AUTHENTIC TRAINING TO STRENGTHEN YOUR KNOWLEDGE OF SANSKRIT, YOGA & LUMINOUS SOUL TEACHINGS
Chant Mantras Over Your Meal & The Elegant Art of Vegetable Picking I knew nothing about cooking. I grew up in the 1970’s where the main dishes in our house consisted of canned this and processed that. Later when I was in direct training with Guru ji I learned the art of cooking. Guru ji […]
Discipline as a Structure for Freedom As I mentioned in my previous blog Freedom Found in Yogic Rituals, as a child, I had an intense thirst for soul understanding. As destiny would have it, at 13 years of age, I was to meet a great Yogi named Shri Brahmananda Sarasvati, who was at that time […]
As a young kid, I knew nothing about almonds except, of course, that I liked eating them. My grandma always had a dish laid out on her coffee table with a mix of shelled nuts. I recall enjoying the action of cracking the nuts and popping them into my mouth each time we visited her. […]
My Rebellion When I was a teenager, I’m sure my parents would tell you that I took rebellious to a whole new level. I was the classic youngest of three children and I bucked the system every chance I got. I thought a lot about freedom and in those days I felt my freedom in […]
You are beautiful. You are powerful. You are free. You are a Luminous Soul. ~ Manorama Once when I was working with a private student in NYC I noticed that she was talking non-stop and her eyes were darting here and there. Her energy was wild. What I mean by wild is that she engaged her […]
The Conversation is a quaterly blog series devoted to the dialog between Yogis & Artists By Manorama An interview with my brother, Artist, Carl D’Alvia, acclaimed sculptor, & Rome prize winner on Art & Spirituality. “Every beauty, which is seen here by persons of perception, resembles more than anything else that celestial source from which we all are […]
According to Lord Patanjali the obstacles to experiencing yoga are: Confusion, egoism, depression, physical pain, lethargy, exhaustion, skepticism, a lack of interest, over attachment to sensuality, delusional perception, failure to reach the state of unity and the inability to remain there once you have experienced it. These are all considered to be obstacles to the […]
Part 2 In last month’a blog, I spoke about the vital need for the yogi-in-training to understand his/her prana, which means breath, energy, life force and soul. In the Luminous Soul Method, awareness of your prana is a foundational aspect of your practice. The more you consciously work with your prana the more you connect with […]
It’s hard to speak and listen at the same time. In Luminous Soul, we cultivate the art of listening. We learn to focus on pulling inward and listen to: The mind, the thoughts, the body, the heartbeat, and the inner sound known as nadam. There is something about listening that links us with our highest […]
Language is symbolic. We use words to suggest meaning about the thoughts we want to convey. Your inner dialog also moves in a similar and powerful way. What your inner language tells you, will affect how you live. In Yoga, we look at the gods not as deities apart from us rather as representations of […]
We are all energy moving through form, we just don’t know it yet. ~ Manorama What is the gift of your life? … The people I admire the most always live in an awareness of the blessing of their lives. Guru ji, Shri Brahmananda Sarasvati, was aware of the gift of his life. My mother, […]
Each of us work with rituals that sustain and nourish us. This month I am suggesting that students work with this simple Devi Puja, as a new ritual for immersing in and supporting your practice. Rituals do not exist to make us more neurotic and rigid. They exist to help us see and experience beyond […]
According to the dictionary, vibration is defined as: ‘of or relating to the act of vibration.’ Hmmm… ‘Relating to the act of vibration’… I sat with the definition a bit and chuckled … after reading it I was left contemplating the word vibration, as well as something about relating. Happiness Someone recently asked me what […]