Yoga at its Best --- Svaroopa Yoga Conference (2009)

This conference, held biannually under sponsorship of the Master Yoga Foundation, is open to everyone --- interested beginners, active practitioners, and Svaroopa teachers earning continuing education credits for their certifications. It provides a comprehensive and accessible Hatha Yoga experience, including assisted asana (pose) practice, readings and review of traditional Yogic texts, mantra (chanting) and kirtan (song), meditation, vichara (guided self-awareness), and, of course, food! The registration fee, which includes most meals, is reasonable for the contact hours involved and the immersive nature of the experience: pre-breakfast mantra and meditation, two-hour workshops and training sessions, evening lectures, and more mantra and kirtan before bed. A full day at the conference is a sunrise to well-past-sunset event; optional pre- and post-conference workshops and lectures are also available.

This year's conference included the formal installation of its founder, Swami Nirmalananda Saraswati (Rama Berch), as the spiritual head of Svaroopa Yoga. As Nirmalananda carefully explained before the installation and Fire Ceremony, this process in no way constitutes a Guru-Student relationship between her and the teachers and practitioners of Svaroopa Yoga; she honors and practices the concept of guru in the traditional sense, as a voluntary and close one-on-one relationship initiated by the student. Although she took formal sannyasa initiation as a nun in the Order of Saraswati in India this past January (after more than thirty years of Yogic practice and study), her role in Svaroopa Yoga is very much within the Western context of senior teacher and mentor.

In many ways, Svaroopa Yoga exemplifies the best of East and West: a focus on asana without devolving into mere calisthenics and formulaic stretching, and an in-depth and text-based approach to the supportive practices (sutra contemplation, meditation, mantra, kirtan) without the requirement of residing in an ashram or beholding oneself to a guru. The senior instructors of Svaroopa Yoga include a research scientist and registered nurse, and the board of directors comprises Yogis who are also dedicated to the professional skills they bring with them (accounting, education, event coordination). Practitioners and attendees of the conference cover a wide range of age and physical ability (teens to seniors well into their retirement), and teachers come from an equally wide range of professional and experiential backgrounds. Svaroopa Yoga and its parent organization, Master Yoga Foundation, maintain and build upon rigorous certification criteria for their instructors.

If a single word could sum up the spirit of Svaroopis, that word would be Buoyancy. While they take their practice seriously, the nature of the practice itself --- lineaged to Kashmir Shaivism, a Tantric* tradition of Yoga --- focuses on accessing the divine universal essence already present within each of us (and, more precisely, expressed as each of us). This does not require a conversion to the religions or spiritualities that informed the development of Kashmir Shaivism, as all religious expression (and rational inquiry) are held as aspects of consciousness. What it does require is a willingness to dive into the depths of the Self to uncover the authentic experience of Being.

*Tantra is often misunderstood in the West as being a Yoga of sexual practice. In reality, sexual practice is one of many forms of Tantric Yoga, which posits that the energy of the manifested universe is essentially divine.