My New Journey

This is my first blog post on my journey of living as a volunteer staff member of an ashram in northern California. I have been here for two months now and in this post will give a general overview of the lifestyle here.

The name of the ashram is called Sivananda Yoga Farm and you can visit http://yogafarm.org for more details on the history, current workshops, and other news. My blog will be more about my personal journey into the 4 paths of yoga.

The schedule here is the same every day of the week with minor fluctuations depending on the workshop and/or guest speakers we have. Here is the basic schedule:

600 - 730 Satsang
730 - 800 Staff Meeting
800 - 1000 Asana Class
1000 - 1100 Brunch
1100 - 1600 Karma Yoga / Workshops / Lectures
1600 - 1800 Asana Class
1800 - 1900 Dinner
1900 - 2000 Peace Chanting
2000 - 2130 Satsang

So this is the basic line up every day. I will go over what each event means. Future blog posts will cover some of these events in more detail.

Satsang in short means 'in the company of truth'. Satsang is a hour and a half gathering in which the first half hour is dedicated to group silent meditation. The second half hour is chanting with various musical instruments, and the third half hour is a reading out of one of Swami Sivananda's books.

Asana is what most people in western culture would think of as yoga. We start out with breathing exercises such as Analoma Viloma, we then go through a set of sun salutations followed by about 12 different poses which vary depending on the teacher.

We only eat twice a day here on the farm and each meal is vegetarian and completely organic. I have been on this diet for two months now and have certainly noticed changes, quite subtle but I have noticed them.

The big block of time in the middle of the day is dedicated to workshops and teachings such as lectures on Vedanta or a week long seminar on positive thinking. There are many more things that go on in this block of time which will be covered as they happen in future posts.

The rest of the schedule is straight forward. And that is my day.

Om
-G