Pictures from Japan Tour Program

Dear all,
Below please find a few pictures of Sri NV Raghuram in his extended Japan tour program. to review all pictures, please visit Amrit's photo album.


Father and son - Sri NV Raghuramji and Amruth at Yonago Garden Museum


Sri NV Raghuramji at Shimzu Comunity Center


Sri NV Raghuramji with Shizuoka Gita Group


Sri NV Raghuramji at Koba Yoga Deva.


Sri NV Raghuramji at Kagoshima Noikura Clinic


Sri NV Raghuramji at Hiroshima Center

Finding Inner Peace: Yoga Techniques (3)

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A RADIO TALK on "Yoga Research" by Sri NV Raghuram for local NPR, WUWM, Milwaukee/USA can be listened to at http://www.wuwm.com/view_le.php?articleid=25
Date: October 5, 2006
Program name: Lake Effect
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Everyone else is second level and third level seekers of spirituality or freedom. Therefore others must ask another question, “How do we detach and practice slowness? How do we obtain a calm state of mind?” The great Arjuna belongs to this category. That is why he asks Krishna the question, “Krishna, you ask me to calm the mind, but it is so difficult. I can stop the vayu but to control the mind is very difficult.”
We must face that it is difficult to calm the mind. For that purpose, we sit down peacefully, quietly wanting to control the mind. In two minutes, our legs start hurting. Now we need to change our position as we try to continue to calm our mind. But now the new posture begins causing pain. Your body does not cooperate with you. After you take care of all those things and so you sit down again to calm the mind and suddenly you feel hungry. You want a small cookie or something. But you just had a meal so how could you feel hungry? So you strongly tell yourself, “ I am not going to listen to my stomach. Let me calm my mind.” You want to be very serious about this, but the mind is very tricky. Once you decide that you do not want to think about the body, your body begins to create hurdles for you such as pain or an itch. The body is coming in the way of a peaceful mind. Hence, you need to do something to the body so that the body will help you calm down the mind, such as physical yoga techniques. In order to keep the mind calm, the body needs to relax. The physical level is not the only level at which we have disturbances within our personality. For example, we have disturbances in our prana which we will discuss at a later time.

All of these disturbances that are at every level of our personality begin to percolate deep within us and begin to effect our pathology and becomes the cause for sickness in us. When we remove these disturbances, we regain health. This is how we work in yoga therapy. In a future topic we will discuss sickness from the point of view of yoga and how yoga can help alleviate the sickness.

Another important aspect of these disturbances, which we today call stress, is how they develop from our mind. There are so many disturbances in the mind so if we need to find a solution for the stress, a technique to control the mind. The affects of this stress limits our potential. For example, when we are agitated, our memory is lessened and our creativity is diminished. In this sense, every walk of life needs peace of mind. Now the question is how do we apply that in our various personality levels? Because we are not only the body, but also the mind, we are often times identified with intellect and other times emotion.

So we come to the important questions of “what am I? Who am I? What is this thing “I”? This is a very important philosophical question. Our whole life passes without ever knowing what “I” is. We use the word “I” so frequently and so easily- “I am happy, I am sad, I am angry, I am depressed, I am old, I am young.” We use the word “I” so freely but do we know what this “I” is? Another fundamental question is what is the use of knowing what “I” is?

When we delve into the inquiry of “I” we begin to see a beautiful definition of yoga. In the next topic we will take up this question of “I”. This inquiry will help us within yoga. When we investigate “I” and find yoga, we will explore integral yoga. That is why this practice is called “integrated yoga practice,” and what we refer to as IAYT- Integrated Approach of Yoga Therapy.

Love,
Raghuram.

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Sri Raghuramji is in Japan. Please visit www.nvraghuram.org to review his tour program.
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Finding Inner Peace: Yoga Techniques (2)

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Raghuramji's Japan tour program started. Please visit http://nvraghuram.blogspot.com/2006/10/sri-nv-raghuramjis-japan-tour-program.html to review it.
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One such story is found in the scriptures. Shuka is a youth who was involved in the regular life of gossiping and playing. One day, his father, Vyasa called him and said, “Now you are 14 and grown up so you need to develop responsibility and learn knowledge.” The son asked what for? The father replied that we should all study scriptures so that we do spiritual Sadhana. Through this we will come to know that our nature is bliss and we are not the body and all things attached to it.”

Shuka asked his father, “What did you say? My nature is bliss and I am not this body and its attachments?” His father replied with a simple, “Yes.” So the son further questioned, “How do we know this?” The father replied, “We know that we are free with no mother, no father, no birth, and no death. We know this through introspection, or an inner journey.”

Shuka, talking to himself, said, “is that so….” And he started walking as if he was nobody. When the father looked at the sudden transformation of his son, he did not take it too seriously immediately. But he quickly realized that something happened to his son. He could not believe the effect of his words on his son! He followed his son asking him, “My son, what has happened to you? Why are you going? Where are you going?” But Shuka transformed the minute he heard that he has no father or mother, because he is not the body but the soul. The Soul does not take birth nor does it die; it has nowhere to go but is everywhere; and he is peace himself because the Soul is peace.

Shuka kept walking and the father was following and shouting behind him, “Oh my son, where are you going? Talk to me, dear son.” But there is no son; he has already dissolved. There is no longer, Shuka, the son of Vyasa. There is only a soul in the form of Shuka; he has lost even the identity with his name so he does not respond.

As Shuka kept walking, he began passing through a place where there was a pond meant for the ladies of the village to bathe and play. Since it is exclusively for ladies, no male members are permitted to go there. They did not mind running around the pond without caring about being covered or not.

Shuka passed that way and they did not care that a youthful man went by. However when his father ran behind him, shouting, “My dear son!...,” the women ran into the water of the pond to cover their modesty. Vyasa was surprised at their reaction on that occasion and could not contain his curiosity. He asked them why they did not mind when Shuka, a young man came through. But when he, being over 70 years old and like a grandfather, came through, they covered themselves. They replied to him, “Shuka was like a child who does not have any attachment with his body so there is no feeling of a man’s presences and in his passing we could feel the presence of a pure soul. They further added, “Where as the very fact that you are shouting and saying ‘my son, my son’ we can see how much attachment you have with the body, because the son belongs to the body as he is born to the body.” Only body attachment brings about the sex consciousness that is the reason they have to hide their bodies. Soul with attachment looses its purity whereas a person like Shuka is so pure in his heart that all it required was for him to hear once that he is a pure soul and he is at peace for him to internalize and establish his own peace. People such as Shuka do not need to do anything when hearing reality is all that they need.

-to be continued.

Love,
Raghuram.

Sri NV Raghuramji's Japan Tour Program / November 2006

Kagoshima
October 5th Thursday / 1pm- 4pm Karma Yoga in Noikura Clinic
Fukuoka
October 6th Friday / 1pm - 4pm Karma Yoga JYN, Fukuoka
Hiroshima
October 7th Saturday / 10am - 1pm Karma Yoga JYN, Hiroshima
Yonago
October 7th Saturday / 4pm - 7pm Karma Yoga JYN, Yonago
Osaka
October 9th Monday / 10am - 1pm Yoga therapy JYN, Osaka
Kobe
October 9th Monday / 4pm to 7pm Karma Yoga Kobe Yoga Square
Nagoya
October 10th Tuesday / 10am to 1pm Karma Yoga Atsuka Jinguu – eiryuukaku
Shizuoka
October 11th Wednesday & 12th Thursday / Free Days
Tokyo
October 13th Friday, 14th Saturday / Free Days
October 15th Sunday Karma Yoga JYN, Tokyo
October 16th Monday Karma Yoga Otaku Sangyou plaza
October 17th Tuesday / Free day
Kitakami
October 18th Wednesday 10am - 1pm Karma Yoga Sjata ashrama
Sendai
October 19th Thursday 10am - 1pm Karma Yoga Shimin Center
Fukuoka
October 20th Friday 10am to 1pm Karma Yoga Iwate aiina
Fukushima
October 21th Saturday 10am to 1pm Karma Yoga Fukushima terusa