Light on Yoga and Meditation Dr Swami Shankardev Saraswati & Jayne Stevenson

This episode is based on a talk given by Dr. Swami Shankardev to Yogic Studies students in February 2005 on the keys to heart presence and selfless service.
This talk arose in response to a student who was struggling to practice service, an aspect of Karma Yoga. 
In the talk, Swami Shankardev discusses the following:
1.      Selfless service is an important path to managing the ego and bringing it into a relationship with the highest Self.
2.    How true service illuminates the mind, enabling us to connect to a higher, more conscious state of being.
3.    Even in enlightened states, the ego still exists and needs to be managed. (Ego is only eradicated at the very last stage of human evolution.)
4.    Selfless service is a path to purifying the chakras, allowing higher consciousness and intuition to flow into our lives. Without this capacity for giving, we remain overly attached to things that block consciousness from moving beyond the constricting influence of the ego.
The main meditation to disentangle from the selfish aspect of the ego and become centered in the highest Self is Inner Silence (Antar Mouna). This practice enables you to observe the mind and the ego, to free yourself from their negative influence, and to come back into a relationship with the highest Self.
One of the best methods for forging a path between our individual self and the universal Self is Ajapa Japa. This wonderful meditation practice charges the mind with energy and links individual consciousness with higher consciousness. We can then act with an awareness of the universal within our individual lives.
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For more information on Big Shakti's Yoga and Meditation Courses, go to https://bigshakti.com/courses/
For information regarding Jayne Stevenson's intuitive healing and dream therapy practice, go to https://bigshakti.com/about/jayne-stevenson/
For information regarding Dr. Swami Shankardev’s medical and psychotherapy practice, go to https://bigshakti.com/about/dr-swami-shankardev-saraswati/
Big Shakti’s YouTube Channel https://www.youtube.com/@BigShakti

This podcast episode is from an interview with my good friend Ron Ehrlich in 2019 for his podcast Unstress. For many years, Ron was my holistic dentist. However, he has recently found a new life purpose and has retired to focus on health education. You can find out more about Ron and the wonderful work he is doing at his website, Unstress Online: https://www.unstressonline.com.
In this episode, we discuss the vital importance of self-awareness, self-knowledge and how that is the key to Finding Life Purpose. Ron asked me to talk about the admonitions of the great philosophers over the last millennia to know ourselves and to address the question of who we really are. Ron and I both agree that it's never been more important to ask the question “Who am I?" because of the growth of technology and AI and the fact that, if we don’t ask ourselves this question, technology may know us better than we will ourselves. And this is a dangerous thing.
Topics in this podcast include
1.        The importance of Self-awareness in knowing who we are and finding purpose.
2.         The three types of purpose – common purpose, life purpose, and ultimate purpose.
3.        What is the self?
4.        What is the difference between the authentic Self and the ego self.
5.        How the ego and all our different selves form.
6.        How to manage negative ego patterns?
7.        How the ego and shadow form.
8.        Midlife crisis.
9.        Chakras.
10.  Different types of meditation practice for health and wellbeing.
Check out Big Shakti's Find Life Purpose Online Course https://bigshakti.com/shop/online-courses/finding-life-purpose/
Subscribe to our eNewsletter and receive substantial discounts on products https://bigshakti.com
Big Shakti podcast https://bigshakti.com/podcast/
For more information on Big Shakti meditations, go to https://bigshakti.com/meditations/
For more information on Big Shakti's Yoga and Meditation Courses, go to https://bigshakti.com/courses/
For information regarding Jayne Stevenson's intuitive healing and dream therapy practice, go to https://bigshakti.com/about/jayne-stevenson/
For information regarding Dr Swami Shankardev’s medical and psychotherapy practice, go to https://bigshakti.com/about/dr-swami-shankardev-saraswati/
Big Shakti’s YouTube Channel https://www.youtube.com/@BigShakti

In today’s episode, we are providing you with the Introductory lesson from Healing the Mind – Ajapa Japa Stage 1 Course. It is also available as a video on Big Shakti’s YouTube channel.
Ajapa Japa is a wonderful and extremely powerful form of meditation that combines many forms of meditation, including relaxation, mindfulness, breath, prana, life force, and a mantra to heal the body and mind and activate and awaken the chakras and kundalini. It calms an overactive mind, balances emotions, and creates physical and mental resilience as well as awakening consciousness.
Of all the meditation practices that I use in my medical practice, Ajapa Japa is the most powerful and useful.
Of course, it is one thing to learn the technique, but it is another to understand how to apply it to achieve your desired results. The MP3 series on Ajapa Japa is available on Big Shakti. However, I highly advise you to enroll in the Healing the Mind Ajapa Japa Stage 1 course. It tells you how to do the technique, and the methodology, which means how to apply the technique to achieve your desired results. I can’t recommend this course more highly.
Big Shakti podcast https://bigshakti.com/podcast/
For more information on Big Shakti meditations, go to https://bigshakti.com/meditations/
For more information on Big Shakti's Yoga and Meditation Courses, go to https://bigshakti.com/courses/
For information regarding Jayne Stevenson's intuitive healing and dream therapy practice, go to https://bigshakti.com/about/jayne-stevenson/
For information regarding Dr Swami Shankardev’s medical and psychotherapy practice, go to https://bigshakti.com/about/dr-swami-shankardev-saraswati/
Big Shakti’s YouTube Channel https://www.youtube.com/@BigShakti
To learn more about how to apply Ajapa Japa meditation for healing and for your spiritual evolution, Big Shakti teaches guided yoga and meditation techniques that systematically take systematically guide you into the practice of Ajapa Japa. This guided training program is called Ajapa Japa, Breath and Mantra. https://bigshakti.com/shop/guided-meditations/ajapa-japa-breath-mantra-consciousness/
If you wish to really understand how to use Ajapa Japa to support the healing of mental illness and to cultivate a strong mind, then we highly recommend that you enroll in the online course, Healing the Mind Meditation Course – Ajapa Japa Stage 1. https://bigshakti.com/shop/online-courses/healing-the-mind-ajapa-japa-meditation-course/

If you only ever study one yoga meditation technique over your lifetime, you would be wise to choose Ajapa Japa. Ajapa Japa combines many forms of meditation into one powerful practice that heals and transforms your mind.
Ajapa Japa is a potent guided yoga and meditation technique that you can use to improve every part of your life: physical, mental, and spiritual. The practice circulates the light of awareness through the body and mind. The result is that you become more Alive, Aligned, and Enlightened.
Yoga TantraAjapa Japa is the foundation meditation upon which all Yoga-Tantra practice rests. Ajapa Japa is a complete system for healing, self-development, and spiritual awareness. 
Of all the techniques in the yoga tantra system, Ajapa Japa, the movement of your breath, prāna, a mantra in a psychic passage, is one of the most powerful. The word japa can be defined as the continuous repetition of a mantra. When the suffix ‘a’ is added, it implies that the process of mantra repetition becomes spontaneous. 
While japa requires continuous, conscious effort to repeat the mantra verbally or mentally and to turn the beads, ajapa requires no effort. It is said that japa comes from the mouth, whereas ajapa comes from the breath and from the heart. Japa is the preliminary practice of mantra repetition, and ajapa is the perfection of this practice.
The Ajapa Gāyatrī MantraThe theory behind Ajapa Japa is that there is a mantra called the Ajapa Gāyatrī Mantra, vibrating in you all the time. This is the breath mantra SO HM, which is also called the Ham-sa mantra. Ajapa japa is a technique in which you repeat the mantra of the breath, SO HM, while you tune into the mantra that is always present in you. As such, you do not need any initiation from a guru to give you a mantra, as it is already and always within you. 
This core Yoga-Tantra teaching reveals the mantra hidden at the core of your being that is vibrating you into existence. In both human beings and the cosmos, there is a universal sound vibration, a powerful mantra that can be heard in the subtle breath that arises from the spiritual dimensions of your being. In the ancient yogic texts, this mantra is the song of the soul singing you into existence. Ajapa Japa meditation enables you to tune into this most powerful mantra resonating at the very heart of your being. As you tune into the sound, you cognize the intrinsic connection between your individual self, your universal self, and the cosmos as a whole.
Kriya yogaAjapa Japa is a form of kriya yoga and kundalinī yoga. The word kriya means active, and kriya yoga is an active form of yoga, which activates kundalinī, the primal cosmic power that lies dormant in the base chakra, mūlādhāra. The word kriya comes from the same root as the word karma, which also action. So Ajapa Japa is a powerful technique that, once learned, is used in many more powerful forms of meditation to activate the latent powers and abilities that lie hidden in you.
By aligning yourself with this great and powerful mystery, you synchronize your deepest self with the expansive cosmos. Your inner and outer worlds become one, and you experience the bliss of living an authentic, meaningful, and harmonious life.
Big Shakti podcast https://bigshakti.com/podcast/
For more information on Big Shakti meditations, go to https://bigshakti.com/meditations/
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This episode is taken from a series of lectures given by Dr Swami Shankardev to a yoga group in 2005. It focuses on tantra.
He briefly describes the difference between yoga and tantra and how tantra fits into the profound philosophical systems of India.
Out of the myriad systems that arose over the millennia, 6 systems, called the shad darshana, became the most famous.  The six systems are Gautama’s Nyāya, Kanāda’s Vaisheshika, Kapila’s Sāmkhya, Patanjali’s yoga sutras, Jaimini’s Pūrva Mīmāmsā, and Bādarāyana’s Uttara Mīmāmsā, which is also called Vedānta.
Tantra lies outside of these six. It is a vast sprawling amorphous system that enables you to liberate energy to expand your consciousness so that you see that everything in existence has consciousness at its center.
The tools of tantra are mantra and yantra, name and form. By vibrating matter with a mantra, a name of the divine, the power within a sacred form or symbol, a yantra, is liberated. The world is seen to shine with divine radiance. You become a seer. Consciousness’ is then experienced as the eternally unchanging reality, all-knowing and full of bliss.
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Big Shakti podcast https://bigshakti.com/podcast/
For more information on Big Shakti meditations, go to https://bigshakti.com/meditations/
For more information on Big Shakti's Yoga and Meditation Courses, go to https://bigshakti.com/courses/
For information regarding Jayne Stevenson's intuitive healing and dream therapy practice, go to https://bigshakti.com/about/jayne-stevenson/
For information regarding Dr Swami Shankardev’s medical and psychotherapy practice, go to https://bigshakti.com/about/dr-swami-shankardev-saraswati/
Big Shakti’s YouTube Channel https://www.youtube.com/@BigShakti

This episode is taken from Big Shakti’s Light on the Chakras and Kundalinī training master class series. This masterclass is taught once every two years and is conducted over nine months.
In this episode, which comes out of Lesson 1, we discuss the concepts of yoga, meditation, tantra, and yoga-tantra.
The Sanskrit word yoga means connection or union. The English word meditation also means the connection of the meditator (the consciousness of the meditator with the object of meditation via the act of practicing meditation.
Yoga and meditation are, therefore, synonyms. One is Sanskrit. The other is English. However, they point to the same thing, conscious connection. The aim of all systems of yoga is to consciously connect with your body, mind, and consciousness so that you are more in touch with yourself. You can then be more in touch with all of life.
Tantra is a wisdom tradition and an empirical philosophy, like Raja Yoga, that places major emphasis on embodying knowledge and experience rather than intellectual speculation. It is a profound system of self-transformation that teaches liberation of consciousness through the release of energy trapped within the chakras, particularly within the mūlādhāra chakra.
So, while Raja Yoga is a science of consciousness, tantra is a science of energy. It is the science of self-transformation that is most appropriate for us in this day and age.
All of Big Shakti's meditations and courses are based on yoga-tantra and teach you how to cultivate and amplify self-awareness, liberate trapped energy, and awaken higher consciousness.
Light on the Chakras and Kundalini https://bigshakti.com/shop/online-courses/light-on-chakras-and-kundalini-2022/
Subscribe to our eNewsletter and receive substantial discounts on products https://bigshakti.com
Big Shakti podcast https://bigshakti.com/podcast/
For more information on Big Shakti meditations, go to https://bigshakti.com/meditations/
For more information on Big Shakti's Yoga and Meditation Courses, go to https://bigshakti.com/courses/
For information regarding Jayne Stevenson's intuitive healing and dream therapy practice, go to https://bigshakti.com/about/jayne-stevenson/
For information regarding Dr Swami Shankardev’s medical and psychotherapy practice, go to https://bigshakti.com/about/dr-swami-shankardev-saraswati/
Big Shakti’s YouTube Channel https://www.youtube.com/@BigShakti