About Geetha Yoga in , Kodaikanal

Whenever it is thought about learning yoga in India, the first thing coming to minds is ashrams which have been an integral part of the Indian society reflecting the culture and tradition of India. One can’t also deny that ashrams are comprehended as part of Hinduism, integrated with the ritual setup of the Hindu religion. Many times it is wrongly perceived that yoga has much to do with the religion, whereas yoga has nothing to do with the religion nor it speaks or reflects any religious ideas.

To be very clear and precise yoga is one of the six schools of Indian Philosophy [Sat Darshanas] which tries to explain the existence of life in a more scientific way. It explores both the body and mind at all levels allowing one to dwell deep into the higher levels of consciousness. Therefore we believe that to take the experience of learning yoga beyond the boundaries of religion it is important to make all the teachings more experiential than mythological, though the experience of knowing the divine varies from person to person. To make the learning of yoga more simple tureya has decided to work beyond the ashram concept of yoga. All these years we have been working on various lost philosophies of Indian tradition and finally we have come out with the concept “Geetha Yoga”.

Tureya’s new form of yoga , Geetha Yoga would work with tantra as the base, which is the mother of most philosophies including yoga. Apart from this we have taken lots of ideas from the ancient Tamil philosophies like “Saiva Siddanta” to make this work better. In what way this is different from other forms of already existing thousands of yoga’s is a natural question. The simple answer is most forms of traditional yoga speaks about the self being pure or holy to enter into learning yoga, where as we believe anybody who has the will, even if it’s a criminal has the right to know about good spirituality. It doesn’t matter who you are rather it would be who you would become after the practice.

“Change is Permanence”, is a Famous Buddhist saying. So the life of humans is also subject to this, and what type of change should be made is up to the individual. In the path of yoga we believe that unless the change is not destined to happen which would push the individual to evolve in higher consciousness a person can’t come to yoga. This does not happen automatically but happens only for those who choose. When such change happens and the individual is ready to know more about oneself they can’t be put to hundreds of tests for purity to enter into spirituality but rather be guided through the right path which would be done by our community.

We believe that learning yoga should not be conventional with strict hierarchy and rituals rather it should be an experience like a flower blossoming which happens naturally. Many times we have hundreds of questions and we doubt everything before we understand and this is a natural process of learning. So it’s always better to start with a known to know the unknown. Yoga also does the same starting with the asanas for the body and moving gradually into mind and to higher consciousness. In this process we provide a better environment to all rational and logical arguments that comes out of the mind for everyone and at the same time we insist one truth about man which is “totality”. Human existence can be understood only in totality which includes the rational and irrational, the known and unknown, and not in parts or seclusion. “Doubt everything except the doubter” is a famous western saying and so the western mind and also the eastern minds taken by western culture do this invariably today. But yoga is still ahead of this saying and the yoga sutras of patanjali says doubt even your own self so that you know who you are better. In our new form we would be working on all these aspects to give a complete experience of knowing and transforming the self beyond the physical and spiritual limitations.

Another important thing to be thrown light in the process of learning yoga is ,” what yoga is really”. When you say the word yoga the first thing that comes in the mind of any body is asanas or the body postures. Especially in the west yoga is limited only to this aspect which includes bending the body and standing upside down. Only if you could do this then only you are considered as yogis. But in the real sense asanas are just part or just a step in the whole ladder. Yoga is much more than asanas and relaxation. We believe that the purpose of this new form is to take the understanding of yoga beyond this.

According to tantra we are born in bliss and the nature of the child is happiness and contentment. Naturally we are expected to take the world with joy and exuberance which are the true nature of the soul. But this is lost to mention at least at the conscious level because of the insecurities transmitted to us starting from our childhood. We try to provide a complete application of these ancient wisdoms to train the mind and the consciousness. This ultimately helps oneself to explore the true essence of the soul “happiness”.

In short the new form of yoga tries to find better application of these ancient techniques to evolve body and mind.