Sivananda World News: the Sivananda Yoga Vedanta Centres

We celebrated Rosh Hashanah (the Jewish New Year) with a traditional seder which consisted of a delicious feast, prayers, and beautiful songs. At the conclusion of the feast, we celebrated Swami Paramananda’s birthday. A highlight was an inspiring lecture with Swami Durgananda ‘Obstacles and How to Overcome Them’, lovingly sharing Swamiji’s teachings on how to work with the ego as the main obstacle. We also thank Niranjan Babu for a wonderful Vastu Shastra 4-day course sharing the Vedic knowledge to create healing energy with space and architecture, including the use of mantra. On Thursday Bhagirathi completed the Ayurveda for beginner’s course and the students were very happy and grateful for everything they learned. We were supposed to meet in person for this time, but now are meeting online for Module 2 with focus on Yoga Philosophy (Swami Sitaramananda); Anatomy and Physiology (Sw Jnaneswariananda); Ayurveda (MahaVidya); Arun Deva (Ayurveda Yoga Therapy). A good number of students joined the free course with Dr Kamlesh on Ayurveda while we had a nice small but sincere group of students for the course with Dr Marilyn Rossner. We also had a very special course with the beautiful 5-day History & Appreciation of Indian Art & Culture - Lectures and films with Benoy Behl.

Raghunath Manet intervened live from India again to introduce his upcoming course "Introduction to Indian Classical Dance". Meanwhile, in September in the Bahamas, we celebrated the birthday of Swami Sivananda Saraswati with a morning Puja in the main temple, as well as an Indian feast for supper and Akhanda kirtan from eight in the morning until eight at night. The course was well attended, given the timing and the world’s situation. As September progressed so did the TTC course, with the students enjoying the course very much. She will be very much missed. Om Namah Sivaya. As a precautionary measure due to the COVID-19 pandemic, we will not have yoga retreats or day visitors during the month of October 2020. We will only welcome students from the Teacher Training Course. While back in Chicago, Radha began training and transferring responsibility of the Centre to Mahadevi. Strengthens the biceps, deltoid muscles and back. Before leaving his body, he told us to take care of this organization. The plumber took care of a leak in the reception area. The vacation guests were happy to take part in the yoga classes, Satsangs and walks in nature. The vacation guests were grateful for the opportunity to be here and take part in the yoga classes, Satsangs and walks in nature.

Meanwhile during May we were invited by the Technical University in Munich to take part in stress-reduction week for their students. As we stayed connected online, we also were very much present offline with the Ashram residential program, inviting guests to come for 2 week stays or more. This time we heard about how the Pandavas and Kauravas came to young adulthood, and next week we will hear more about the events that eventually led to the fateful battle of Kurukshetra. Benoy’s heartfelt presentation connected us to the paintings of the Ajanta caves, bronze and sandstone sculpture, sacred dance as devotion, and much more. We said farewell to a couple of the residents with more to come soon. We said hello to a few more karma yogis - Kaitlin, Lalita and Jean Marc. From India, the priest led us in elevating Pujas for the Divine Mother Lakshmi with recitation of the Lalita Sahasranama. From India, the priest led us in a series of elevating Pujas for Masters Birthday and the Divine Mother Sarasvati, with recitation of the Lalita Sahasranama. Rukmini Chaitanya picked up the storytelling from where the Mahabharata ends by beginning a series of tales from the Srimad Bhagavatam.

In the Satsangs, we heard the tragic tale of Radheya in a continuation of Jnaneshwari Chaitanya’s series of stories from the Mahabharata. Swamiji visited the Centre for many days giving inspiring Satsangs, putting a dose of sattva in the house, guiding and inspiring everyone. Sometimes Sattva prevails in man. Alongside, we had a further teacher training on how to teach yoga to children, with Ananta. If we wish to learn yoga, we need to find a teacher who can teach us yoga. We completed a certificate course with Swami Kailasananda - "How to Find Purpose in Life". The current ladies batch completed their course. A Positive Thinking Course started which three of our karma yogis attended and enjoyed. Respecting social distancing, we started live Satsangs, study groups and asana classes using the growing social media software of Facebook Live and Zoom. This month we started fourth new courses: Gita, Meditation, positive thinking and Kirtan. Topics were presented by Swami Sitaramananda (Importance of Lineage); Srinivasan (Bhagavad Gita; Chanting for Emotional Regulation); Swami Jnaneswariananda (Philosophy of Yoga; A&P of Hatha Yoga); Swami Dharmananda (Positive Thinking); Swami AdiParashaktiananda (Hatha Yoga Theory & Practice).

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