Lately I’ve been reading a few of the articles on yogadangers.com. I first came across this site a few months ago when it popped up in the Google ads I was trialling on my blog. I read through it then, but revisited it the other day after a recent incident.

On Friday night on the bus home from Atma Yoga I got chatting with a guy who told me he had not been back to the Sunday Feast since I last saw him there because his digestion was “cactus” (Australian for b0rked). When I enquired what was wrong and how it had happened, he explained that it was “tantric misadventure” and then gave me a bone-chilling account that mirrored some of the ones I had read on yogadangers.com about Kundalini awakening gone wrong.

He told me that he had done tantric practices (he didn’t say if they were of the left or right-hand path) “without even believing that they’d do anything”. Next thing he knew, it was like someone was holding a blowtorch to his meridians, one after another for 30 minutes each, like clockwork, every time he ate. All his hair fell out. His energetic system is now completely disturbed.

Two things arise from this:

First of all, yoga practice is not a joke. Most people are not going to experience a partial or complete Kundalini awakening, but some people, due to past activities or whatever predisposition, are susceptible to it. Without the complete practice of yoga, a complete framework that gives you a context to experience and interpret the psycho-physical changes that will take place, Kundalini awakening will be a very disturbing and dangerous event.

Simply doing a few postures, some breathing, and a bit of meditation without the complete orientation and lifestyle that go with yoga practice, while statistically speaking safe, does leave a person open to the possibility of misfortune. Again, most people are going to be perfectly safe, but there are some people who are predisposed to Kundalini awakening. Definitely yoga practices which are designed to awaken the Kundalini should not be taught indiscriminately. Do you know what to do to help someone whose Kundalini energy partially awakens?

If not, don’t play around with it.

One more time for clarity. Most people are going to be fine. Most people will never experience the things described on yogadangers.com. There are 76 case studies on one site - for the hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people around the world who practice yoga in one form or another. At the same time you mitigate the risk by practicing yoga holistically and doing things gradually and under guidance, and by not teaching or practicing Kundalini practices unless you know what you are doing and are ready to take full responsibility for the possible outcomes.

Kundalini awakening is a sideshow on the road of yoga practice, however. And when yoga is practiced properly, you might not even notice it happen.

The second thing comes from reading a number of Christian experts commenting on yoga on that site.

I’m a Christian, and I’ve taken the time to research deeply yoga and the philosophy behind it. Unfortunately many Christians commenting on yoga mistakenly identify yoga philosophy with the philosophy of Sankaracharya, not that most of them would know that, or even know who Sankaracarya is.

Sripada Sankaracarya was a 9th century AD philosopher who preached kevaladvaita philosophy - the idea that the soul (atma) and God (param-atma or Brahman) are identical and non-different.

According to the kevaladvaita philosophy of Sankaracarya, the apparent difference between ourselves and each other, and ourselves and God, is due to illusion only, and when this illusion is overcome by yoga practice, then we again realize our oneness with God and merge into that non-dual existence.

This makes a nice strawman to tilt at. It’s a strawman because Sankaracarya’s philosophy originated in the 9th century AD as a response to the philosophy of Gautama Buddha, who said basically the same thing, but substituting “the void” for “God”. Buddhist philosophy is technically atheism as it denies the existence of a persistent soul or God. At liberation the living entity merges into the void, like a candle going out. Sankaracarya’s philosophy is point for point equal to Buddhism except that he says that there is a soul, but it merges into the Supreme at liberation, like a drop of water returning to the ocean.

Buddha preached around 500 BC. Sankaracarya preached around 800 AD.

Yoga practice, on the other hand, predates both of them by thousands of years. Figurines found in excavations in Mohendro-daro depict yogis practicing asanas. The civilisation of Mohendro-daro is over 4000 years old.

Sankaracarya’s philosophical sleight of hand was useful in that it was used to reestablish the traditional authority of the Vedas, and drive Buddhism out of India to where it survived in China. The philosophical basis that was used for argument was secondary however, to the social egalitarianism that had given Buddhism its foothold in caste-conscious India, and that Sankaracarya co-opted when he asserted that birth was not the only criteria for social standing.

The reason that Buddhism had found such favor with the mass of people in India was the repressive caste system based on birth. Buddha threw this out, and with the bath water the baby of God, the soul, and the scriptures that describe both. Sankaracarya made adjustments to the doctrines surrounding the caste system, asserting that birth does not limit one to a particular social standing, then reintroduced the scriptures describing God and the soul, using a layer of philosophical interpretation that he wrote in his commentaries on these scriptures to make them appear more Buddhist-like in their conclusions.

This social egalitarianism, which was also a hallmark of a later reformer, Sri Krishna Caitanya, has been the basis of religious reformations and revolutionary philosophical movements throughout Indian history.

Due to his triumph over the Buddhist school, and his reestablishing traditional Indian cultural norms and scriptural canon on a basis of greater social egalitarianism, Sripada Sankaracarya and his philosophical conclusions have enjoyed wide spread support, and continue to do so today.

Later commentators, such as Ramanujacarya and Madhvacarya, further reformed the tradition and explained the theistic conclusions of the scriptures that Sankaracarya had reintroduced, continuing with his conclusions on social organization and explaining that his kevaladvaita commentary had actually been a ruse to make the scriptural canon more acceptable to a people who had been accustomed to the conclusions of Buddhism for over one thousand years.

Sankaracarya’s doctrine of saguna and nirguna brahman, on which he bases his monistic interpretation, are not found anywhere in the scriptural canon, but are in fact constructs that he describes in his commentary Sariraka-bhasya. Most Christians and the majority of followers of the “Hindu” religion generally do not know these facts about Sankaracarya and his place in the history of religion and philosophy in India.

Many Christians who have commented on yoga have cited as evidence the expert testimony of “followers of Hinduism” who have confirmed that yoga is part of their “Hindu religion” and that the philosophy of Sankaracarya is in fact what “Hinduism” is all about.

Unfortuately, letting Sankaracarya speak for “Hinduism” is about as valid as letting Sam Kekovich speak for “Australianism”. I’ve got a lot of time for both of them, and I’m sure that you could find some Australians as expert witnesses who would quote Keka chapter and verse, but Australia is a big place with a lot of people in it, and so is Hindustan (India).

Sankaracarya’s philosophy is not what yoga is about. It’s not what “Hinduism” is about. “Hinduism” is an invention of the British. “Australianism” is the invention of the marketing company behind Keka’s ads. How long until we have dedicated followers of that?

The real purpose of yoga is described by Lord Kapiladeva in Srimad Bhagavatam. The purpose of the asanas is to clarify the body and make it a suitable vehicle for spiritual practice. A healthy body and mind make for a powerful instrument for spiritual practice and service. The ultimate goal of yoga is union between atma and param-atma, the soul and the Supreme.

One commentator, identifying yoga with Sankaracarya’s philosophy, cited as further proof of the kevaladvaita (monistic) goal of yoga the fact that yoga means “union” (it gives us the English yoke). Unfortunately for that argument word religion means the same thing - the latin ligare means “to bind”. When you yoke, or join or bind, two things together, they become one in a sense, but they also retain their individual identity, and so it is with yoga and religion. Simultaneous oneness and difference - understanding yourself as a part of the whole in an intimate personal relationship.

Lord Kapila, the Personality of Godhead, who is the highest authority on yoga, here explains the yoga system known as ashtanga-yoga, which comprises eight different practices, namely yama, niyama, asana, pranayama, pratyahara, dharana, dhyana and samadhi. By all these stages of practice one must realize Lord Vishnu, who is the target of all yoga. There are so-called yoga practices in which one concentrates the mind on voidness or on the impersonal, but this is not approved by the authorized yoga system as explained by Kapiladeva. Even Patanjali explains that the target of all yoga is Vishnu. Ashtanga-yoga is therefore part of Vaishnava practice because its ultimate goal is realization of Vishnu.

Where did that come from?

Core Power Yoga, which is based on Baron Baptiste’s Power Yoga and Bikram’s Hot Yoga, has it. 50% of the people absolutely love it, 50% hate it (read some reviews). If you are going to appeal strongly to some people, then other people are not going to like it. That’s the natural result of the fact that people are different.

Core Power Yoga was started by former-IT executive Trevor Trice. He was obviously on the dark side (some would say he still is) - the full functionality of the website is only available to users of Windows using Internet Explorer.

I feel dirty for even having said that…

Last night we went to Bikram Yoga Brisbane - “Brisbane’s Hot Spot”.

I’m on a two week break from the yoga teacher training so I’m at a loose end with my led classes, and someone at work told me that Bikram Hot Yoga was in Bardon, near Red Hill, and that they heat the room up to 37 degrees and lock the doors.

Well, you know that that got my interest. I checked out the website and saw the offer that Laxmivan in Newcastle told me he copied to get his yoga school up and running last year - $17 for unlimited classes over 10 days, which carries me over to term 2 of my teacher training.

Elliott and I rocked up at 6:15 pm last night and joined the queue filing past reception. When we got up to the reception desk we signed the disclaimers and were issued our membership cards. They have a flat panel LCD with some customer management software running. We have discussed using a bar code scanner and membership cards at Atma Yoga, and I’ll keep looking into that. With few students it’s more organic and personal to not have it, but when we start dealing with hundreds a day we’re going to need it.

The mood outside was part gym, part cult - or maybe that was just my imagination. The brochure carries the advisory: “Warning: Seriously Addictive!”

The website, the brochure, and the studio itself are pink and gold.

You have to take your own mat, a towel to put over it, and a bottle of water. You can hire mats and towels at $2 each, and you can buy water.

A board in the reception area had the names of students who are doing the “60 day challenge” - come every day for 60 days and you get a free month. You also get the benefit of 60 days of practice, obviously.

There are lockers where you lock up your gear and take the key into the class with you.

The Class

If the outside mood was part gym, part cult, the inside was pure S&M dungeon. Afterwards I joked with Elliott - “Hey man, I can fire my dominatrix and start coming here. All I need to do is imagine the ‘You’ve been a baaaad boy’.”

First of all when we went in it was like going into a sauna, like Mensana. Dimly lit and hot. We laid our mats out with the other students (who eventually reached 30 in number), and laid down on our towels over them.

One wall was taken up with a mirror that ran the entire length of the classroom.

The teacher was Jan, who I later learned was half German, half French, which probably contributed to the dominatrix mood. When she came into the room she cranked the lights up to full, blinding me, and then it was all on.

Having watched some videos of Power Yoga classes, after going to this class I have to say that Atma Power Yoga’s lineage has Bikram in its family tree somewhere very close by.

Talking continuously, cajoling and urging us on, Jan ran us through the 26 posture Bikram Yoga sequence in sets of two, all precisely timed and expertly described.

Now I can see how Atma Power Yoga can succeed here at Atma Yoga Brisbane.

Number 1: Talk continuously. Don’t let people internalize and space out. Keep the pace fast.

Number 2: Punish the people. Some people are not going to like Power Yoga. They just won’t like it. Don’t try to accomodate them. Here is what you say: “If this pose is a little too hard, then try…. coming to a different class!”

Of course you encourage everyone, but this is not for the “Gentle Hatha” crowd. This is pure passion, unadulterated with any tinge of goodness or ignorance

Encourage the people who come, and make it POWER Yoga. I think that this might be my calling here. “Sitapati’s 90 minute Hour of Power”. Our heating system at Atma Yoga goes up to 30 degrees (I checked it after the Bikram class last night), but as Andy suggested, we can throw in some free standing heaters. Maybe ones with naked flames. “Brisbane’s Independently Verified Hottest Yoga”. Longer, hotter, pinker, golder… Anyway, let’s see what a year of teacher training brings.

The Bikram class was intense. I have a pitta body - high in the fire element, so I was sweating like anything in no time. As the class progressed my heart rate climbed. Elliott, who is recovering from bronchitis, flaked out for a while on his mat.

I also felt like I needed a rest, but I also felt that if I dropped out of the flow of the class I wouldn’t be able to get back up again. As I lay there in one brief resting posture, looking up at the ceiling and feeling my heart pounding in my chest, I thought: “Man, people could die in this class.”

That’s very inspirational.

Anyway, I was back there this morning at 6 am for another round, like any true believer with another potential convert in tow. This stuff is good. Today I got up at 4 am feeling energized and not at all sore. I’ll be pushing to do a class a day over the eight remaining days, and I’ll probably switch to a class a week after that.

Do One Thing - Do It Well

Bikram Yoga - the sequence and the business model - is based on doing one thing and doing it well. All the schools whose websites I’ve looked at, look tight. Their facilities are purpose built and streamlined to what they do. Everything is low fat, high efficiency. The only way to make the registration processing faster would have been to have bar code scanning, or a dedicated receptionist (that would be fat).

The sequence is tight. It is suspiciously similar to the Atma Power Yoga sequence, but it was delivered with more authority than any Atma Power Yoga class I’ve been to, which may affect my perception of it. After my eight days on this I’ll try the Atma Power Yoga sequence again and see how it stacks up. The Bikram sequence feels right. It hits all the areas of the body. There is no minute alignment adjustment, but amazingly, like Prabhupada’s books, it is accessible to beginners and advantageous to the more experienced.

The main thing is to make your body strong and flexible, and the sequence does this. There is no discussion at the level that we get at our “Alignment in Practice” classes on the training course - but it’s not necessary. This is not the thinking man’s dance floor - it’s pure gabba. It’s not Dream Theater - it’s Motorhead. This is Everyman’s Yoga. It’s a tool that people can use for specific outcomes. It’s a drop of nectar brought back from the ocean.

Yeah man, for the next 8 days, I’m drinking the Bikram Kool-Aid.

—————————
Here are some links to the Bikram Yoga websites:

Bikram Yoga Brisbane
Bikram Yoga Wellington
Bikram Yoga Auckland

Read this brief article: What You Need to Know About Power Yoga.

Basically Power Yoga is a version of Pattabhi Jois’ Astanga Vinyasa Yoga created in the 1990s by some of his American students to make it more accessible to westerners.

One of the main differences between Power Yoga and Pattabhi Jois’ Astanga Vinyasa is that:

Power Yoga does not follow a set series of poses. Therefore, any Power Yoga class can vary widely from the next.

So there you have it.

The majority of people do not like to do the same set over and over again. That’s the traditional way, the way that it’s done in Astanga Vinyasa, and it works for some people who are hard core into it. You might remember that I glorified Atma Power Yoga for this previously. For the vast majority of people, however, it’s too much. Thus, Power Yoga was born - where you don’t do the same set each time.

Atma Power Yoga has only one set which is repeated each week, so in that sense it’s more like Astanga Vinyasa. The whole idea of Power Yoga was to make it more accessible, and part of that was a variable set.

So we are working on four different Atma Power Yoga 1 sets in order to vary the set each week.

This is the way that hatha yoga systems develop - through experience. There is no substitute for experience. In preaching, teaching, and other forms of leadership, there is no substitute for the hard yards.

Let’s look at the macro level first of all. If you look at the history of hatha yoga, the earliest hatha yoga texts contain a small number of basic asanas. Patanjali’s Yoga Sutra, considered the primordial yoga text, dedicates only one line to the question of asana, mentioning it in passing between a discussion of the ethics of the practitioner and the preliminary practices of meditation, saying only:

Postures (asanas) should be steady and pleasant.
Asanas are mastered by relaxed effort and remaining unaware of the body.

The oldest known Hatha Yoga text, the 15th century Hatha Yoga Pradipika, contains instructions for only 15 basic asanas.

Over time, practitioners of yoga have developed the asanas through their personal practice and deepening realization. Many of their poses are named after animals. Yogis lived in the woods and learned by observing the actions of animals, whose lives are in tune with natural processes. They also learned through practice and introspection.

I have practical experience of this. My first contact in this lifetime with Hatha Yoga was through Ramacaraka’s Hatha Yoga - the Yogi Philosophy of Wellbeing.

I read through this book, which talks about the holistic yoga lifestyle in terms of eating, drinking, breathing, sleeping, bathing, and began practicing the things it talked about. I found myself naturally stretching my body and feeling how it responded - where the tension was, how different movements made me feel.

That book covers asanas at the very end, but I hadn’t made it that far when I found a flyer for the Manly School of Yoga. I wondered what they would teach there - would we discuss lifestyle management? I went along, and was surprised to find that it was all stretching exercises, and I could see how they were more sophisticated and refined versions of the rudimentary stretches that I had spontaneously begun to do.

So that is how Hatha Yoga systems of asana develop. As Power Yoga pioneer and luminary Baron Baptiste explained in an interview:

My style of yoga practice developed over many years of trial and error, and in finding what worked for myself, and for the everyday folks who would walk through my classroom doors. My focus has always been on “what works” and throwing out what doesn’t.

That is how asana has developed from the very beginning, and that is how it will continue to develop. There is no “one right way”. Yoga asanas are not revealed knowledge except through a practitioner’s personal practice and development of sensitivity to their own body and what it tells them.

There is no substitute for the hard yards.

As a teacher, you have to make the difficult trek to the ocean and then return carrying some water to share with others. You have to make the pilgrimage to the mountain to hear from the teacher, and carry back the teaching to share with others.

In teaching asana, you need to go deep into the practice and share your realization with others. You have to be a source of inspiration for them. The guru represents our highest aspiration manifest before us. We see the teacher and we say: “That is what I want to become”.

If you want to be a credible teacher you have to be a credible practitioner. You have to be a credible leader. You have to lead in practice. If your students practice once a week, you have to practice once a day. If your students practice one hour a day, you have to practice two hours a day.

The commitment of the people will always trail that of the leader. Your ability to teach will be proportional to your personal commitment, in terms of your ongoing practice and also the duration of that commitment - the length of your experience.

There is no substitute for the hard yards. There is no short cut - no magic formula. You have to practice, practice, and practice. Then you can inspire and guide others based on your personal experience. You cannot replace the depth of experience of the teacher with a system. You cannot teach if you do not practice.

If you want to be a teacher, first be a practitioner.

We’ve run a trial of Atma Power Yoga here at Atma Yoga for the past two months, and these are the observations.

Power Yoga, for the uninitiated, is the “generic brand name” for any dynamic strength building series of asanas inspired by Sri K. Pattabhi Jois’ Ashtanga ™ Yoga (r)

Big names in Power Yoga are Baron Baptiste, author of “Journey into Power” and creator of the Baron Baptiste Yoga Boot Camp / Brian Kest, an early American student of Pattabhi Jois’ Ashtanga, and Beryl Bender Birch, who is credited with coining the term “Power Yoga”.

Atma Power Yoga is a power yoga sequence handed down through a secret tradition to Atmananda das, the founder-acarya of the Atma Yoga sampradaya.

There are three main components to the Atma Power Yoga class. There are the asanas, obviously. As well, there is “root lock” (muladhara-bandha), drsti (fixed gaze), and ujjaya breath (”psychic breathing”).

Root lock is the activation of the muladhara-bandha, or lock in the muladhara or base chakra. This is accomplished by directing awareness to the….. anyway, either you know what the whole thing is about or you don’t. If you know, here are the observations:

People do not like to lose.

That’s pretty obvious, but how does that relate to this class? Well, as they say over at Creating Passionate Users, the whole idea is to help the user kick a** - not to leave them feeling like a loser. If you get people into a class and then lay muladhara-bandha, drsti, ujjaya breath, and asanas on them all at once, with the Atma Power Yoga Countdown to Destruction over the top of that, there is no way that they are going to experience a feeling of mastery in that class. No way.

They are going to feel overwhelmed, inadequate, and ineffective. For a few of us these feelings inspire a response of ferocious determination to dominate, but in most of us they lead to resignation and renunciation.

How to fix this: at the moment our thinking is to create a Power Yoga beginners class, and a Power Yoga general class. In the beginners class there is no count. The focus is on helping the students to have a “mastery experience” with the asanas.

Once they have that, they can come to the general class where we have the count going, and students who have already mastered the asanas, or at least gained familiarity with them, can now tackle the coordination of the breathing.

People do not like monotony

From initially high numbers and high enthusiasm, we’ve watched that class go down. Early feedback that we got from students about Elliott’s Hatha Yoga classes, which used to faithfully mimic his personal practice, fanatically derived from Iyengar’s Light on Yoga, was that they wanted something different each week.

Of course Elliott, the consumate Hatha Yogi, was thinking that a stable sequence that enabled the students to gain deeper appreciation of the poses and develop their practice in a solid way was the way to go. That’s a kind of reflection on his own practice, which consisted of three hours of asanas “by the book” each day.

However, most people are not after that kind of level or approach to hatha yoga practice. They’re after an experience. Something different, something interesting, something stimulating. Most people are not going deep enough into the practice. They are acting from a platform of curiosity, rather than a deep-rooted desire for personal transformation.

How to fix this: In order to accomodate this motivation for coming to the yoga class, we are developing four different Atma Power Yoga 1 classes, and rotating them, so that each week the class is different, while remaining true to its objectives for those who actually wish to practise and progress.

So that’s where we’re at with the Power Yoga thing. We’ve basically killed one of our nights to find this stuff out, but nothing ventured, nothing gained. I’m interested in any insights that others might have on this subject. Send me an email, leave a comment, or write an article if you’re blogging.

The contemporary Vedic Ashram system of Atma Yoga / The Loft includes a relatively new samskara, engagement. “Classical” Vedic culture doesn’t have it, but people today benefit from a period where they get to taste “committment without entitlement”. It’s a formal position of regulated engagement to ease them into the full grhasta situation. Basically you’re married, but you don’t get to disappear off into your own scene.

I had the great honour and pleasure to address the 80 or so members of the community at Atma Yoga during the ceremony. For me it was a great privilege to be able to serve my dear god brother Vrajadhama in this way.

Engagement Address

This is Vrajadhama, and Bhakticandrika devi dasi from Peru. I’ve known Vrajadhama for now, let’s see, 17 years I think - something like that. No, 15 years. 15 years, and we’ve been through a lot together. We came to this Hare Krishna movement, this Vaisnava tradition together, and then we went and we spent some time in Peru, spent three years there, and while we were there Vraj met Bhakticandrika. It was obviously fate’s divine arrangement for them to connect in that way, because being such a small guy, Vraj probably wouldn’t be able to find someone his size anywhere else.

(laughter)

Yeah, so it was perfect. Everything worked out perfectly.

So today we are observing the engagement, their engagement ceremony. Now, according to the “classical”, in quotes, Vedic tradition there is no engagement ceremony, because there is actually no engagement. People are either married or not married. You see, the ancient Vedic culture is very strict about the mixing of the sexes. In Yoga one of the preliminary practices is brahmacarya, which means basically “celibacy” - and it means conserving the energies, and so they have a very strict way of social interaction where they don’t have that. Today we don’t really have that culture so much in our society, but we try to follow the Vedic tradition, the Vedic way of life, because it promotes elevation of consciousness. Now, there is no engagement ceremony in that ancient tradition, so we are basically making one up ourselves.

Because you see the Vedic tradition - it’s not a stereotypical culture that belongs to a particular time and place. It’s actually a living thing. Just like within our bodies there is the living energy, and when the living energy is gone from the body, the body just falls to the ground. It’s inert - it’s lost its life. But while that living energy is there, the body changes. Once I was a small boy, like our young friend here, now I’m a young man, and I’ll go through different changes. The body has changed so much, but I’m still the same person - still me - experiencing that. So there’s something within me that’s vital, that’s living, and the outer thing changes. So it is with the Vedic tradition. The outer appearance of the tradition changes, but the inner thing remains the same always.

And the inner thing, the inner substance of the Vedic tradition, it is the platform of absolute transcendental reality - that’s the spiritual platform. You know, the part of us that doesn’t change during our life, that’s our spiritual aspect, our spiritual identity. The physical part of us - that goes through changes. So the idea of the Vedic culture is to help people to connect to that identity, to that aspect of our identity. And that thing never changes - that absolute platform, which is known as Brahman in Sanskrit, that doesn’t change. That is eternal and unchanging - immutable. But society does change, so therefore the Vedic tradition changes along with that. You know, it tracks along with that, to keep connecting the people with the absolute platform. So as time goes on the Vedic tradition changes, so now we are introducing the idea of the engagement ceremony.

So why do we have this engagement ceremony? Why are they doing this? What are they doing?

They’re making a public commitment. They’re not just making a public commitment to each other, they’re making a public commitment to all of us. Because life is not just about “me”, and life is not just about “you”. Life is about all of us, and we all, because we’re all interrelated, we all have a duty to each other, and especially in family life. Family is the basis of human society.Community, human community needs continuity, it needs stability.

So when you enter into this kind of relationship, it’s not just about “what do I want to get out of this? What do I want?” It’s actually about “what can I do for others?” It’s not even about “what can I do for this other person?” It’s about “what can we do together? What can we together do for everyone else?” Now if we begin to live from that platform, instead of thinking “What can everyone do for me? What can I do for myself?” If we begin to live from the platform of “What can I do for others?” then the whole relationship becomes different. Instead of “What can I get out of this other person?” it becomes “what can we together do for others?”, and that makes for such a difference in the relationship.

So the commitment is not simply the two of them to each other, but it’s a commitment to all of us. It’s a commitment to contributing to stability and continuity. Community needs stability, and it needs continuity. We need to create a stable community, a stable society, so that people can have a stable situation in which they can pursue spiritual realization. You know when you’re so disturbed and there are so many disturbances, and you don’t know what’s happening from one day to the next, and your future is so uncertain - it’s very difficult to concentrate on anything higher than just getting through the day. But if we can have a stable situation underlying us for our practice, then we can apply ourselves to that practice, and we can make advancement, we can make progress.

So the duty of those who come together in this way is to provide that stability, and making this public commitment in this way to all of us also helps them with their commitment to each other, because they can realize as they go through it that “it’s not just about us, it’s about everyone, and the public commitment that we’ve made.”

It’s called the “Edison method”. Thomas Edison was a famous inventor, and what he would often do is call a press conference, and he would announce a wonderful new product that was coming out. Then after making that announcement in the press conference he would go into his lab and invent it.

So by making a public commitment like this, it helps to achieve your goals, and to be committed to your goals.

There is another aspect to it, as well.

The other day I was reading Madison magazine. I don’t know if anyone here reads Madison magazine? I don’t - generally I don’t read Madison magazine, but this particular Madison magazine - I was waiting - OK, wait a minute, let me tell you how it happened.

I was waiting for the bus down in Adelaide St, and this particular Madison magazine, the cover jumped out at me, and it’s not because it had a picture of Angelina Jolie on the cover. She’s on the cover of practically every magazine this month - or at least the ones that Jennifer Aniston isn’t on. So what it was, actually, that jumped out at me was a headline that said: “Married versus Living Together: Who’s happiest?”

These are the kinds of things that I like to think about, and I was particularly intrigued to know - what did they have to say about that? I didn’t really want to saunter up to the stand and pick up the magazine in case someone coming from the class saw me reading it. So I waited until we were in Stafford, at Woolworths, where I was sure we wouldn’t run into anyone - but actually we did, we ran into Lou. Anyway, the Supersoul goes with us wherever we go - we can’t escape it.

Anyway, I picked up that magazine and I just flicked through the article, and one thing jumped out at it me, and it said: “Statistically it’s proven that people who don’t live together before they get married, have longer marriages.” That’s what it said. And then they gave their interpretation, or a little bit of their commentary on that. They said: “This is because people who don’t live together before they get married, these days especially, they often don’t do so because of cultural or religious reasons, and those same cultural or religious reasons often preclude divorce as an option.”

I think there is some validity in that, but at the same time I think that is a little bit of a disempowering view to take of it. I think a more positive and empowering view of that can be understood from a principle that we find in the science of Yoga, and that is something that Krishna explains about the yogi in the second chapter of Bhagavad-gita, where He says: “sama sukha-dukham dhiram”

In this particular verse He says:

yam hi na vyatayanyete
purusa purusarsabha
samo-dukha-sukham dhiram
so’mrta vaya kalpate

That the yogi, he is “samo-sukha-duhkam dhiram” - he is equanimous. He is the same - sama means “same” - dukha-sukham - dukha means misery and sukha means happiness. He is the same in both misery and happiness. This is this universal principle. This is something that doesn’t change. The rituals might change, the society might change, but let me tell you this - this is something that doesn’t change. This is an eternal principle: If you cannot regulate attachment, you will not be able to regulate aversion - and these two things are the two sides of the same coin. Attachment and Aversion. The two functions of the mind. If you watch what your mind does as you go around - your mind is always saying: “I like that. I don’t like that. I like it. I don’t like it.” Things that you like, the mind says: “Go. Go. Get it. Get it.” The things that you don’t like the mind says: “Get away. Get away. Give it up.”

“Sankalpa Vikalpa” it is called. So the yogi has to learn to control the impulse towards attachment or engagement. Our society today glorifies the uncontrollable whirlwind romance, you know, it’s kind of like: “I was just swept off my feet. I just couldn’t help myself. I just had to get up on the couch and jump up and down. I was madly in love.” That’s kind of celebrated - you know?

But there is another saying: “Easy come, easy go”. If he can’t control his mind on the way in, he’s not going to be able to control his mind on the way out - and wherever there is attachment or attraction there will always be aversion, that will always come. That is the nature of this world. Whenever there is some attraction, some desire, some attachment - there will always come a time where there will be aversion, there will be repulsion. So if we can’t regulate ourselves and control ourselves when the attachment comes, then we certainly won’t be able to control ourselves when the aversion comes. If we can’t control ourselves when kama, or lust, comes, then we won’t be able to control ourselves when krodha, or anger, comes.

So I think that persons who, for whatever reason - because of their own realization, their own control, their own understanding, or even by social tradition - if they can control, if they can learn to control on the outset - then when the difficult times come, and the mind starts pushing them to come apart, they will also find it a lot easier to control that. And then if they also have the understanding that “it’s not just about us and what we think and what we feel”, but “we have a duty to all these people around us, to the whole society, to the whole community” then that commitment that they are making now to all of us, that commitment will push them together. It will help to hold them together. So by doing it in this way they get the support of the whole community, behind them, to help them in their endeavour, together, to serve - to serve the community.

So that is something about the concept behind this engagement ceremony that we are doing tonight. As I said there is no formal ritualistic ceremony for this in the ancient Vedic tradition, so we are creating one as we go, because the Vedic culture is always relevant to our situation.

So it is very simple what we have planned for tonight. We have the garlands for them? And there are some flowers for puspanjali? So we have some flowers - and we are going to hand these flowers around. Last night we were hearing something about the demigods showering flowers? It is very auspicious.

So they are going to exchange garlands, and there is also a ring, which is a sign of commitment in the West.

Anything that is done beginning with the syllable OM is said to be permanent and binding, so we will chant the Guru Pranam mantra, then you can exchange the garlands and give the ring, and we’ll all throw the flowers.

Hari!
Om ajnana timirandhasya
jnananjana salakaya
caksur un militam yena
tasmai sri gurave namah

Esa puspanjali!

After we returned from the retreat in Taupo we held a strategic planning retreat to map out our priorities for 2006. You can see where we announced these and preannounced the new Loft facility in February in the post “Wanted: New Loft“.

Within weeks the place manifested, and we took possession on February 24th.

Looking back now I can see by analyzing the specification that we came up with that we were basically trying to reimplement the “success formula” of Gaura Yoga. It’s not an unnatural thing to do. We were successful once doing things that way, so we naturally gravitated toward that.

At the same time that we were discussing the shift, we were also discussing the rebranding of the Loft. We discussed how when I first came to the Loft in 1996 there were no yoga classes. Many of the early Lofties came before yoga even started. Rama das, Bala Gopal das, Khadiravan devi dasi, Sudevi devi dasi, Seva Kunja devi dasi, and many others. So yoga is not integral to the success of the Loft paradigm. Ten years ago there was no yoga, in ten years time there may be no yoga, but in the meantime there is yoga.

In 1998 in Wellington, after experimenting with so many of the things that had been successful in Auckland we gradually discovered that yoga was the way forward there. Eventually yoga displaced all the programs that had been the mainstay of momentum at the Loft in Auckland. After we left Wellington in 2001 the name of the facility was changed to Gaura Yoga, to reflect the fact that its identity was primarily as a yoga school.

So we thought that since we’re doing yoga, we might as well align our identity with that. I’ve discussed previously some of the factors that influenced us to go with Atma Yoga. It’s a powerful name, and it also allows us to contribute to building an international platform. I’m not a Lone Ranger. I’m happy to be out in front exploring new frontiers, but I’m very much concerned with contributing to wider success through my efforts, which is one of the reasons why I maintain this blog.

Looking back now, we would have better off if we had realized that basically we were opening a new center, starting from scratch. Of course all the relationship building that we had done up to this point is worth something, but “community needs continuity”, and we were discontinuing basically everything - changing the location, the name, the hours, the pricing, the staff, basically everything.

In the first month we made multiple changes to the timetable as we struggled to understand both our own changed internal structure (we have recently gained a number of team members) and the changed requirements and opportunities of our new situation. These changes further confused and demoralized the people who were struggling to accompany us through this transitionary period. Leadership demands clarity. In fact, one of my personal definitions of leadership is “the supply of direction and clarity in a situation of uncertainty and confusion”. We certainly weren’t able to provide this initially. Internally we were struggling with new processes of decision-making as the old processes no longer accomodated the increased number of team members.

I’ve learnt a lot about change management. I’ve probably mentioned this before, but if you only learn one thing in OCS it’s this: a leader has to make a decision. It doesn’t have to be the right decision, it just has to be a decision. By making a decision and issuing orders to implement this decision the officer retains troop confidence, unit cohesion, and momentum. He can then adjust things in response to the results. If he loses troop confidence, unit cohesion and momentum, he can make all the right decisions he wants later on, but there will be no ability to execute by then.

You can be wrong, but you have to make a call.

Anyway, by doing the radical 180 degree turn in midflight we made a bold move, betting everything on the new direction. Nothing wrong with that, but we should have been more aware that we were jettisoning a lot of the goodwill and momentum that we had up to this point along with the previous branding. Basically we were starting again from scratch and we had to work hard to build things up again - not rely on the existing momentum to carry us through.

The idea that you are starting a new place from scratch leads to a different internal conception, which subtly influences everything that you do. It leads you to thinking about process and steps, elements of change leadership, rather than processes and systems, which are more indicative of management of a status quo.

I don’t disagree with the idea that I expressed in March in “Reinventing the Wheel by Drinking Kool Aid“: “My conclusion is that the best way to convert an existing Loft center to Atma Yoga is to just do it“.

I would just add this addendum:

As General Douglas MacArthur, whose Pacific Headquarters, now a museum, is a block away from Atma Yoga, said: “It is fatal to enter a war without the will to win it.”

Learning from our experience won’t hurt either.

Now let me start to run over some of the other things that went wrong, and what discovered through them. You see we made a number of small errors that cumulatively had a big effect.

First of all, we spent some money to get new tables and more of them. These tables were then set up in a separate dining area that we have at the new space. Each table is quite small and has four chairs around it.

This robbed a lot of momentum. We didn’t realize it, but the shared dining experience is a big part of the Loft / Atma Yoga experience. I mean, I keep repeating that “looking at the face of another human being while you eat is the most basic community experience”, but somehow that didn’t translate into our operational implementation.

This is really, really important. People are so isolated and alienated today, divided up and easily conquered and manipulated by economic forces. Have a look at this:

Over the last 100 years the average size of a household has halved. At the same time people’s habits have changed. People now eat their dinner frequently sitting in front of a television or DVD. Other statistics reveal that the average number of inhabitants in the metropolitan areas is significantly lower than in rural areas, so these national results are skewed toward the low end of the scale for cities.

People do not have the extended family experience. To sit with a number of people and have that communal experience is important. Seems obvious, but because of being overloaded with details and not being conscious and intentional about what we were doing, we unintentionally created a situation of division and isolation, putting people at tables with only three other people.

Upon realizing this we changed the seating arrangements to put six people in a circle, around two tables.

This was the first thing we implemented, but it wasn’t the first thing that we noticed. The first thing we noticed was the bain marie. We slavishly thought that getting a bain maire was the way to go. After all, didn’t we have one in Auckland and in Wellington? Isn’t that part of the “Loft success formula”?

Not at all. What we initially perceived as a limitation, not having a bain marie, had actually been an opportunity for us to stumble upon a significant discovery.

Let me tell it as we realized it. First of all, when we put the new bain marie (thank the Lord that we rented one and didn’t buy one!) we noticed that it changed the mood somehow. It made it more formal, it put up a barrier and created “us” and “them”.

We got rid of it, and continued to serve the plates in the kitchen and bring them out. Then we discovered something else. What had arisen as a spontaneous response to the burgeoning numbers at the Loft and our lack of staffing, the guests helping to carry the plates and serve, was actually a significant part of the Loft experience. It’s the experience of participating and contributing.

By now serving the people - we had increased our staffing level - even without a bain marie, we were robbing them of this opportunity to participate and contribute, essential elements of authentic community.

Immediately we bought some pitchers and put them on the tables, so that people can take control of the situation. Our motto is “we make it easy”. We want to make it easy for people to experience the nectar of serving one another. After all, it’s your place, so make yourself at home!

We also reduced our staffing level, and fixed on a core team who take full responsibility and ownership for the services. Community needs continuity - it needs consistency.

We had unconsciously raised barriers to participation.

The model that we have always used to create a clean environment is one of “guests” and “staff”. There are no “devotees” and “non-devotees” at Atma Yoga, thank you very much. Check that at the door.

What we did is add more people to our “staff” at Atma Yoga from the expanded team that we have. This was a mistake.

I am always a “guest” when I go to Atma Yoga, except when I’m teaching a class. Otherwise I basically model the guest role. I help out voluntarily when it’s needed just like other guests, otherwise I leave things to the professionals.

What we unconsciously and unintentionally (that’s a pretty heavy admission to make) did is an instructive illustration of the difference between position and influence. We put people into “positions” in Atma Yoga that did not relate to their influence.

We put a receptionist on the door. We thought that we would be better able to attend to people and give them personal attention, and after all, isn’t that what we did at Gaura Yoga? What happened in practice is that someone would come back after not coming for a few weeks, and the receptionist would say: “Is this your first time?”

Imagine it, the guy has been coming for the past year, and is an integral member of the community. He says: “No, but it looks like it’s yours!”

Things have suddenly become wierd.

So we nuked that. That person who was the receptionist is fired. They are now a guest like everyone else. If we have an urgent need for someone to help out on the door we’ll call out for a volunteer on the spot, but “appointing” someone creates an artificial distortion in the otherwise natural relationships between people. Let people negotiate their relationships based on real personal interaction. That’s why we dismantle the mental construct of “devotee” and “non-devotee” in our centers.

We also need to minimize the mentality of “guest” and “staff”. Staff has to be kept to a minimum, and everyone else has to disperse into the community. Lower the barriers to participation.

If you read the transcripts, or listen to the Contemporary Urban Preaching Seminars by His Holiness Devamrita Swami, you may fall under the misconception that the information contained in those seminars simply fell from the sky fully formed, or was revealed in a mystical revelation. Of course, the information was revealed in a mystical revelation, but it was done in a process that took some time.

I know because I was there for a reasonable portion of that time and saw it happen. We didn’t work out of a play book, following the numbers. You may have heard of famous discoveries that were made by accident - a scientist is doing one thing and she puts one of her failed experiments to the side. A week later she notices something happening with that experiment and makes a discovery completely unrelated to the original experiment. Well, a lot of things were like that. We did things using our intelligence to the max, thinking about how to do things, what the effects were, and observing the situation, and being open to Krishna’s hand. In this way a lot of things developed organically.

I think understanding that this is the process is important. If you listen to the CUP seminars and get the idea that it is a playbook that you can copy 1,2,3… you may not have much success. Every situation is different. The environmental conditions are different, the people are different, your team is different. So you have to adopt the same process that was used to develop successful Loft centers in other places, rather than simply imitating them. This is why I have a strong desire to make a presentation of the CUP seminars interweaved with the stories behind the observations and developments. This will help to communicate the essential conceptual orientation and approach that is needed. Implementation of principles is what is needed, not imitation of practices.

Now, on to the latest discoveries. I’m just going to set up the situation in this post, then talk about the response in the next one.

We were quite surprised with how things went in Brisbane.

When the Loft in Newmarket was opened, and later on the Loft in Wellington, now Gaura Yoga, we had a reasonable capitalization, and were able to fund the construction and outfitting of a facility.

In Brisbane we started with what we had in our pockets after we got back from three years in South America, which wasn’t a whole lot.

Point 1: Don’t wait to get money to preach.

Using a bit of the good old Aussie ingenuity we cobbled together whatever we could. We extended into renting a small space next to Govindas, which entailed exposing ourselves to risk, and also meant a significant commitment of our resources to preaching. Call it a sacrifice if you will.

Point 2: No risk, no reward. Sacrifice is the secret sauce.

One of the things that we learned from starting out this way is that the active ingredients of the whole operation are independent of the money. As one preacher in a megachurch in the States put it: “Hey, we can spend thousands, tens of thousands, even hundreds of thousands of dollars on our productions, but people can go around the corner and experience something that was produced in Hollywood for hundreds of millions of dollars. We have to be offering people something substantially different from, and better than that.”

We opened a place that had a terrible decor. We put in a heck of a lot of effort to make it look as good as we could, and people responded to the spirit of that. Professional, slickly produced productions don’t connect with the heart as much as authentic, “real” ones do. Because we put our heart into making the place it was heartfelt.

We didn’t have any money for tables, so we borrowed some rickety old ones from the shed out the back of the temple, propped them up with cardboard to stabilize them, and draped clothes over them.

A few people would come for a yoga class, and we would all sit together afterwards with the tables joined together and chat over dinner. We didn’t have a bain marie or anything like that. Acyuta and Channell would cook and would bring in the plates already served to give to the guests. We would leave a pitcher of drink on the table, and we would serve ourselves and each other.

As more people began to come the table started to fill up. There were three or four tables joined together into a long table, seating 10 or 12 people. Soon we had to start bringing in extra tables and chairs from the restaurant. We would have to do this after the class, because there was no room for them during the class. One of us would start bringing them in, and guests would spring in and help us out. It was taking Acyuta and Channell so long to bring plates over that guests started pitching in and carrying the plates over.

We thought to ourselves: “We need to get a bigger place.”

There were a number of limitations that we were facing with that facility. There was nowhere to hold discussions. Every Friday we would carry couches out of the small storage room and convert the yoga space into a discussion lounge. With poor lighting, bad ventilation and a huge empty space surrounding it, the discussion lounge was hardly ideal. Carrying the couches in and out every week was a lot of work as well, and we felt that with all that effort we were not able to create a nice atmosphere. Speakers would have to deal with the clashing of dishes from the Govinda’s restaurant kitchen as we couldn’t close the door because of the heat. The vast space swallowed up the voices of people trying to discuss.

We went to New Zealand to the Taupo Retreat, and spent some time at the Auckland Loft. We were all sitting around in the discussion room there when we suddenly said: “Hey, have you seen anyone sitting around like this at the Loft in Brisbane?” “No way! That place is terrible”

Lunch time yoga classes could not take off. During the day the heat was unbearable inside with no air conditioning or windows. The door had to be left open, which meant you had foot traffic walking past in the corridor, which was very distracting. We felt that without the soothing influence of night time’s low lighting and the presence of a number of people, combined with dinner, it just wasn’t attractive for people.

All of these factors lead us to the inexorable conclusion: We needed to get another space.

And so we did.

to be continued…

I Was Wrong is the title of the famous book by Jim Bakker, which was accompanied by a round of appearances on national television talk shows, after the once influential evangelical preacher was released from prison following his fall from grace.

We’re not afraid to take risks, we are not afraid to make mistakes, and we are ultimately not afraid to fail. As Napoleon Bonaparte said: “He who fears defeat is sure to be conquered”. We work to actively create a culture where people have the freedom to innovate, to explore, to find their way forward, and yes - from time to time to mistep. Part of that is “minimizing the downside” - creating a culture where we can admit, identify, and rectify mistakes as soon as possible, without having to feel a need to cover them up.

I’m particularly interested in studying success and failure. As Marcus Buckingham puts it:

You don’t learn how to be good by studying bad and negating it. The opposite of bad is not good - it’s “not bad”.

You don’t learn what to do by studying failure. However, you can identify essential elements of success by contrasting and comparing success and failure and analyzing the differences. I’m always interested to know how things are going in different places. “What is working, what is not working? Why?” I’m always looking to understand things better, to be more conscious and intentional in my service.

However, my endeavours to inquire and understand are hampered by the following complications:

• Different places have different environmental conditions. It’s not comparing exactly equivalent things with each other.
• The perceptions that we use to study the different situations come from different people. They have their own unique ways of perceiving things, so again it’s not comparing exactly equivalent things.

Recently, however, a golden opportunity fell my way. I was able to do an examination of two operations in the same environment, using the same perceptual baseline. That is The Loft and Atma Yoga in Brisbane.

I was able to see the unexpected success of The Loft, and the equally unexpected failure of Atma Yoga, and then with a team of fellow surgeons perform a postmortem in situ.

What we discovered in this process has been priceless.

Of course Atma Yoga has not failed, but these past two months have allowed us to come to deeper grips with the elements of the Loft that make it successful. Over the next few days I’m going to share that postmortem with you, and explain what we have discovered to be the active ingredients of the situation.

For those who come to Atma Yoga, you may have noticed a change since we made the move. I think that you’ll notice further pleasant changes back over this next period. No, we won’t be breaking a hole in the guttering to get the sound of the storm water pouring outside the window during relaxation , but we will be bringing back the essential mood of the Loft, and I think in an even deeper way, now that we have come to grips with what it is. After you’ve been soaking in it for a while it becomes invisible to you. These past two months have been an opportunity for us, now that we’ve caught our breath from the hard yakka of moving the place over, to reflect a bit on what makes the Loft / Atma Yoga so special. We’ve spent a lot of time talking with people and finding out from them what it is that they enjoy about the place.

There’s so much more to Atma Yoga than just Yoga, but you already knew that…

This Saturday, 13th May is the occurrence of the Full Moon, referred to as Purnima in the primal Sanskrit language.

Purnima is considered an especially auspicious time for celebration and spiritual communion. Our bodies are intimately connected with the forces of nature - our bodies are over 70% water, which is affected by the pull of the moon. The moon, or Chandra in the yoga tradition, is understood to influence especially the mind.

The moon is described in Bhagavad-gita as being influential in the growth of grains and vegetables, necessary for sustaining life. Planting is done according to the phases of the moon. The light of the full moon is described as especially cooling and rejuvenating.

The moon is described in various Vedic scriptures along with the sun as the eyes of the Universal Form of the Supreme Spirit of the universe. The Universal Form is a preliminary meditation for yogis to understand that just as the spiritual identity within our body causes the inert material elements to come alive and move, similarly a Supreme spiritual identity animates and breathes life - energy, movement, and activity - into the otherwise dark and lifeless universe.

This Purnima we will be holding the Full Moon festival at Atma Yoga. It is an opportunity to come together and celebrate life with all its transitions, together. The festival starts at 6.30 pm. Come with an empty stomach and a friend for an evening of dancing, singing, and joyous celebration. Bring some flowers if you like.

What we are all about is Authentic Community. That is the real product or service that we are peddling at Atma Yoga – that is the unique contribution that we have to make to humanity – our “value proposition”.

All the other things we have are to support and supplement that – but Authentic Community is the secret herbs and spices – it’s the secret ingredient in our special sauce.

First of all, Authentic Community means “bringing people together with Krishna in the center”.

This is the primary necessity for Authentic Community. We must have something in common. And what will that common point be? It must be the most inclusive, universal point. It must be a lasting point. That point can only be Krishna. If we put some other limited proposition or personality in the center of our community then we will have a temporary community, we will have a community which includes some and excludes others. Only by putting Vishnu, or Krishna, who is the source of all living entities and is all-pervading, in the center can we create Authentic Community. That is our real common interest - our common source of being.

Next, Authentic Community has other characteristics that distinguish it from the apparent community that characterizes our present day existence, and frustrates our search for satisfaction and a fulfilling and meaningful existence.

Authentic community is not created or experienced through passive consumption - it can only be created through contribution and participation. Today we frequently experience community through consumption. We sit back and passively consume goods, services, and even experiences, in order to experience community. We live vicariously through reality TV shows and read the meta-reality experience on news websites, and in this way experience community with the others around us. We sit on couches and stare at televisions. We buy from the same stores, go to the same shows, and in this way construct our identity and our common identity through consumption.

Authentic Community on the other hand is based on participation and contribution - “be yourself and make a contribution”. It’s not about being exploited in the name of being served - it’s about actively serving one another. Authentic Community is based on a spirit of service, one to another.

Even in a community where supposedly Krishna is at the center, without the spirit of active service, without participation and contribution, there can be no Authentic Community, only apparent community. While lip service is paid to the ideal of putting Krishna in the center, secretly, subtly everyone tries to put themselves in the center. Everyone will sit down and wait to be served, and no-one will stand up to serve. Rather, everyone should stand up to serve, and no-one should sit down to be served. If we find ourselves in that situation, with everyone standing up to serve, and no-one sitting down to serve, then we can turn outwards and see the millions of people who surround us, waiting to be served. Waiting to experience Authentic Community.

We need to give people the opportunity to engage in Authentic Community. They cannot engage if they are relegated to the position of “consumers”. We cannot be “consumers of Authentic Community”, we must be contributors, we must be co-creators, we must be active servants in order to experience Authentic Community.

We have to create opportunities for everyone to engage in Authentic Community. That is what it is all about.

The basis of human community is looking at the faces of other persons as you eat. That is the basic human experience of community. We have to give people the opportunity to do this, and to serve each other. By giving them the opportunity to take sanctified foodstuffs, to serve one another, and to sit in a comfortable environment where they can look at each other and converse, the first taste of Authentic Community can be had.

In the Atma Yoga side of things we have to strive for high quality, professionalism, depth of knowledge. On the Atma Lounge side of things we have to strive for Authentic Community - personalism, service, inclusion. If these things can be done along with high quality and professionalism, then all well and good. Otherwise high quality and professionalism must be sacrificed, because they are secondary considerations! People have to feel that they have some ownership of the space, that they have the opportunity to contribute and influence, that they have the opportunity to serve. Let them taste the nectar!

On the subject of Google Ads, I just started a Google Ads campaign for Atma Yoga. We’ve had a number of people email or phone from our findyoga.com.au listing, where we’re number six down on the right in the list of schools.

While we were debating the new name for the school I mentioned a principle that Guy Kawasaki had talked about around that time in a post entitled “The Name Game“, about choosing a name for a company.

Guy said:

Begin with letters early in the alphabet. Here’s the scenario: you bought a booth at a massive trade show like Comdex. The list of exhibitors in the show guide is alphabetized. Would you rather be listed in the front of the guide or at back of the guide? Another scenario: A reviewer analyzes a dozen or so products. She lists them in alphabetical order in the review. Would you prefer that your product be at the beginning or end of the list?

Ka-ching. The only way to ace the findyoga listing would be to call the place 108 Yoga.

Candidasa hassles me every now and then about our non-appearance in Google searches for yoga in Brisbane, so let’s see what the Google ad campaign does.

Don’t be surprised if you don’t see any sponsored links for Atma Yoga in Google - the campaign is targeted to Queensland, Australia, where we are physically located. No sense in advertising to people in Iceland. I might widen it to Australia. We’ll see what happens.

We also got 10,000 flyers yesterday. Elliott and Maha-mantra reckon that they’ll distribute 500 a day, finishing the lot in 20 days. We’ll see how they get on. Again, carpet bombing is not as effective as targeted assassination, to use a military analogy. Bunker busters haven’t taken care of Mr bin Laden…

The personal referral beats the mass marketing campaign any day, or at least it does today. If you didn’t check it out when I previously mentioned it, and you have some time on your hands and the capacity for it - check out Greg Stielstra’s site Pyromarketing.com. Greg was the marketing manager for Zondervan who oversaw the marketing for The Purpose-driven Life.

So we find that people come if a friend invites them or tells them about it, or if they meet a staff member in the street. We trust what our friends tell us because we have similar tastes - that’s why we’re friends. What a stranger tells us is good is less reliable.

At the same time, a good military strike involves air and artillery support accompanied by a fast moving mechanized infantry wave. Boots on the ground. So Google Ads is part of that metaphorical strike - at least that’s how I think of it.

Today I did three and a half yoga classes - five hours in total.

Usually Monday morning is a wipe out after the Sunday Feast. Now with the Yoga Teachers Training Course that we are on we have to be at the yoga studio at 6 am for a two hour led practice session.

Last night I got to sleep after midnight, then got up at 5 am, showered, chanted 7 rounds, and went to the studio. Two hours later I was feeling great, after an hour of pranayama and 45 minutes of asana.

I came home and took breakfast, then chatted with various Atma Yoga staff members about the program, then Param, Prahlad, and I went over to the temple. Our god sister Carana Renu is arriving in Brisbane tomorrow. She has a Ph.D in astrophysics, and will be doing some programs at the university. We went over to the temple to prepare a room for her to stay in.

Param stayed and did that, and Prahlad and I went to visit the lawyer to sign some documents and pick up his bill. I tell you - if I had known that it would require $40,000 just to open Atma Yoga, I would never have taken the first step. Reason - not because I have too little money, but because I have too little faith. Amazing how Krishna can use you as an instrument even when you are so disqualified. And you know I didn’t have $40k up my sleeve, so as they say: “With a little help from my friends”.

Then I made it to Elliot’s Hatha Yoga class at Atma Yoga at 1.30pm. It was a Gentle Hatha ™ class, as only myself, Rasika, and Jody were there. All four of us were at the mega kirtans at the temple on Saturday night and at the Sunday Feast last night so we were wiped.

Afterwards I conked out in Shavasana and stayed on the floor for the next hour and a half until 4 pm. Then I went back to the ashram, chanted my rounds, helped Zoe jump start her car, and rode my bike back in to catch the last half of Mantra’s Slow Deep Stretch ™ class, and catch Channell’s 90 minutes of Atma Power ™.

The classes were low in attendance today. Tomorrow’s a public holiday, so people are chilling in their cribs, I’d imagine. It’s been a pretty yoga intensive day. Oh yeah, I didn’t have to go in to my day job today, so I maxed out the yoga practice.

A6, double-sided, colour, glossy white paper. $605 for 10,000 for those who like to know about those kinds of things. I also saw some DLE (that’s 1/3 of an A4) on card, double-sided, colour, that a mate had done - $600 for 6000. Those are Australian dollars, but it’s about 1 to 1 for the Kiwi, isn’t it?

You can read details of the programs on the Atma Yoga website.

Props to Bhakticandrika for laying it out. It’s been a long process with a lot of changes along the way.

I taught my first class at Atma Yoga today at lunchtime. I’ve been riding my bike into the city to take the class at lunchtime, and doing night time classes whenever possible as part of my midflight re-engineering to yoga teacher. The yoga teacher training course starts next week (8 hours per week).

Today I went in and Elliott was sick with a cold that the devotees brought back from India with them that has been ravaging our ashram. I’m one of the last ones to hold out, despite sharing a room with two others who have it.

So he asked me to teach the class. Debut.

Here are a few humble contributions to the Atma Yoga sampradaya. First of all, the Atma Power Yoga Count that I use. I had DJ Vraj whip it up, and I’ve been using it for my personal practice for the past week or so. We started using it at the center this week.

Journey into Power - DJ Vraj / featuring Bhakticandrika. (mp3, 80MB, 80 minutes)

Here is something else, from the opening:

The mantra that we begin the class with is a powerful invocation to the ultimate personality of pure consciousness. Please bring your left and right hands together in front of your heart, symbolizing the coming together of method and wisdom in devotion.

Then:

Om Namah
Bhagavate
Vasudevaya

You need to break the mantra down to a few syllables at a time in order to help people get it. Whatever you do, don’t chant Om on it’s own (props to Maha-mantra for picking that one up).

The word namah is a compound of na and ma - “not me”.

I didn’t use the count today, as the guests who came didn’t look like the power types. I gave them some Gentle Hatha ™ instead.

Red Hill Ashram residents, now hear this.

Please set your home page in your webbrowser to http://redhill.atmayoga.com.au. This website is only available from within the ashram, and it contains importants messages each day about what is going on in the ashram and at Atma Yoga, including Atma Yoga and ashram financial reports and Atma Yoga attendance reports.

With 12 people it has just become impossible to rely on communicating directly and personally with everyone and we are dropping the ball through miscommunications too often.

Let’s see if we can tighten up the game play with this internal noticeboard where we can post important information.

Thank you.

Guys, there is some confusion over this topic, and it’s hard to get everyone in the same place at the same time to communicate this, so here is the canonical information:

The lunch time class now runs for 45 minutes

The reason for this is that people who will come on their lunch hour need to do their thing in an hour. I know that you guys who aren’t working in an office find this hard to appreciate, but I can understand this only too well. An hour long class does not fit into a lunch hour. One of our target markets for this class are people who work in the city and want to do some exercise on their lunch hour. Another target market are the students at QUT Gardens Point Campus. Another target market are people who are free during the day and can make it in from the inner suburban ring. A 45 minute class will serve all these markets. A 1 hour class will not.

The lunch time class starts at 12:15 pm

We are going to run two lunch time classes back to back, in order to increase the number of people that we can serve. With two 45 minute classes back to back we can do two classes with a 90 minute commitment of time, versus one class for a 60 minute commitment of time. The efficiency is obvious.

We are starting the class at 12.15 pm instead of the old time of 12.30 pm because the when the second class kicks in it will start at 1.15 pm and go to 2 pm. If we leave the first class at 12.30 pm we’ll have to push the second class back even further, which doesn’t suit a lunch time crowd, and puts us closer to our evening classes.

Continuing the class at 12.30 pm for the convenience of the people who are already coming simply creates more problems for us. This is what is coming:

12.15 - 13.00 Class
13.15 - 14.00 Class

So people are going to have to get used to that. The longer we wait to make the change, in the name of serving the people who are already coming, the more people will become accustomed to that, and the harder the change will be for everyone.

We make the change now, hard, and deal with it.

Why 12.15 and not 12.30? Because 12.15 - 1300 is cleaner and easier to remember. Having a .15 and .30 in the timing will cause too much confusion for people in the long run. We’re in this for the next six years so don’t be too attached to the last three weeks.

We are printing 10,000 flyers for this program

There are currently 1000 cards out there with the old program on it. We’re about to print 10,000 flyers with the new program on it. Currently we’re getting up to 10 people per day for this class. We want to see that rise to 40 people across those two classes. Don’t focus on the 1000 cards and the 10 people, focus on the 10,000 flyers and the 40 people, and “make it happen”.

Lunch is not advertised on the flyers

That’s right, because lunch is something else. We give lunch to everyone who comes, but that is something that we invite guests to personally. We charge for yoga classes in order to pay the rent on our facilities, and that’s what we advertise.

We need to be very clear on this point. We do not charge for prasadam. It is by invitation for our guests. We charge for yoga classes.

From a marketing perspective, just as an aside - I don’t think that people come because they read about prasadam on a flyer. People come for yoga. They come back because of the company and they stay because of the community. The basis of human community is looking at the face of another human being while you eat. So it’s an element that causes people to come back, and to bring their friends. But it is not a significant “first-time attractor” for people.

So from that angle don’t be concerned that we are losing some kind of competitive advantage by not publicizing this aspect of the program. We need to be clear to separate what is the “commercial” aspect and what is the community aspect. The yoga classes are run by volunteers and Atma Yoga is a registered non-profit community benefit organization. The donation that people give for the yoga class helps us cover the costs involved in running the Atma Yoga center.

Inviting people to take dinner or lunch is something informal that we do out of love and community.

Here it is - Vrajadhama shot some video footage during the construction of Atma Yoga on his digital camera. On Friday night he stayed up late and put together a six minute collage of the footage, accompanied by one of the tracks off his last album, Antimateria.

We showed the resultant movie at the Grand Opening on Saturday night. There are a few in-references. The lights in the elevator weren’t working for a few days during construction, and during the sanding one Friday night the smoke alarms went off… we switched them off for the agni-hotra on Saturday.

Otherwise it’s a nice little compilation. There is a smaller version at 26MB that I’ll upload tomorrow.

In the meantime here it is: “This is Atma Yoga” (.wmv, 96MB)