By Rama Berch, C.S.Y.T., E-RYT 500

You hear this question often, "What are the differences between your two sides?"  There are many reasons your Svaroopa® yoga teacher asks this question, as she or he guides you through your class.  Some of the reasons are about your body and some are not.  While the question is about your body, much more is hidden within it. When I asked what got them started in yoga, nineteen answered that they wanted help with physical pain or problems.  One had a completely different reason, saying, “I wanted more out of life and thought yoga might offer it.”  Most new yogis need and want specific physical changes, which Svaroopa® yoga easily provides.

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By Rama Berch, C.S.Y.T., E-RYT 500

Connection is important. This article is an important way of staying connected. Cell phone calls are too, which is why I am never bothered when someone’s cell phone rings – it means someone wants to stay connected to the student in the classroom, even though it is an inconvenient time. The importance of connection is especially apparent during the year-end holidays. Your holiday celebrations with these people may be deeply fulfilling or quite frustrating. To work with that, you need to understand what happens when you connect with someone.

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By Rama Berch, C.S.Y.T., E-RYT 500

Freedom of choice is all you’ve got. Everything else in your life and in your being comes from it. When the phone rings, you choose to answer it or not. When the alarm goes off in the morning, you choose to get up or not. When a mealtime comes, you choose what to eat (or whether to eat). When someone speaks to you, you choose whether to answer and what you’ll say. Every moment is a choice-full moment, whether you are conscious of it or not.

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By Rama Berch, C.S.Y.T., E-RYT 500

I was standing next to the curb, waiting for an airport shuttle, when a woman walked by me, pulling a suitcase on wheels. A few feet past me she stopped, made a loud and frustrated, “Aaargh!” and threwher hands up in the air. I was concerned that something was seriously wrong and turned to speak to her. She turned away from me, put her foot up on the edge of a planter, and proceeded to retie her shoelace.This is called overreaction.

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By Rama Berch, C.S.Y.T., E-RYT 500

Everyone has illumined moments whether they do yoga or not, but illumined moments are not enough. It’s like finding one chocolate chip in an ice cream pie – it’s not enough. Yoga is about living from your own illuminedessence – all the time. To get there, you need some conditioning and preparation. The healing and transformation
you get are the conditioning and preparation – not the goal.

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By Rama Berch, C.S.Y.T., E-RYT 500

Whatever physical problems you started with or are still working on, you already know that you feel better when you do yoga. Whether you are doing poses at home, taking a class or getting private sessions, your yoga gives you an immediate improvement in your body. The more yoga you do, the more changes you get, and they are progressively faster and easier. It’s a cause-and-effect relationship, absolutely reliable.

 Click here to download Healing, Transformation, & Illumination 

By Rama Berch, C.S.Y.T., R.Y.T.

The hardest thing we ask a new student to do is at the beginning of their first class – to lie in Shavasana. Many things contribute to the difficulty: they don’t know what is going to happen, they are in a strange room with some people (who seem really strange), and they don’t yet know how to relax. But the most difficult part is that their body is laying there, well propped and cushioned, in comfort and stillness, but their mind is still racing. Even after many classes or many years of yoga, you may experience the conundrum of having your body in stillness while your mind is still churning.

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You need to breathe. Especially if you have any aches or pains, any injuries or illnesses, if your mind is racing much of the time or your anxiety and stress level is high – you need to do more breathing. Specifically, you need to do more yoga breathing. Ujjayi Pranayama is taught at the beginning of every Svaroopa® yoga class because it is the most important of yoga’s breathing practices. If you compare equal amounts of time in the poses to doing the breathing practice, you get more benefit from Ujjayi Pranayama (ood-jaw-yee praa-naa-yaa-ma).

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It’s that time of year again. It’s time to take an honest look at yourself and see if there are any improvements you would like to make. An honest assessment of yourself is called for. This is not a snap judgment or even a continuation of the inner stream of self criticism. This is a clear-eyed look at how you are, who you are, what you do, and even whether or not you even like yourself.

 Click here to download Choosing to Change

When you go for a walk in the woods or take a bit of a delicious tidbit, a feeling rises inside. It is a bubbling up, a light and delightful filling that rises inside you. This feeling… is called udana prana in Sanskrit… It comes from an inner source and rises within you.
–Rama Berch

When something happens on the outside, your mind stops, even if only for a moment, and this feeling arises inside. It is called happiness. It comes from an inner source and rises within you.
–Rama Berch

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Everything you do in your life, you do in order to be happy. This is true even with the things you don’t like to do. For example, many people work in a job they don’t like. They stay in the job because the pay makes them happy, or the benefits, or the security it provides.

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Your body is made of atoms, just like every other physical object. Those atoms are made up of subatomic particles, which are tiny bits of contracted energy swirling around in vast amounts of empty space. The subatomic particles that make up your body are the same subatomic particles that make up everything else, including what you are sitting or standing on, the air you are breathing, the meal you ate recently, etc. These particles include protons, neutrons, electrons, quarks and mesons, which move in different patterns to become everything that exists, including your body.

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‘Tis the season to be jolly – to feast, to play, to celebrate with loved ones. The daily-ness of life is arduous, with more things that need to be done than time to do them. Take advantage of this season and respond to the invitations to experience a lightness of heart and a few moments of pure silliness.

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Every yoga teacher knows that September is back to school month (in the USA), and enjoys welcoming back students who got caught up in the lazy days of summer. Welcome to all of you, as well as to those of you who continued throughout the summer.

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There are two types of desire. I will call the most common one the “Passing Desire.” It is a desire that arises from an inner feeling of being incomplete. It might be a desire that is easy to fulfill, maybe to eat something or to phone somebody.

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When you lose track of the radiance and purity of this inner drive, it still propels you forward but you mistake it for a drive toward worldly accomplishments. These parts of life are important, but they exhaust you and create a lot of inner turmoil.

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