Although the emphasis in a Jivamukti class is on Hatha Yoga in its most elevated and esoteric form, five elements form the foundation of Jivamukti Yoga. These are:

1. Scripture

The sources for the teachings are ancient Sanskrit scriptures, notably:

• Patanjali's Yoga Sutras (the scripture that discusses how to overcome the mental obstacles to enlightenment).
• Hatha Yoga Pradipika (a technical manual on Hatha Yoga).
• Bhagavad Gita (Krishna's outline for the three paths to Yoga: Bhakti, devotion; Karma, service; Jnana, knowledge).
• Upanishads (the source scriptures that expound upon the nondualistic nature of God).

We also promote the study of the Sanskrit alphabet and grammar.

2. Bhakti (Devotion)

We recognize that God-realization is the goal of all yoga practices. To that end we:

• Encourage interreligious understanding and tolerance.
• Use altars, religious pictures, and iconography to create a devotional mood.
• Encourage the practice of kirtan (devotional chanting) and japa (repetition of the name of God).

3. Ahimsa (Nonviolence)

We recognize nonviolence as the primary ethic of yoga, so we promote:

• Ethical vegetarianism.
• Animal rights.
• Environmental and social activism.

4. Music

Nada Yoga is an essential component of Hatha Yoga. Music is used in a Jivamukti Yoga class to:

• Refine hearing through listening to uplifting, spiritually directed music during asana practice.
• Refine speech through kirtan (call-and-response singing).

5. Meditation

We encourage the practice and study of meditation. We feel strongly that without meditation, no attainment in yoga is possible. There is no point in practicing asana, for example, without also practicing meditation. It must be a part of every class or private practice session.

Our method differs from other approaches, in that we expect our students to include all these elements in every practice session and not, for instance, to practice asana separately from scriptural study, chanting, and meditation. We do this because the practice of asana creates biochemical changes that improve one's ability to reach a meditative state and gain insight into the scriptures. Just as it is important to move from alphabet recitation to sentence construction, so we hope our students move from attempting to stand on their heads to a liberating spiritual practice.

During one class we played "Across the Universe," a Beatles song in which the Sanskrit mantra Jaya Gurudev appears. After class an excited student ran into our office exclaiming, "Do you know that they are singing the same Sanskrit mantra that you taught us the other day?!"

She had been listening to that song for nearly thirty years and had never heard the mantra before. The class provided her with an experience conducive to a meditative state of receptivity in which she could hear things that were previously unavailable to her cognitive mind. In this way, art can fill the gap between the yogi in the Himalayan cave and the modern urban practitioner. There is no audience for this performance; there are only participants.

Originally, the shamanic role of the artist was to uplift people with authentic experiences of transcendence, to inspire them to move out of the mundane and toward the Divine. Today, however, we have become a mute audience: voyeurs rather than participants, consumers rather than creators. We collect, acquire, and hoard. With the growing popularity of yoga, it, too, could be reduced to a vacuous commodity. This is why we emphasize to our students that their practice must be grounded in humility and selflessness and a striving toward divinity.

I am often telling my artist friends that through my lectures I may reach a few hundred, a few thousand or a maximum of a hundred thousand people. But artists through music, painting or sculpture, whether it is a constructive message or destructive message, can reach millions. Therefore, artists can produce peace, love, compassion and harmony, which everybody wants, you see. Everybody is praying eagerly about that.

- His Holiness the Dalai Lama

For us, creating Jivamukti Yoga was a natural continuation of our own artistic investigation into the mysteries of life. It was a way for us to share our findings with others who were also interested. At Jivamukti we use art, music, dance, and poetry, much as they were used during the "happenings" of the 1960s (minus the drugs!), to create an environment that inspires people to break out of their small selves and feel the Divine Self flowing through them. In this way, the world of appearances becomes a playground for deeper learning and a laboratory for the evolution of the immortal soul.

The Upanishads tell us that a liberated person views all with equanimity, seeing no difference between the mud puddle and the crystal lake, or the diamond and the dust. So, rather than reject our environment, we choose to view practicing yoga in New York City, with sirens blaring and people screaming, as the ultimate shortcut to liberation. This choice-to elevate the mundane toward the divine-is available to all of us wherever we live.

There are advantages to solitude, ashram life, and relating to nature, certainly, but we have never felt that New York City is not natural. After all, everything comes from Mother Nature. If you're attached to preferences-this is good, this is bad; this is natural, this is unnatural; this is clean, this is dirty-then you cannot know the truth. You're caught in the chitta-vritti, the fluctuations of the mind. That is what the mind is equipped to do: to separate this thing from that thing. Yoga practices teach us to go beyond the mind and perceive the cosmic consciousness that animates all beings.

Take from me all that is not free.

- Bhagavan Das, a chant to Kali Ma

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Copyright © 2002 by Sharon Gannon and David Life.

Tags: Yoga