isha Foundation’s work offering yoga and meditation programs such as Inner Engineering around the world, or of their mass social outreach initiatives for education, environment, and health. Still others were drawn by the prospect of personal health benefits and relief from chronic ailments, as well as reduced stress, depression, and anxiety achieved through the yogic practices.
Once the sessions began, however, participants realized what they had stumbled upon was not just another workshop or set of lessons to learn, but an opportunity to examine their lives to the very core. Sadhguru, founder of Isha Foundation and creator of the Inner Engineering program, explains that, “As there is a science and technology for external well-being, there is a whole science and technology for inner well-being.” The 10,000-year-old science of yoga understands the human system not just as a physical body, but as five layers of body. These five layers are the physical body, mental body, pranic energy body, etheric body and bliss body. It is alignment of the bodies, the koshas, that allows a yoga practitioner to experience the bliss at the core of human life.
(Above): Sadhguru Vasudev during a session at the San Mateo event. [Photo: ISHA Foundation]
“The reason why most people in the world do not know joy is that the physical, the mental, and the ‘pranic’ or the energy-body, are not in alignment. The core of you is joy; over that there are four layers. If they are properly aligned, a natural expression, an overwhelming expression of joyfulness will naturally happen within a human being,” explained Sadhguru in a recent introductory talk. “People may achieve this state in so many ways. Someone is listening to music and at a certain moment he experiences joyfulness because in that moment his physical body, mind, energy, everything is focused in one direction, and suddenly, a burst of joyfulness happens within. Maybe somebody is dancing, it happens with him. Maybe somebody is looking at something beautiful, it happens to him. These are all different ways that it may happen. Now (in Inner Engineering programs) we are looking at the technology of keeping these three bodies constantly aligned so that joyfulness is not an accidental happening; joyfulness becomes a normal condition, a natural way of living for you.”
The San Mateo program included teaching a daily yogic practice called Shambhavi Mahamudra kriya, a powerful 21-minute energy technique that brings the entire system in alignment so that body, mind, emotions and energies function in harmony. In learning and understanding the kriya practice, the group explored the effect on the body and energy system of everything from their breath, their physical postures, to the sounds that they make and the food that they eat.
Tamra Walker, a participant, shares about a meditative process using specific sounds, “There were over 800 of us sitting on the floor on mats in the San Mateo Expo hall with Sadhguru. He sat alone on the stage on a padded bench, legs crossed. He gave simple, concise instructions for posture as we prepared to learn to chant AUM. Closing our eyes, he led us, his voice low, calm and sure through the microphone. After the fifth AUM, our voices synced together making glorious harmonics. Such vibration. I felt the connection in my body, from my stomach to my upper chest and throat to my nose. In the silence after the last AUM, hot, heavy tears puddled in my eyes. I couldn’t hold them back. Bliss.”
Between learning the practices and the sessions of riveting discourse from Sadhguru, as well as questions and interactive discussions, the 1,000 participants and volunteers in attendance also enjoyed nutritious high-energy meals, spirited live music from Sounds of Isha musicians, and lighthearted games which reflected the joyous mood of the whole event.
Another attendee Jennifer Lomboy shared, “100 years ago, one had to travel by boat across the ocean and go around the East word-of-mouth hoping to find one like Sadhguru, let alone be granted a method for spiritual evolution. But, thanks to Sadhguru and the course of our times, many more people from this weekend will now be blossoming in the U.S. This was a humbling and enriching experience to be a part of. Days later, I’m still moved to tears and observing my own clarifying happening within.”
Sadhguru Vasudev is slated to return to the U.S. in spring 2014 to offer the Inner Engineering and other programs.
Interested readers can visit ishafoundation.org for more information.
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