Simply call (530) 881-1000 just prior to 6PM (PST), May 7th and enter Participant Access Code: 677390#

You are going to be muted, you can press *6 to unmute if you’d like to ask a question.

Click on the link below to access the power point.

Kaoverii Detox teleclass

Here’s the recording: Subtle Yoga Spring Detox

1. Something green in the morning
For years I couldn’t handle this idea. Salad for breakfast? Ugh. I’m going back to bed. But then I started making green smoothies in the morning. Let me be clear, I DO NOT OWN A VITAMIX (not that I don’t want one – text me if you happen to be moving abroad). I bought a good Oster blender, which I didn’t have to take out a second mortgage for, and it does just fine – a little noisier than my morning nerves like, but no chunks. In case you are considering crossing over to the dark green side, here’s a recipe to tinker with:

Ingredients:
1 handful of almonds
1 t of chia seeds
2-3 dino kale leaves – deveined
1 granny smith apple cored and cubed
½ cup of frozen blueberries
Maybe ½ of a frozen banana
1 T hemp powder protein
Maybe some greens powder or spirulina
¾-1 c of almond milk

The night before: Soak a handful of almonds in one small bowl or jar and a teaspoon of chia seeds in another. In the am: almonds and chias go in the blender first. If I have time, I pop the almonds outta their skins. Then the powders. Add kale, apple, blueberries and optional banana. Plug your ears. Blend enthusiastically, because you are going to feel great after you drink this stuff.

My friend Sam tells me my smoothies are like my schedule. Just shove it all in there and blend.

2. Twist poses are excellent for detoxing!
Matsyendranath, the father of Hatha Yoga, has a powerful pose named after himself – Ardha Matsyendra’sana. “Half Lord of the Fishes.” I’m sorry that the translation sounds, well, a little pathetic. Believe me, this sage had many talents beyond his skill for half-heartedly dominating fish. Matsyendranath can be accredited with initiating the understanding that asanas help to detoxify and rejuvenate the body. His name indicates that he was from a fishing caste. And also from the group of yogis called the “Nathas” who were Shiva worshippers and great Tantric experimenters. Whether or not Matsyendranath himself created this asana is up for discussion – nevertheless, it can be found in the Hatha Yoga Pradipika – one of the original poses. It’s a powerful digestive system rejuvenator.

3. Sweat
Which doesn’t necessarily mean you have to do sweaty yoga. In fact, it’s not my favorite way to detox with asanas – they can be used much more creatively and intentionally. However, sweating is really important so, in whatever way you like to get worked up, make a commitment to yourself that 4-5 days a week you will get out there and sweat somehow cause gosh darnit, you are going to feel better if you do. Lazy yogi cop-out tip: even though it’s not necessarily better than internally generated hear, you can also sweat in a sauna.

4. Examing the urge to retox
Here’s the thing: we’re all dealing with toxicity. Let’s face it, we’re pretty much living in a toxic garbage heap of a planet these days – but that’s another blog. Nevertheless, it’s essential to find ways to unload the burden from our bodies. But toxicity is not only physical – frankly, a lot of it is emotional. “Toxic” emotions like guilt, shame, anxiety and anger all inhibit the body’s ability to detox. It’s great to do all the right things physically but we also need to unearth the roots of the urge to retox. This calls for lots of mindful compassion. You have to recognize the urge before you can do anything about it. And when you see it, can you respond with compassion and kindness rather than judgment and punishment?

We’ll talk about all this and lots more next week! Hope you can join us for this free webinar next Tuesday night (May 7)  at 9 pm EST. 

And here’s a cat…

If you’ve been thinking about our RYT500 Subtle Yoga Therapeutics Training – this is your year. Did you know that if you begin an RYT500 therapeutics training before Dec. 31, 2013, the International Association of Yoga Therapists will grandfather you in as a Yoga Therapist?

If you start a training after that, you will have to complete an additional 300 hours of training.

And boy have we got trainings! One RYT500 is beginning in the spring in Charlotte and two more will begin in the fall – one in Asheville (an intensive, yay!) and the other in Chattanooga. We are still working out the dates for the fall trainings, but the spring training is ready to go. Click here for details.

And please remember that you can have a certification through Subtle Yoga or any other approved school to start our RYT500 program, which is actually only 300 hours.

I am humbled and thrilled by the amount of positive feedback we’ve had on our trainings (both RYT200 and RYT500) and in this month’s newsletter, I want to introduce you to the AMAZING trainers that have made these programs possible…

I have to start with my husband, Brett Sculthorp, who, as an introverted New Zealander, hates this kind of attention. However Brett is a central force behind our curriculum and the logistics of our trainings. Brett is a licensed certified prevention specialist, and a provisionally licensed social worker and substance abuse counselor. It is no exaggeration to say that his vast knowledge of both social work and yoga has enabled us to become a national forerunner in the field of a yogic approach to behavioral health.

Next, Samantha Noto, RYT500, is the director of our programs in Charlotte and the incredible shakti behind all the programs we are offering there. Sam, who was a corporate trainer in her past life, has the uncanny ability to see both the large picture and the devil in the details. She is a powerfully subtle teacher with the empathic, intuitional ability to help trainees hone their talents and fine tune their skills. I am infinitely grateful to Sam for her support and drive as we take Subtle Yoga to the next level.

Marek Sawicki, BA. CAyu. LMBT, eRYT 500, a certified Ayurvedic Medical Practitioner and lead faculty instructor of Therapeutic Massage at AB-TECH Community College, is our Ayurveda and Structural therapy guru. Marek’s command of Vini Yoga and ayurveda is impressively vast! He’s a warm, helpful teacher who offers solid guidance served up with a healthy side of amazing kirtan!

Ramesh Bjonnes, a certified yoga health educator and a popular yoga columnist for Elephant Journal as well as the author of Sacred Body, Sacred Spirit: A Personal Guide to the Wisdom of Yoga is a true gem of our faculty. Ramesh, who spent several years studying in India, wows our students with his expansive understanding of yoga history – the mainstream, as well as unorthodox perspectives. Ramesh also teaches detox techniques. You can read his articles here: http://www.elephantjournal.com/author/ramesh-bjonnes/

Eric Siler is a Rolfer, yoga instructor and master of prana. Eric has an incredibly extensive list of trainings from Kripalu, to Anusara to Para Yoga. He teaches a whole weekend on prana and pranayama for our programs and also helps students explore the modern day relevance of the Yoga Sutras.

We are delighted to introduce Jessica Boylston-Fagonde, a heartfelt branding whiz who teaches a refreshingly authentic Business and Marketing module. We are also incredibly honored to present Dr. Marcy Braverman Goldstein, an expert in Asian religions, and instructor at both UNC Charlotte and Davidson College, who teaches our Sanskrit modules.

Other fabulous contributors in our RYT500 Chattanooga trainings include worldclass yoga instructors Doug Keller  and Roger Cole  whose reputations speak for themselves.

Sue Reynolds, the founder of Clearspring Yoga and an accomplished yogini (Sue was the second yoga teacher to hang a shingle in Chattanooga!), teaches a module on Yin Yoga for our program and helps keep our program cogs turning and Maggie White, a brilliant young teacher whose skills include group facilitation, prenatal and kids yoga has been a true pleasure to work with. Also a shout out to Janka Livoncova who teaches a heartfelt module on Addiction Recovery.

In Asheville we are tremendously grateful for Amber Acheson from Asheville Community Yoga who is the glue that holds things all together.

Our groundbreaking Subtle Yoga Training for Behavioral Health Professionals at MAHEC in Asheville and the workshops we are now presenting all over the state at the AHECs (area health education centers) would be exist without the support and efforts of Ashley Lester, LCSW, RYT200 and the good faith and advocacy of our program director, Elizabeth Flemming.

In Charlotte in our RYT200 program, we have Helen Mason, who teaches basic anatomy with infinite kindness and flair in our RYT200 programs. There’s also Katherine Metzo, Mariana Schuster, Julie Flanagan, Kim Neater, and Amy Schneider of Community Yoga and so many others who have been so supportive to our programs.

I’m sure I’ve missed a few of the fabulous people who have contributed to the thriving of Subtle Yoga and for that, I apologize. I am truly humbled by the amazing community that has evolved to merge the authentic tradition of yoga with today’s evidence based practices and serve their communities with health, wellbeing and spiritual expansion. I am also in awe of the tremendous contributions of the students to these programs. Each program is a rich and satisfying – filled with the knowledge and wisdom of so many participants who truly hold space for and nurture each other on the path to learning to share this tradition.

Om shanti,

Kaoverii

Dear Kaoverii,

I can quickly get to that quiet place where my mind stops – it’s nothing special that I’ve done, I’ve always been able to do that. Is there something I should be doing or looking for or *something* while I’m there?  Since I don’t have to spend all of my meditation time trying to find the quiet place, what should I be doing once I get there?  How can I grow here?  I meditate often, because it makes me feel better and really reduces my stress levels on a physical level — but I feel I’m missing an opportunity here.

Elizabeth, Asheville NC

Answer:

Hi Elizabeth,

I’m so happy to hear about your meditation practice and that you are finding it so beneficial.

Your question about “what next?” is a really good one and it strikes right to the heart of the question, “What is meditation?” There are certain styles of meditation that suggest that stopping the mind is the goal. And in fact, this quieting is a very important aspect of any meditation practice.

Traditional tantric yogic meditation opens up the practitioner to the simple, expansive beauty of mantra. What is a mantra? Something that makes your mind expand and leads to the infinite. “Man” = mind and “tra” = “the liberator.” So traditionally, yogis have used mantra to get them beyond the mind and open up to the infinite.

Why use a mantra? The idea is “As you think, so you become.” Mantra is a way to take the mind into the infinite – because the mantras used for meditation always are some variation of the theme, “I am the infinite.” By reinforcing these neuro-cognitive pathways the mind is able to use itself as a springboard out of itself.

A few traditional mantras are “Shivo Hung”, “Om Shanti”, and “Hare Krishna.” But I would suggest that you receive a mantra from a qualified teacher – there are many different organizations that offer mantras, many of them free of charge – and will teach you a simple technique to use. Mantras that come from a teacher rather than a book are specially vibrated. They are imbued with the “shakti” or power of that teacher. So find a teacher you resonate with and then use the mantra they give you.

Mantra is not the end of the road, it is the beginning. There are many other sophisticated and intricate meditation practices in yoga, but mantra is the foundation of them all. Using mantra for meditation will help your meditation move beyond contented quietness towards deeper transformation.

Hello Kaoverii,

Lately with my meditation, when I am in that happy place, my eyelids flutter fairly hard.  It actually hurts/ strains my eyes.  Many times my focus is pulled to my eyes rather than meditation.  I’ve asked the eyelids to stop, but my full focus is not on meditation.  I tried to look up some information, but can’t find anything on how to deal with it.  I thought about wearing a sleep mask, but think that might be too restrictive.  Do you have any advice or know where I can find more info.?  Thanks!

Beth, Charlotte, NC

Answer:

I believe what you are experiencing is what is sometimes called a “kundalini symptom.” What this means is that when you go to “that happy place” the kundalini energy begins to stir. This is  sometimes experienced in weird physical ways – often the body will shake or rock, some people make weird sounds, sometimes there is laughing, crying or even jumping. In a western sense, this is explained by the idea that the nerve cells or fibers are going through a purification process. Prana gets “stuck” someplace and can’t flow through easily – so the body does weird things to try to let it get through. Fluttering eyes is  one of those things.

I would suggest that you sit with it and observe it. This is an opportunity to go deeper in to your mantra, to focus with more energy and awareness. See if it helps to bring your focus down into your chest and away from your third eye.  Oh, and don’t forget to gently splash water in your eyes before you meditate to see if this helps calm them.

Hi Kaoverii, I am starting to think that I can teach downward facing dog. But I have such a hard time getting my students to do it correctly. They have too much weight in their hands, can you help?

Donna, Florida

Answer:

Glad you are venturing into the land of dogs, it can be playful!

The trick is to ask your students to bend their knees a lot, get the weight out of their hands as much as possible and push the hips towards the seam between the wall and the ceiling behind them. If they can’t get it with that instruction, you have to stand in front of them, not behind, put one hand on each side of their waist, and then lift them up and back. This will get them going in the right direction – they have to have their knees bent while you’re doing this if they have tight hamstrings or if won’t work and you could injure them.

Now, I’ve been teaching yoga and watching yoga trends for a long time – but it’s only been in the past few years that yoga has been getting serious attention from the health profession. There is a tremendous groundswell of interest in yoga as a complementary therapy and it seems like everyone wants to know how they can use these simple, powerful techniques to help themselves and their clients/patients.

I have been contacted by several other AHECs in North Carolina to provide similar classes for their students. And The Subtle Yoga Teacher Training program for Behavioral Health Professionals at MAHEC is starting up again August 22 – we have participants attending from Wisconsin and California. One therapist applicant commented, “I’ve been searching for a training like this for years! You do realize that you are the only people in the country doing this, don’t you?”

It’s not that we are the only folks teaching about yoga and mental health in the country (although I do think that we have a unique take on it) – it’s that MAHEC, a well respected continuing education institution, is supporting it.

Last week, a student came up to me after class at Asheville Community Yoga and told me that the practice we had done in the beginning of class, Bhramari Pranayama (bumblebee breath), had helped her, more than the medication she had been given, to regulate her irregular heart beat and associated anxiety. Yes, there’s research that also shows this.

And today another student told me through Facebook that Legs up the wall is the most reliable thing she can do to minimize her PTSD induced tachycardia.

Yoga is neither expensive nor laden with dangerous side effects. It can offer potent therapeutic support for an array of mental and physical challenges.

But the world needs more professionals who can teach this art/science and adapt it to specific clientele. For example, I teach yoga nidra for PTSD and the US military has done numerous studies to support its use. But yesterday, a therapist who specializes in women’s recovery from sexual trauma said she probably wouldn’t use it with her clients because it could trigger women who have been sexually assaulted – lying on the floor, being spoken to softly, etc. Of course! What a great insight. But we need specialists to make these kinds of calls and to continue to do the amazing research that is supporting yoga’s therapeutic application.

In addition to our training for Behavioral Health Professionals – we are also offering an intensive RYT500 Therapeutics Training – in a format more suitable for people coming from far away to train with us. So far we have people participating from Japan, Mexico and Europe.

I hope you find a chance today to do something relaxing and soothing for yourself – like putting your legs up the wall for 10 minutes.

love and shanti, Kaoverii

Over the years a lot of people have come up to me after class and said, “Yoga has saved my life.”

My usual response is, “Mine too.”

I don’t know how sensitive people survive in this culture without it. Unfortunately, survival often morphs into escapism – attempted through insidious addictive behaviors – drugs, alcohol, food, sex, shopping, gambling etc. And while we know how harmful addiction is on one hand, on the other, our culture fosters, condones and promotes these behaviors. Why be uncomfortable for one second when there is a distraction for everything that irritates you? Why feel bad about yourself or your society when there’s a pill to fix that feeling?

Of the millions of people who are entrenched in addictions in the U.S., less than 10 percent get treatment – and that treatment often is ineffective. Addiction rips apart lives, families and communities. It is one of the largest public health crises that we face as a society and at the same time, the fact that our culture is plagued with addiction is not even remotely surprising. We are fighting against ourselves.

While people tell me “Yoga has saved my life” for many reasons – one of the biggest is their recovery typically from a drug, alcohol or food addiction – followed by the reclaiming of their purpose, meaning and joy in living.

Yoga teaches us to tolerate the feelings in our bodies – the good, the bad and the ugly. And to be okay with whatever sensations arise. To be able to tolerate them and remember that everything passes. It also heals – physically, emotionally and spiritually – the devastation that addictive behaviors can wreack.

In a 2009 study on reducing addictions with yoga, the Kissens wrote, “[it] can be argued that the overall yoga experience is antithetical to addictive tendencies and behavior. The ritualistic aspects of yoga are uniquely self-soothing & produce atmosphere of comfort & feelings of being held w/out the self-harming aspects inherent in addictive behavior.”

I’m looking forward to teaching about yoga as an integrative part of substance abuse recovery again at the Mountain Area Health Education Center’s yearly conference – Addiction: Focus on Women. I’m also teaching Yoga for Reducing Depression and Anxiety at Charlotte AHEC tomorrow and later in the summer – another one day course at Northwest AHEC.

Yoga is quickly gaining acceptance as an important component of recovery. It’s not a stretch to say that addiction affects everyone, and yoga can be a powerful part of the healing process for individuals, families, and communities.

I believe that yoga can help anyone at any point in their lives whether they are dealing with a disease or illness, recovering from it and trying to reclaim life, or enjoying good health and moving towards  self-actualization and thriving. I also think yoga is one of the most powerful prevention tools available to young and old alike. I mean who doesn’t need to both move more and find more quiet?

Not only does yoga benefit physically and emotionally, perhaps the greatest benefit is spiritual – an area that conventional medicine is just starting to understand:

“By ignoring the spiritual dimension of health, for whatever reason, we may be depriving ourselves of the leverage we need to help empower individuals and populations to achieve improved physical, social, and mental health. Indeed, unless and until we do seriously address the question—however difficult and uncomfortable it may be—substantial and sustainable improvements in physical, social, and mental health, and reductions in the health gradient within and between societies, may well continue to elude us.” - John-Paul Vader, University of Lausanne Medical Centre, Institute of Social and Preventive Medicine, Lausanne, Switzerland

So how do we reach people who don’t think yoga is for them? How do we bridge the chasm between the yoga world and the conventional health world? These are questions inform my work of getting yoga out into the world. All of our programs are designed to help train teachers who can confidently walk that bridge and interface with community health providers to institute yoga as a key part of truly transformative integrative health care strategies.

I want to introduce our conceptual model to you. Now before you stop reading or your eyes glaze over, take a moment to consider this: The lower right corner is about treatment – what most people think about when they try to help people. But health is a complex web of relationships and individual behaviors. Our model helps to expand our idea about what health is and how yoga can help. The health care world is starting to understand that we have to address all areas, not just treatment.

Things are changing in the yoga world too. The celebrity allure is falling away. Practitioners have a strong desire to share the wellspring of wisdom that yoga offers and to deliver it in a way that meets the needs of the people they are serving. As practitioners and teachers, if we are to see our profession grow and flourish and really make a dent in our ailing nation, we need to learn the language of the medical people and the mental health professionals. We need to offer our practice in community context and perhaps strip if of some of the cultural trappings that keep people away.

Yoga is for everyone, let’s figure out how to bring it to them.

How old is Yoga? Reply to Waylon Lewis.

By Ramesh Bjonnes from www.Elephantjournal.com

Waylon Lewis asked an intriguing question in one of his blogs: How old is yoga?  A little more than half a dozen decades older than Waylon Lewis, responds one of the experts, Nick Rosen, over at Yogadork. There is undoubtedly some truth to that quick and concise historical assessment. But only if one equates the practice of yoga with the practice of asanas, the physical exercises most people today associate with yoga. It is true, Waylon, modern yoga—as taught by Krishnamacarya and later by B.K.S. Iyengar, who imported it to the West—is indeed a mixture of Western gymnastics, wrestling and Indian Hatha Yoga. This is true. This has been documented.

If you think of yoga as these forms of practices, which today have morphed into numerous other yoga styles, including Power Yoga and Bikram Yoga, yoga is indeed no more than 90-100 years old. Not much older than one of Bikram’s Roll Royces. But let’s not conflate yoga to the level of the body only. As the Einstein of consciousness, Ken Wilber, would say, that’s flatland science. That’s conflating reality to one dimension only: the physical. And, Waylon, that does not work in the world of yoga.

As you know, in yoga, we divide reality up in at least three dimensions: body, mind, spirit. And, says Boulder’s Einstein, Mr. Wilber, we need to understand each of these levels on their own terms. Not conflate them all to the level of the body. Hence, yoga does not equal asanas only. So, to understand the history of yoga, we need to understand that yoga is more than the physical exercises exported to the West by B.K.S Iyengar et al. Luckily, more and more yoga students today understand that. And Iyengar certainly understood it. Iyengar certainly knows and respect the fact that he has borrowed from a tradition that is thousands of years older than Waylon Lewis.

So here goes:

The most recent record of authentic Hatha Yoga scriptures from India in existence is the Gheranda Samhita, which was written in the 17^th century. This book describes 32 of the most common asanas used today. This book builds upon another book, the Hatha Yoga Pradipika, from the 15^th century (there are also versions of this book hundreds of years older), which list a dozen yoga postures. So, Waylon, we already know—by using only measurable and scientific methods acceptable to the Western flatland mindset—that yoga is at least 500 years older than you are!

The Hatha Yoga Pradipika mentions in its introduction that these exercises were developed by Shiva and that there were 84 in all. Other written sources, such as the Shiva Samhita, say the same thing. Shiva is the original founder of Yoga. That is why in India, Shiva is called the King of Yoga, and that is why you see posters of this dreadlocked hippie everywhere. This is no coincidence. If we want to trace the history of yoga, we must follow the smoke, including the smoke from the sadhu hashish pipes, leading us back to this one sadhu king named Shiva. Because, if we want to know yoga and its origins, that’s our man.

But before we go tracking down Shiva, we need to visit with some other yogis, the Tantric yogis of the Middle Ages. From about 400 AD to about 1400 AD, India experienced a spiritual renaissance of Tantric dimensions. This is the period when all the books on Tantra were written, including the Hatha Yoga Pradipika.

So, if we want to understand the roots of yoga, we cannot leave out Tantra. Why? Because everything we associate with yoga (asanas, kundalini, chakras, pranayama, mantra, and so on) have been developed by Tantric yogis. Even Patanjali (200 BC) acknowledged that and many other important teachers acknowledge that Patanjali’s Asthanga Yoga System built upon Tantra and Samkhya. That is why Ashtanga Yoga is also called Raja Yoga. Kriya Yoga or also Kundalini Yoga. Hence, also the Tantric saying: a true yogi combines Hatha Yoga with Raja Yoga to create body-mind-spirit balance. In modern language: combine the heat of Bikram with the upward coil of Kundalini and you’re getting closer to the real deal!

So, Waylon, now we have established that yoga is at least 2200 years old. Because, even Western academics acknowledge that the Yoga Sutras are that old, give or take a few hundred years. And, we have also clearly established that yoga is more than asanas, the physical flatland stuff, because Asthanga Yoga is divided into eight limbs, and only one of them deals with asanas.

Let’s move another few hundred years backwards into history. Some say that the Samkhya philosophy was written about 500 years before Christ, some say it was developed around 1500 BCE. This is very likely so, because all of yoga history and its philosophy existed for a long time as oral tradition before being written down. Interestingly, this philosophy, which is the foundation of Ayurveda and also, to some extent, Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras, was also called Kapilasa Tantra after its founder Kapila.

Another word for Tantra is Shaivism. And Samkhya is a Shaiva philosophy. In other words, Samkhya is basically a Tantric yoga philosophy. Hence, there is also a deep interrelationship between Ayurveda and Tantra. In South India this Tantric medicine is called Siddha medicine. Moreover, many traditional Ayurvedic doctors in India will say that Shiva also developed Ayurveda. In other words, both yoga and Ayurveda can be traced back through oral history to this dreadlocked sage.

And, if you want to read this oral history, read the Puranas. The Shiva Puranas in particular concludes that yoga and Tantra come from the same ancient source.

Note here that we have not mentioned anything about the Vedas yet. Many Western scholars claim that yoga originated in the Vedas. That is very unlikely. The oral tradition of the Vedas was upheld by the Vedic priests. The oral tradition of yoga was upheld by the yogis, the Shaivites, the Tantrics. You just don’t go to a Vedic priest to learn about yoga, especially if you are a woman.

The Vedic dogmas do not think highly of women. In Tantra, on the other hand, women could be teachers and gurus. No problem. Indeed, according to oral Tantric tradition it was Shiva and his wife Parvati who developed the Agamas and Nigamas, the teachings of Tantra. Hence, yoga’s earliest roots can also be traced straight back to a woman, to Parvati.

Around 1500 BCE, there lived a great man named Krishna. He introduced three forms of yoga: Bhakti Yoga (yoga of devotion), Karma Yoga (yoga of action) and Jinana Yoga (yoga of knowledge). Krishna’s teachings are outlined in one of the greatest spiritual books ever written, the Bhagavad-Gita. (It has now been proven that Krishna’s city Dvarka lays under the sea on the west coast of India; it dates back to 1500 BCE)

In the period after Krishna, many other yogic scriptures were developed: the Brahmanas and the various Upanishads. All these scriptures signify a blending of two cultures and traditions, the Vedic and the Tantric, the priest and the yogi.

These sophisticated spiritual scriptures are often termed the Fifth Veda. Many scholars in the West, I would say most, do not accurately distinguish the great difference between Tantra and Veda, and do not appreciate the great value Tantra has had in supplying the yogic practices, the spiritual technology that enabled the yogi sages to have inner experiences that in turn enabled them to develop such sublime philosophies as outlined in this period, as well as in the later tantric renaissance of the Middle Ages.

When we speak of Hinduism, we speak of the blending of Tantra and Veda. But we must also remember that Hinduism is a Western term, a recent term that is pretty meaningless when we trace the real spiritual history of ancient India.

A few thousand years before Krishna (1500 BCE) there was an early Dravidian and Tantric civilization in India, the Indus Valley civilization. It is this civilization that has produced the Pashupati seal of the horned yogi sitting in a certain bhanda (lock) with his heals pressed into the scrotum. Many mistake the position in this seal for the lotus position.

The Horned Yogi

This shows that the people of that period, as early as 4000 years before Christ, were intimately familiar with various yogic bhandas. Now, pay close attention: As mentioned earlier, Shiva had developed 84 yoga positions, many of which have been written down in various books, such as the Hatha Yoga Pradipika. Some of these 84 positions were also bhandas (as seen above), which are often more sophisticated than the asanas, as their main goal is to awaken kundalini.

Hence, I venture to claim that this yogic seal proves that yoga asanas existed as far back as 6000 years ago. If these folks knew bhandas, they certainly also knew how to practice asanas. More importantly, they also knew how to meditate. Indeed, there is another statue from this period in which the person gazes at the tip of his nose. This meditation exercise is called dharana and is part of the much later Ashtanga Yoga of Patanjali.

So, what about Shiva? Did he vanish in a cloud of hashish smoke? It is indeed unfortunate that many Shiva followers today, the sadhus, do little else but smoke hashish all day long. Because, in spite of all the legends and the stories, it is unlikely that was how the prehistoric Shiva spent his time.

When I was in India, I learned from my Tantric teachers that Shiva, just like Buddha and Krishna, was a historical personality who lived around 7000 years ago. And if that is true, we know that yoga is a lot older than Waylon Lewis. The same teachers told me that Shiva lived during the first Vedic Aryan invasion to India, 5000 years before Christ. The genetic science of Dr. Spencer Wells and his famous Genome Project has now proven that is a fact.

Indeed, the history of yoga is very long. The history of its motherland, India, is also very long. Yoga did not come from the Rigveda, nor any of the other four Vedas. Yoga came from the tradition of Tantra, the tradition of Shiva and Parvati, the tradition of Shaivism.

After thousands of years of comingling between these two mighty spiritual rivers, the Veda and the Tantra, the yoga of the Gita, the yoga of Samkhya and the yoga of Patanjali develops. Hence all of the yoga technology of asanas and pranayama and mantra meditation we know today can be traced back to prehistoric Tantra, and most of its philosophy comes form the Upanishads and the Gita, also called the Fifth Veda, as well as the various books we call Tantras.

So, Waylon, if you think of yoga as asanas taught in a Power Yoga class, many aspects of that kind of yoga is not that old. However, even some basic Power Yoga exercises have their roots in the ancient practice of Tantra. Moreover, as you know, yoga is so much more than asanas. And when we include the whole shebang that is yoga—the whole body-mind-spirit aspect of it, then we realize that yoga is very old. Some say as old as that dreadlocked king they call Shiva. That ancient king, not of modern Pop Yoga; that king of  ancient Tantra Yoga.