Video and Audio

How to Stay Calm Under Pressure: Spiritual Yoga for Calmness

Nayaswami Gyandev
March 12, 2020

There is a need for yoga and the ability to stay calm under the pressure of ever-increasing challenges -- now more than ever. Join Gyandev in this spiritual yoga video episode for postures to reduce anxiety, build the immune system, and regain a sense of calm despite outer circumstances.

___
ABOUT GYANDEV & ANANDA YOGA

Nayaswami Gyandev (Gyandev Rich McCord, Phd) is the worldwide Director of Ananda Yoga and the Ananda Yoga Teacher Training programs at The Expanding Light Yoga & Meditation Retreat. He has a Ph.D. from Stanford University in Applied Mathematics and has taught internationally on the subjects of yoga, meditation and yoga philosophy for over 16 years. He also served as General Manager for Ananda Publications and Dawn Publications for three years and as a Management Consultant for four years in the Silicon Valley.

Nayaswami Gyandev has served on the Board of Directors of the Yoga Alliance, the group of yoga schools and traditions which has recently developed comprehensive standards for yoga teachers in the United States. He is also an accomplished storyteller, focusing on epic dramas from mystic traditions.

Nayaswami Gyandev’s philosophy about yoga practice is that, “It should give valuable benefits on many levels – physical, mental, emotional – and that its highest purpose is to tune practitioners into their own body’s subtle energy flows. This allows a practitioner to experience the full spiritual dimension of each posture, thus expanding the benefits of yoga beyond the body, into the mind and soul.”

ABOUT SPIRITUAL YOGA

Many thousands of Yoga practitioners yearn to explore the spiritual dimensions of the poses they practice every week. Spiritual Yoga fills a gap left by most modern Yoga manuals, which tell everything about bodily alignment and physical benefits, but leave out Yoga’s higher dimensions: subtle energy control, meditation, and inner enlightenment.

In this book, Nayaswami Gyandev McCord shares these spiritual teachings as originally taught by the great Yoga master, Paramhansa Yogananda (author of the classic Autobiography of a Yogi) and Yogananda’s direct disciple (and Nayaswami Gyandev’s teacher), Swami Kriyananda. These teachings include: the mind-energy-body connection; the art of meditation; dozens of techniques for spiritualizing one’s Yoga postures practice; spiritual Yoga routines; affirmations and energy control suggestions for standing, seated, relaxation, and inverted postures; mastering pranayama (energy control), and breathing exercises for specific results (greater energy, calmness, concentration, etc.); and Yoga as a way of life.

As Nayaswami Gyandev writes in his introduction: “Imagine that you’ve hired Michelangelo to repaint your kitchen cabinets. Plain white. No doubt he would do a great job, but might you be missing out on something much better?

“It’s the same with Hatha Yoga, the physical branch of the greater science of (Raja) Yoga. If you practice only for its physical and psychological benefits — increased flexibility, strength, and vitality, reduced pain or stress, and so on — you’ll receive some of those benefits, but you’re likely to miss out on something much better! For Hatha Yoga is above all a tool for spiritual growth. Its highest purpose is to help you raise your consciousness and achieve ever-greater happiness.

“Can mere bodily positions and breathing exercises do that for you? A little bit, yes, but much more is possible if you know how to amplify the effects of these practices through the hidden powers of your mind and heart. This book shows you how. If you’re new to Hatha Yoga, you’ll find here instructions to begin a safe, enjoyable practice that will raise your consciousness. If you’re experienced, you’ll find many ways to deepen your practice by working more directly with energy and consciousness.”

View *Spiritual Yoga* book