by guest author Madi Das, Kirtan Shakti Courtesy of Integral Yoga® Magazine, Summer 2015 Most days, I go to my regular job, wearing my regular clothes, and I type regular things into my regular computer until it’s time to go home. My co-workers know me as Joe, that guy who has enough light banter to be social, but not so much as to get distracted from his typing. Joe is a good guy. Familiar. Dependable. You know the type. But on Tuesday nights, I trade my collared shirt and GAP slacks … [Read more...]
Search Results for: kirtan
How Yoga Kirtan Helped Me Find My True Voice and Share it With The World
By Premratna, Premratna Music If I try to imagine what the course of my life would have taken without yoga, I get an image of the movie Life of Pi: a small boat, huge swells, a tiger on board and a lot of fear. Yoga found me while I was doing my ‘big O.E.’; that phase of life where we are typically searching for adventure. I was no exception. In between hiking, skiing, singing and songwriting, I went to a yoga class at the gym in the Canadian Rockies where I was living and working. The … [Read more...]
Why kirtan is one of the most powerful yoga practices you’ll ever do
Photo credit: Pete Longworth by Kara-Leah I want to let you in on a secret. Ok, it's not really a secret, because I'm telling you right? But until I actually experienced this for myself I had absolutely no idea of how powerful this particular yoga practice is. It is the most powerful practice I have done. Ever. … [Read more...]
Bhakti Yoga & Kirtan – it’s How Yogis get High
by Kara-Leah The mission of this website is to get everybody in New Zealand doing yoga - but it's really important to remember that yoga is not just about the physical postures called asana. One of the lesser known and yet perhaps most powerful forms of yoga is Bhakti Yoga. This is the yoga of devotion and is often practiced via kirtan - or chants. Take a moment to think of your favourite music right now, and how it makes you feel when you sing it - when you lose yourself and get right into the … [Read more...]
Asia Pacific Yoga
300 Hour Hatha Vinyasa Yoga Teacher Training, led by Steve Hall, Joleen Lunjew & Guest Teachers If you feel that you are ready to take that next step and become a RYT500 certified yoga teacher, then this course is for you! This Yoga Alliance accredited and internationally recognised 300 Hour Hatha Vinyasa Yoga Teacher Training is for teachers ready to embrace a more profound understanding of the power of Yoga practices. It is for those who are looking to immerse themselves in … [Read more...]
Expand your yoga into the dreamscape.
By Sarah Marlowe Spence That time a vacuum cleaner sabotaged my kirtan. Yup, an odd situation. So I delved into that dream to figure out what it was trying to tell me. Dreams happen to most of us when we’re asleep, yet dreams can also be daydreams of where you want to go in life, or waking dreams, i.e. what is happening right now in life. When I was a teenager, I found a dream dictionary in the secondhand bookstore, as we did in life before Google. I wondered what the meanings of my busy … [Read more...]
Trust in The Flow: How Reflection Can be a Tool for Yoga, Singing & Life in General
by Sarah Spence ‘Mindfulness’ is a buzz word these days. I ponder whether ‘reflection’ will join it, given that leadership teams in corporate organisations are now given journals to write in. Regardless, let’s celebrate that these kind of tools are making it to the mainstream. The quality of self-observation is key to both yoga, mindfulness and to managing the mind. I discovered reflection as a yogic tool when I showed up at a yoga ashram in Western Canada. I’d been attending Power … [Read more...]
Jason Corliss: Love Fully, Live the Moment, Believe in the Magic
by Kara-Leah Grant The last time I saw Jason Corliss - Organic Mechanic founder, wizard, shaman, healer, sage - was at Kawai Purapura on Sunday, February 11th, 2018, for a Cacao Ceremony. He was outside, dancing, in the rain. This weekend - the weekend of his funeral, was the International Yoga Festival at Kawai Purapura, and I was presenting. Grace meant I was scheduled only for Friday and Sunday, so I was able to go and sit with Jase at the funeral home on Saturday morning before … [Read more...]
10 Things I Wish I Knew Before I Started Yoga
by Lucinda Staniland Most of us come to yoga with a whole lot of misconceptions about what yoga is. I was no different. Here are some of the mistakes that I made, and lessons that I learnt, as a new yoga student. 1. Asana does not equal yoga. When I started doing yoga I was awed by the strength and grace of the physical practice I saw my fellow students doing. I couldn't wait for the day when I too would move with such beauty. I fell in love with asana. But asana (physical postures) is not … [Read more...]
The Real Meaning of Aum and Why We Chant It
by Kara-Leah Grant An extract from 'The No-More-Excuses Guide to Yoga' The number one thing that freaks out new yoga students is the thought of opening their mouth and making a vowel sound followed by a consonant in a room full of strangers. Yes, the simple sound of OM makes people want to run screaming from the room. There are a few reasons for this - one is that Aum (as it's correctly written) has a bad rap. It's weird, strange and the butt of all kinds of jokes. Plus, making a sound like … [Read more...]