For the Love of Yoga with Nish the Fish

I wanted to explore the relationship between spiritual wellbeing and physical health to make the somewhat surprising claim: intense spiritual practice can sometimes compromise health! This is because, in the course of intense sādhana, Kula Kundalinī, our personal Shakti, progressively loosens its hold on the physical body. As such, in this talk I argue for the importance of Hatha Yoga practice to purify the prāna, to purify the blood and to fortify the nerves to account for this strain on the system sketched out above. Many "spiritual emergencies" might come down to just this: experiences have occured in a body ill equipped to whitstand the electrical shock of realization So we must prepare the body! I want to share with you our Kaula heritage of Hatha Yoga as articulated by the Nath Sampradāya and I want to tell you the story of Kukuripa and the black dog, arguing for the power of mantra and the allyship of Kula Kundalini. We read a little bit from the "Life of Swami Vivekananda by His Eastern and Western Disciples" towards the end!I pray this conversation inspires you to take up the study and practice of Hatha Yoga in a systematic and dedicated way! Here is our full playlist of our Hatha Yoga classes over the years. We meet live on zoom for practice every Wednesday at 11am PST and again on Friday at 5pm PST via the house link here: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/7028380815And Kuleśvarī Mā teaches Mondays at 5pm PST, Tuesdays at 3pmPST and Thursdays at 5pm PST, before the evening talks. Image from https://mydattatreya.com/matsyendranath/Support the showLectures happen live every Monday at 7pm PST and again at Friday 11am PST Use this link and I will see you there:https://www.zoom.us/j/7028380815For more videos, guided meditations and instruction and for access to our lecture library, visit me at:https://www.patreon.com/yogawithnishTo get in on the discussion and access various spiritual materials, join our Discord here: https://discord.gg/U8zKP8yMrM

This was a fire Questions & Answers discussion! After our Monday evening talk earlier this week, we explore some of the ecological, economical, political & sociological implications of Kālī sādhana. I make a case for overcoming all guilt and shame in the quest of personal self-expression, especially for women who are so often socialized to feel that their every impulse and desire is morally and culturally problematic. We discuss what it would be like to remove all barriers to a woman's being and, for lack of a better word, wild-ness and how Kālī sādhana demands just this. Along the same lines, we discuss the "taboo of menses": can I woman enter a temple and do sādhana during the time of her month? is there any reason behind this idea? We explore the reverence that Kaula Marga has for menses as the most potent and magical substances, with a reference to Mā' yoni in Kamakhya, Assam and Ambuvachi, when Mā bleeds. And then we compare this to the Dakshina marga or Brahmanical orthodox view that blood of all kinds is an impure and polluting substances to have a more well-rounded view of the issue across the entire spectrum of the tradition! Such wonderful questions and rich reflections. Thank you all for coming and participating! Jai Mā Kālī!And here is a playlist (our signature series, our flagship course), all of our talks on Mā.Support the showLectures happen live every Monday at 7pm PST and again at Friday 11am PST Use this link and I will see you there:https://www.zoom.us/j/7028380815For more videos, guided meditations and instruction and for access to our lecture library, visit me at:https://www.patreon.com/yogawithnishTo get in on the discussion and access various spiritual materials, join our Discord here: https://discord.gg/U8zKP8yMrM

Here is a brief and exultant sketch of Mā Kālī's journey from ancient pre-history into the most esoteric and elite Tantrik circles and into the mainstream Bhakti movement of Bengal and from there into the hearts and homes of people all over the world! Without all of those who have come before us (and I was only able to mention so few of them in this talk), who have each given their entire lives to the work of making Mā accessible to all sincere devotees, we quite literally would not be here all together, enjoying each other's holy company and talking Tantra for hours on end week after week, year after year. I am so grateful to all of them. I am so grateful to all of you. I am so happy. Here's to many more years together playing in Mā's playground! May all of this be an offering to Mā Kālī who comes to me in the form of all of you. May I have no God but you, O Mā who appears as all of these people! May I worship you in them with all of these words, which are offered as so many flowers to you in the form of this sangha! I love you, I love you, I love you. I am mad with love for you! I give you my life! Jai Mā! Jai Mā! Jai Mā Kālī! Jai Thakur! Jai SwamijI! Jai Gurudeva! Relevant References:And here is a playlist (our signature series, our flagship course), all of our talks on Mā.Some of the material from this talk is fleshed out a little more in talks like Ramprasad Sen, Mā Kālī's Mystic Poet, Ramakrishna & Ma Bhavatārini Kālī at Dakshineshwar and What Does Kali Actually Look Like? which is all about the dhyāna-mantra (visualization chant) that we offered in beginning. Usha Harding's pivotal book which I mentioned in the video is called "Kali: The Black Goddess of Dakshineshwar." Do check out Usha Mā's documentary "A Day at the Dakshineswar Temple" which you can watch here.Here is all the music and pūjā recordings from the early Kali Mandir Laguna Beach pūjās which I mentioned in the talk. You can hear Sri Haradhanji's unique chanting voice! And importantly, I only briefly mentioned it, but here is Uma Sanasrayan's important documentary about our Hollywood Kali Puja tradition. Uma is the one who has been making the murtis for Mā for our annual Hollywood temple Shyama Kali Puja. Support the showLectures happen live every Monday at 7pm PST and again at Friday 11am PST Use this link and I will see you there:https://www.zoom.us/j/7028380815For more videos, guided meditations and instruction and for access to our lecture library, visit me at:https://www.patreon.com/yogawithnishTo get in on the discussion and access various spiritual materials, join our Discord here: https://discord.gg/U8zKP8yMrM

Yesterday, on the new moon in the Vedic month of Vaishakh (Jyeshtha by Purnimanta calendar), we celebrated a most auspicious occasion: the Phalaharini Kali Puja. It is an especially significant day for our lineage and so in this short talk, we discuss why. We tell the story of Sri Ramakrishna's culminating puja which punctuates his 12-year period of intense of spiritual practice! Here is a short pūjā that we did for the online community to mark the occasion! And here is a playlist on all of our talks on Mā. Support the showLectures happen live every Monday at 7pm PST and again at Friday 11am PST Use this link and I will see you there:https://www.zoom.us/j/7028380815For more videos, guided meditations and instruction and for access to our lecture library, visit me at:https://www.patreon.com/yogawithnishTo get in on the discussion and access various spiritual materials, join our Discord here: https://discord.gg/U8zKP8yMrM

We recorded this some time back and its not as comprehensive as I would have liked it to be (lineage is such a rich and sprawling conversation, after all) so I never posted it but inspired by the conversations in the Discord this morning, I felt that this reflection would be good to have!There is some debate as to whether Macchanda, the founder of the Kaula lineage (who along with his consort and 12 children probably taught around 6-8th CE) is the same as the legendary Matsyendranatha who founded the Hatha Yoga tradition and who taught around the 12th or 13th CE. These are siddhas so they can live forever and materialize any body at any time for any reason, so dating can be a little complex! But there is no doubt that even if they are two different lineage founders that the Nath Sampradaya is included in the Kaula marga! Sri Ramakrishna inherits this lineage from both Kedarama Bhattacharyaji, who initiated him into the Kali mantra and also from Bhairavi Brahmani, who iniated him into the Kaula marga. Both Bhairavi Brahmani and also the legendary Macchanda, are said to have come from Assam. Whereas Konkanamba, by her name must have come from Maharasthra and Matsyendranath but especially Gorakshanath are perhaps from South India. By some accounts, Abhinava Gupta's guru Sambhunatha came from South India and Jnanetra Natha who founds the the Krama/Kali-Kula might have come from Jalandhara and been initiated by Kali herself in the form of the Yogini Mangala Devi in Oddiyana, in the swat valley! So what we get is a sort of Pan-Indian Kaula movement!You might enjoy Śani Deva's beautiful lineage tree which is part of the "community cheat sheet" he's working on!Support the showLectures happen live every Monday at 7pm PST and again at Friday 11am PST Use this link and I will see you there:https://www.zoom.us/j/7028380815For more videos, guided meditations and instruction and for access to our lecture library, visit me at:https://www.patreon.com/yogawithnishTo get in on the discussion and access various spiritual materials, join our Discord here: https://discord.gg/U8zKP8yMrM

Last year we gave this talk on Mā Bagalā, on the auspicious occasion of her Jayanti: Bagalā and Black Magick in Tantraand this year, we gave two talks to celebrate the same occasion. The first one is: How To Worship Mā Bagalāmukhī where we went over one of the tantras for Her worship (which you can find here. It's a work in progress!) and this is the second one, approaching Mā Bagalā in a slightly more oblique and thematic way, by discussing the nature of Absolute Silence. I make a claim that even in silence there is articulation "I am", which is called Parā-Vāc, supreme speech which always inheres in the Absolute and is never attenuated! Support the showLectures happen live every Monday at 7pm PST and again at Friday 11am PST Use this link and I will see you there:https://www.zoom.us/j/7028380815For more videos, guided meditations and instruction and for access to our lecture library, visit me at:https://www.patreon.com/yogawithnishTo get in on the discussion and access various spiritual materials, join our Discord here: https://discord.gg/U8zKP8yMrM

Because Buddha Purnima (the full moon celebrating the birth, death and enlightenment of the Shakyamuni Buddha) is so close to Chinnamastā Jayanti, when we celebrate the self-decapitating form of Mā, this year I decided to combine the two themes into one lecture. Having already explained the symbology of Mā Chinnamastā in last year's talk to some extent, this year I want to focus on the theme of "decapitation" that we often see with forms of Mā. What does it really mean to be "decapitated"? But first, to lead up into our idea of decapitation, we present a few radical and thrilling ideas from the most idealistic, non-dual traditions of India: Vasubandhu's Yogācara Buddhism and Gaudapada's Ajāta Vāda as a kind of nod to the dizzying flights of Buddhist and Advaitic metaphysics! May this be an offering at the lotus feet of the Buddha, the sanest man who ever lived.May this be an offering to Mā Chinnamastā!Support the showLectures happen live every Monday at 7pm PST and again at Friday 11am PST Use this link and I will see you there:https://www.zoom.us/j/7028380815For more videos, guided meditations and instruction and for access to our lecture library, visit me at:https://www.patreon.com/yogawithnishTo get in on the discussion and access various spiritual materials, join our Discord here: https://discord.gg/U8zKP8yMrM

In this Q&A discussion right after our Buddha Purnima lecture, we first discuss the art of letting go with Rajeevji. What spiritual practices can I do to help let go of attachment and learn to surrender to the situation? Then we inquire the way spiritual practices can cheer us up and strengthen us with an appeal the the three gunas of Sāmkhya. Then, we compare Tantrik Buddhism to Tantrik Hinduism: can they both be practiced together? We discuss a syncretic approach to Buddhism and Hinduism with Adiji who was tuning in from Dharamsala. We discuss the Candi a little bit with Lekha Ma and take up the question of: should I worship one deity with one mantra or many deities with many mantras echoing the sentiments from this lecture. Then we discuss something very, very important: how to stay inspired in spiritual life to have a sustainable, life-long practice! You can watch the video version of this Q&A discussion here.This one is for Jaanam Devī! Here is a playlist of all our Q&A sessions over the years. Support the showLectures happen live every Monday at 7pm PST and again at Friday 11am PST Use this link and I will see you there:https://www.zoom.us/j/7028380815For more videos, guided meditations and instruction and for access to our lecture library, visit me at:https://www.patreon.com/yogawithnishTo get in on the discussion and access various spiritual materials, join our Discord here: https://discord.gg/U8zKP8yMrM

One of my favorite questions & answers discussions so far!After our God, World and the Self | A Comparative Approach class, we pluge into this wonderful discussion! Carl opens our discussion with a profound inquiry into the true teaching of Buddhism and the value of philosophy in spiritual life. And then we think about wholesome philosophy vs unwholesome philosophical wrangling and what makes the difference between the two. Then, Carl asks and even more important question: what does it mean for God to accept "hate" and "evil" as a valid offering of devotion? Also, how do people overcome "bad" actions by not considering them as bad and thus overcoming shame and guilt? Then, we discuss the inner workings of japa practice with Natalie: is quantity the main priority in japa? Should I chant quickly to say the mantra more or slowly to say the mantra more meaningfully? Then, we have a delightful discussion with Natalie regarding evil: How Do You Know What You're Doing Is Good? What if you think you're good but you are actually evil? Using this idea, we can understand how to forgive everyone and how to still protect your boundaries while forgiving everyone. Finally, we discuss ethics and absolute morality with Lāllā! We close with a reading of some of Tim's comments about Buddhism.00:00:00 Why Do Philosophy00:13:46 Can Philosophy be Unwholesome?00:20:08 Why Does God Accept Evil?00:29:14 Should I Do My Mantra Quickly or Slowly?00:35:00 How Do You Know You Aren't Evil?00:52:58 How To Forgive Everyone 01:07:16 Is there A Universal Good? "Pagan" Ethics. 01:16:19 Is There An Absolute Ethics?01:29:37 Some reflections on Buddhism. Here is a playlist of all our Q&A sessions over the years.Support the showLectures happen live every Monday at 7pm PST and again at Friday 11am PST Use this link and I will see you there:https://www.zoom.us/j/7028380815For more videos, guided meditations and instruction and for access to our lecture library, visit me at:https://www.patreon.com/yogawithnishTo get in on the discussion and access various spiritual materials, join our Discord here: https://discord.gg/U8zKP8yMrM

Today, on the auspicious occasion of Swami Lakshman Joo's birth anniversary, we say a few things about why Kashmir and its philosophers are so important in the Non-Dual Tantrik tradition.Here is a playlist of lectures on Abhinava Gupta's Paramārthasāra, which is a wonderful introduction to the metaphysical and theological system of Tantra known as "Kashmir Shaivism"Lectures happen live every Monday at 7pm PST and Friday 10am PST and again Friday at 6pm PST.Use this link and I will see you there:https://www.zoom.us/j/7028380815For more videos, guided meditations and instruction and for access to our lecture library, visit me at:https://www.patreon.com/yogawithnishTo get in on the discussion and access various spiritual materials, join our Discord here: https://discord.gg/U8zKP8yMrMSupport the showLectures happen live every Monday at 7pm PST and again at Friday 11am PST Use this link and I will see you there:https://www.zoom.us/j/7028380815For more videos, guided meditations and instruction and for access to our lecture library, visit me at:https://www.patreon.com/yogawithnishTo get in on the discussion and access various spiritual materials, join our Discord here: https://discord.gg/U8zKP8yMrM