by Sandra Amrita McLanahan, M.D

I first came across the teachings of Swami Satchidananda (Sri Gurudev) in a transcript from a talk he gave in which he said, “We have a natural state of ease and when we lose it we get disease.” I was in medical school at the time, and nobody was really addressing the fundamental root of disease. Over many years, that’s what his teachings and his guidance have been for me as a medical doctor.

In the late 1960s and 1970s, when drug use was fairly rampant in my generation, he also talked about how when you take drugs they gets you on a jet plane up to the higher sphere, but without a parachute. He explained how Yoga can enable you to access higher state of consciousness and awareness, but it does so step-by-step and with good support. These teachings really intrigued me so I read To Know Your Self, a foundational book of Swami Satchidananda’s Yoga teachings.

I also began taking Yoga classes at the San Francisco Integral Yoga Institute. When we came to Yoga Nidra (deep relaxation) and went over the parts of the body and came to relax all of them, I had an amazing experience of letting go of a lot of the stress that I was carrying from being a medical student. And I said to myself, This is a kind of medicine. And, I’ve been studying it ever since.

With the Integral Yoga teachings, I began to realize that “God” is a state of being. If God is omnipresent, it can’t be one person, but it’s a state of Beingness that is omnipresent. We can tune into w-God on our internal radio dial.

I was fortunate to be able to travel to India with Gurudev many times over the years. On my first trip, he talked about how he had been trained as a naturopath and a homeopath, and he believed in natural ways of healing. So, he taught me all these natural ways to assist the body to heal itself and to look at the root causes. Dr. Dean Ornish, then a medical student, read an article that I had written about this in an issue of Integral Yoga Magazine. And he invited me to come and speak at his medical school. After my talk, he said: “Let’s do research together.”

He designed the initial research study, during which I would teach the Yoga practices to all the patients in the study. Since this was in the 1970s, he felt the patients would feel more comfortable with a medical doctor teaching them. Dr. Ornish was the first to show that heart disease could be reversible and, later, also diabetes and prostate cancer.

I also began to do research with Michael Lerner, the cofounder of Commonweal and the Commonweal Cancer Help program in California and another student of Sri Gurudev. We began using Yoga with lupus and cancer patients. After several years, with Dr. Lerner’s guidance, Smith Center for Healing and the Arts was established in Washington, DC, which also incorporated Yoga therapy for cancer patients. Shanti Norris, a former assistant to Sri Gurudev, was tasked as the director.

That’s why I also love reading his book, The Golden Present. It contains life lessons for every day. One reading is about death and it is titled: “Changing Forms.” It says, “Birth and death are changing forms. The plant changes into a flower and the flower changes into a garland. And if you leave the garland alone for some time, it will change into dust. It is the same for the body. The body is composed as elements and the elements are constantly changing. One day, when the body decomposes, the body is dead. But you, the owner of the body, are always the same. This realization of immortality is possible only when you free yourself from your identification with the body. What’s more, it is when you experience the realization of your own immortality that you can be permanently happy. Strive for the eternal, not for the temporary. This realization of the eternal will make you able to be always happy, no matter what the circumstances. The happiness that seems to be coming from your possessions is false, or in other words, reflected happiness.” For a medical doctor trained to look at people as “bodies,” this realization of the eternal was life-changing for me and guides all I do as both a yogi and a doctor.

Someone once asked Sri Gurudev how to get rid of past bad karma. And he said: “There’s the fast way and the super-fast way. The fast way is that from this moment forward never do anything to hurt anyone in thought, word, or deed.” So that takes some awareness, that takes some focus. It’s work. And then he said: “There’s a super-fast way. The super-fast way is realize you never did anything—it was the Divine moving you the whole time.” It made sense to me that this bigger force is moving through us. The force is with us always. We are not really going anywhere anyway; we are eternal. And, we are one Beingness appearing as many.

And that’s what the Integral Yoga Yantra represents. It represents the Oneness, which is the essential Source of all. And then It manifests in all these different forms and names. So, if you keep that in mind, mind then we don’t get caught up in the various differences. Remember that the Essence, the Source, is within everyone.

Sandra Amrita McLanahan, M.D., is a nationally recognized authority on preventive medicine, nutrition, stress reduction, and primary family health care. She founded Integral Health Services, America’s first integrative medicine clinic in 1976. She continued her trailblazing work as Director of Stress Management Training at the Preventive Medicine Research Institute for twenty years, where she worked with Dr. Dean Ornish to document the benefits of dietary change and stress management to prevent and treat cardiovascular disease and cancer. Dr. McLanahan is the author of the book Surgery and its Alternatives: How to Make the Right Choices for Your Health, co-author of Take a Deep Breath: A Simple Exercise Guide to Increasing Your Oxygen Intake and was the medical consultant for the books, Dr. Yoga.

by Swami Ramananda

Loving-kindness is probably known to many as the Buddhist practice of metta. The formal  practice of metta begins beautifully, by directing kindness toward ourselves or to someone to whom we can easily feel goodwill. Once we take a moment to actually feel that energy of genuine care in the heart, we can practice dwelling on it and gradually learn to expand it outward, regardless of how much we like or dislike someone or something.

Swami Satchidananda’s words remind us that our natural inner joy is more clearly recognized and experienced when we think of others: “Don’t ever think that you get joy by giving. When you do everything as a dedicated act for the benefit of humanity, not just for your benefit, you retain your joy.”

We are often so preoccupied with our own ideas and plans that we fail to consider the needs of others. Though the underlying motive for our efforts may be our own happiness, this pursuit can be lonely and fruitless if it obstructs the natural flow of love in our hearts. Who can really find happiness by ignoring, or even harming, someone else? In doing so, we unknowingly rob ourselves of the very happiness we seek.

A simple way to direct kind and loving intention to ourselves is with the body. For example, when we practice asanas, we can respond to the messages of the body as it is, instead of imposing on it how we would like it to be. We can practice nourishing the body with proper rest and healthy food.

Then we can develop that same accepting awareness toward our minds, witnessing its moods and desires without judgment, and without getting swept away by them. For example, when I see how attached I am to my own plan that conflicts with someone else’s, I can observe how that struggle to control things creates tension.

Whenever we see the cause of our suffering clearly, or how our attachment closes our hearts to others, we can choose to let go. We can value the benefit of an open, loving heart instead of getting our own way. There are endless ways to practice loving-kindness with others in our daily lives. Here are a few:

• When in conversation, we can listen with our full attention, instead of planning our response or jumping in with our comments.
• When we encounter a store clerk, bus driver, or neighbor, we can be present to them with respect and care.
• When we disagree with someone, we can practice opening our minds to another point of view that may have equal merit to ours.
• When we observe the tendency to be critical or unforgiving, we can remember the ways we may have offended someone else during our own struggles, and can practice releasing ill-will, which only harms our own hearts.

Pema Chodron beautifully encapsulates this last practice when she writes in Start Where You Are, “The basic ground of compassionate action is the importance of working with . . . your own unwanted, unacceptable stuff, so that, when the unacceptable and unwanted appears out there, you relate to it based on having worked with loving-kindness for yourself.” This practice can ultimately be applied to almost anything we do by simply having a genuine concern for someone’s well-being in our hearts.

It is so inspiring for me to remember that I can make a difference in our world, one small interaction at a time. Each person’s efforts influence those around them and, ultimately, the collective consciousness of our planet. If more of us are willing to practice loving-kindness, these small steps can go a long way toward positive change. The first benefit happens in our own hearts—when they open to the natural movement of love that is meant to flow and connect us to all of life.

Join Swami Ramananda for Vijaya Dasami: Celebration Honoring the Divine Mother on Weds. OCT 5 @ 6:30 pm – 7:30 pm PDT ONLINE & IN-PERSON.

And for Satsang: Healing the Disease of Busyness on Sat. OCT 15 @ 5:30 pm – 6:30 pm PDT ONLINE & IN-PERSON

Swami Ramananda is leading many Yoga Teacher Trainings both this year and next: Meditation Teacher Training 200-hour Yoga Teacher Training, Yoga Immersion, Yoga Teaching essentials. Click to see all of our online trainings.

Swami Ramananda is the Executive Director of the Integral Yoga Institute in San Francisco and a greatly respected senior teacher in the Integral Yoga tradition, who has been practicing Yoga for over 45 years. Ramananda offers practical methods of integrating the timeless teachings and practices of Yoga into daily life, and transforming the painful aspects of human experience into steps toward realizing one’s full potential.
He leads beginner, intermediate and advanced level Yoga teacher training programs in San Francisco, and offers a variety of programs in many locations in the U.S., Europe and South America. Ramananda co-developed the Stress Management Teacher Training program with Swami Vidyananda, has trained many teachers to bring Yoga into corporate, hospital and medical settings, and has taught mind/body wellness programs in many locations. He is a certified Yoga therapist and founding board member of the Yoga Alliance, a national registry that supports and promotes yoga teachers as professionals. He is a co-founder of The Spiritual Action Initiative (SAI) which brings together individuals committed to working for social justice for all beings and for the care and healing of our natural world. His warmth, wisdom and sense of humor have endeared him to many.