The Spirit of Sivananda | A Traditional Practice

Taking a traditional Sivananda class is like traveling to a different country at an earlier time and is unlike any other. It has been practiced for many years and was one of the first styles of yoga brought to the United States from India in 1957. The physical aspect of the practice (poses/asanas) revolves around the same 12 basic postures in each class, including frequent relaxation & deep yogic breathing during and between each pose.

What to Expect:

An Open Class is a traditional, slow paced, meditative class that helps encourage proper breathing, flexibility, strength and vitality in the body while calming the mind. Because Yoga is a spiritual system with a physical component, this non-competitive approach helps the practitioner gain much more than just a healthy body.

A typical open level class includes pranayama (breathing exercises), warm-ups including Sun Salutations (Surya Namaskar), 12 basic asanas (postures) and deep relaxation. The focus is on mastering the basic asanas from which variations are then added to further deepen the practice. The asanas follow an exact order that allows for the systematic movement of every major part of the body in a balanced way that enhances prana or life force energy, keeping the mind quiet and without the need to think beyond each individual pose. Additional variations may also be taught.

Background:

Sivananda Yoga is a spiritual system founded by Swami Sivananda and refined by his disciple, Vishnu Devananda; it includes the use of asanas (physical postures) but is not limited to them as in systems of yoga as exercise. This yogic system equally emphasizes Pranayama (breathwork), relaxation, a svattic (vegetarian/non-stimulating) diet, vedanta philosophy, and meditation. Vedanta philosophy is the pursuit of knowledge into the Brahman (the absolute) and the Ātman. 

The Brahman Atman is the Absolute Reality of existence. Brahman is sometimes referred to as the Godhead. Brahman cannot be described. It can only be experienced. So when we say, “Atman is Brahman,” we're saying that the individual soul is the same as the universal soul