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Articles on Yoga

SaptaSwara in the Himalayas

  SaptaSwara Retreat Satkhol, Uttharakhand, India   The second edition of the SaptaSwara Retreat was organised by Ritambhara Ashram at the Quiet Place Retreat in Satkhol, Uttharakhand, India from May 10 – 14, 2023. This beautiful space hosted a very diverse group of enthusiastic participants from different parts of India. Kavitha Elango and Hariprasad Varma

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Meeting My Ishta Devata

Up until last year, I had never heard of an Ishta Devata. Who could it be, how do I find it, if what it is was unknown? But my Ishta Devata revealed its full glory, one spring night, when after a walk by the River Hudson, I entered my apartment filled with smoke. Smoke hanging

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Seven Seas and Thirteen Rivers

I loved my fat-bellied, reddish greenish, mango clay bank that unfailingly grew heavier with coins each passing year. Those days, whenever the childish tantrums got the worst of me, I would cradle my treasure, pack two frocks in a polyethene bag, comb my hair into a ponytail and threaten my mother, “I am leaving home

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Swimming Into & Out of Our Archetypal Energies

Reflections from Mahabharata Exploration Online 5 Written by Radhika Rammohan & Hariprasad Varma (MEO5 Facilitators) The fifth edition of Mahabharata Exploration Online (MEO) ended this week on an inspiring and evocative note. Ritambhara launched MEO as an offering at a time when the world went into a lockdown in March 2020. Since then each cohort

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SaptaSwara Immersion – Reflections

We started the New year 2021 by completing our 8 weeks journey with fellow co-travellers on Saptaswara:Path of a Karma Yogi on the 2nd January. SaptaSwara: the seven key values and practices that can provide the foundation for a beautiful, harmonious and meaningful  life. This program was created by our mentors Sashikala Ananth and Raghu

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Yoga, Rasānubhava & Ramya

Reflections from Yoga Samvād with Dr. Padma Subramanyam and Smt. Sashikala Ananth Ritambhara was honoured to host renowned Bharatanatyam exponent Dr. Padma Subramanyam in a dialogue with Smt. Sashikala Ananth, co-founder of Ritambhara and vAstu exponent, on the topic ‘Yoga, Rasānubhava & Ramya’. The session was moderated by Hariprasad Varma, member of Ritambhara Acharya Sangha.

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The Self and its transformation

A note by Raghu Ananthanarayanan The most satisfying event for me in 2020 was the offering that I conducted with the Krishnamacharya Yoga Mandiram called “Self And Its Transformation- According To The Yoga Sutra-s”. This was not only a dream realised, it was also a long pending debt that I owed Shri Desikachar, my guru.

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Yoga & Soft Power

Ritambhara and the Center for Public Diplomacy & Soft Power (CPDSP) of India Foundation started collaborating to celebrate the International Yoga Day from 2019 which saw international participation from 19 countries. This led to the ‘Peace & Sustainability Through Yoga’ initiative in 2020 that received a global response for its online Yoga Samvāds and SaptaSwara

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Embracing the Devi Within

What is Masculine & feminine? Is it male and female? Each one of us has aspects of the masculine and the feminine within us no matter whether we are a man or a woman. How are we holding and nourishing, balancing and integrating them in our life? For me, the part of me that just

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Dynamic Spirituality Through Jñāna Yoga

Yoga Samvād with Swami Mitrananda Yoga Samvād – Dialogues on Yoga, a collaboration between Ritambhara and India Foundation’s Center for Public Diplomacy & Soft Power (CPDSP), resumed with an inspiring and insightful dialogue between Swami Mitrananda (Chinmaya Mission, Chennai), Sri Raghu Ananthanarayanan (Chief Mentor – Ritambhara), Sri Come Carpentier De Gourdon (Consultant, India Foundation &

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Understanding Your Sacred Quest

A Journey of Inner Unfoldment   The mind is the great abode;  The physical body is the sacred precinct; For the Bountiful Lord the mouth is the tower-entrance; For those who are fully realised the jiva is the Shivalingam; The clever (and cunning ) five senses are the eternal lamps. ( Tirumandiram 12th c.) This

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Nature Through The Lens of Vedas & Upanishads

Nature through the lens of Vedas and Upanishads Session 2 of the Peace & Sustainability Through Yoga Festival By Smt. Gitanjali JB   In the recently concluded online festival “Peace & Sustainability through Yoga” on the occasion of International Yoga 2020, we had a dialogue with Gitanjali JB, about Nature and how she is viewed

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Writing Your Own Dharmic Life Manifesto

Writing Your Own Dharmic Life Manifesto Session 1 of the Peace & Sustainability Through Yoga Festival What is it that you are going to dedicate your life to? How will this dedication be a Dharmic dedication? How does this relate to yoga? Sri Raghu Ananthanarayan (co-founder, Ritambhara) began the inaugural session of the recently concluded

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Corona Virus Through The Lens of Yoga

“Over a million infected and thousands of deaths”, no it is not a page from history describing the plague or famine but the virulent novel Corona Virus that has brought every country from east to west down to its knees. While the medical fraternity and scientists are testing and studying this phenomenon that is a pandemic now, a few

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Yoga & Mental Illness

  HV: When I was doing my yoga acharya course a few years back, a very dear friend of mine approached me for help because she was going through a depression. Since I was not a qualified counselor, I referred her to a counselor and at the same time took her to my friend and

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A Deep Dive Into The Yoga Sutra: sAdhana pAda

A recently concluded Yoga prayogam teacher-training course left me feeling very reflective, yet I was feeling restless wherever I went, even back home. Not because we did hours and hours of asana-prANAyAma but because we explored the sutras from chapter two, sAdhana pAda. Incidentally I had a chat with a member of my Ritambhara sangha,

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Yoga and Politics

  Gayatri: You seem to be very active in talking about the political situation in India like the Kashmir issue, elections, etc. Raghu: Well, it is not something new. Of course, there are many triggers nowadays. Gayatri: You are a yoga teacher, so how come you are taking an interest in politics? Raghu: Why? What

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Mahabharata Immersion 7: Reflections

Rajeev and Anita, two of the co-facilitators of MI7 (August 4-10, 2019) share their reflections as a dialogue. Read on for your mini immersion. Anita: Hi Rajeev, It has been over a week since I came back from MI7 and there is a certain sense of ease, beauty, stillness, a quiet conviction, and a comforting

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Remembering Desikachar

‘The 21st of June is an important day for me and all my colleagues at Anantha Yoga. It is our guru Desikachar’s birthday. We rarely referred to him by name, we still say “Sir” a respectful and very tamilian thing to do. May be the 21st being called a world Yoga day is in some

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THE QUEST – A PERSONAL JOURNEY TO RITAMBHARA with RAGHU Part 1

I met Raghu in 2009, at a lab called Learning Theatre. I was 25, and although to many people I might have seemed perfectly normal, deep down inside I couldn’t shake the feeling that something was wrong. Truth be told, I was lost. I didn’t know where I was going, I only knew that I

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Yoga for Peace

Yoga is one of India’s greatest gifts to humanity. This ancient yogic science continues to spread across the globe to alleviate the masses from afflictions at the physical and mental level. On 11 Dec 2014, 177 nations at the UN co-sponsored the Bill to institute the International Day of Yoga (IYD) on 21 June every year. This was

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7 Steps to a More Aligned Existence – Part 3

Welcome to Part 3 of our series on Saptaswara – the 7 Steps to a more aligned existence. The Saptaswara module we created has helped many people over the years reflect on their own individual journeys thus far and create a roadmap of sorts for their futures. In the first post of this series, we discussed the

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Dhyana – Part 1

We are all aware about Yogacharya T.Krishnamacharya being a pioneer in using yoga (specifically asana and pranayama) for therapy and well-being. But little did we know that he was a great scholar of our sacred knowledge and traditions. One of his long-standing students, Raghu Ananthanarayanan, has put together an interesting note about what is dhyAna

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The Gandhian way through a Yogic lens – Part 2

On the occasion of Gandhi Jayanthi, the Ritambhara members engaged in a deep reflective dialogue on Gandhiji, his life, and his message. It seemed a fitting tribute to listen and let oneself be evoked by the many facets of Gandhiji that are brought alive in people today. None of us can claim to know Gandhiji

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The Gandhian way through a Yogic lens: Part 1

On the occasion of Gandhi Jayanthi, the Ritambhara members engaged in a deep reflective dialogue on Gandhiji, his life, and his message. It seemed a fitting tribute to listen and let oneself be evoked by the many facets of Gandhiji that are brought alive in people today. None of us can claim to know Gandhiji

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Parenthood: Blind, Failed, or a new possibility?

I recently offered a one day version of the Parenting Inside Out program at a school, where parents and teacher participated in the exploration of what it means to be a parent and a teacher. The program is based on the approach that is the basis of our work at Ritambhara, which has evolved by integrating yoga

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SEARCHING FOR THE STREAM IN THE WOODS

  Sitting quietly at the Ritambhara Ashram just as the sun sets and the birds have gone to their nests, you feel incredibly tranquil. In a corner of your mind, you notice the sounds of a waterfall. It is a far away, tantalizing sound. On some days it can be heard clearly, especially after a

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Ritambhara Delights…

A sentiment felt by almost everyone who visits us, this little video was put together by Deepika Gummadi at the Kaya Madhya Sutram workshop that took place from the 2nd to the 5th of October, 2017. Feast your eyes on the magnificent hill range that surrounds us, the enchanting skies, and the welcoming space that

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Mahabharata: A Mirror To The Self

A talk given by Raghu Ananthanarayanan at TEDxCBIT

The Hindu discovers Ritambhara

In late May of this year, when we were concluding our program Parenting Inside Out, we received a visit from Varsha Saraogi, of The Hindu.  A young reporter, Varsha happened to be in the Nilgiris and serendipitously stumbled upon us at Ritambhara. The exchange was a pleasure, allowing us to see the centre through fresh

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Asking the question: What is India?

“The modern Indian is influenced deeply by ideas of learning that are based on a western model of liberal education. She / He is also deeply influenced by ideas of autonomy and individual freedom which were the stuff of our freedom struggle. The modern Indian is thus socialised in a peculiar mixture of the traditional Indian

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The ABCD of self-awareness

Yogacharya Krishnamacharya’s expositions of the Yoga Shastras was always simple, profound and pragmatic. When giving a gist of the Shrimad Bhagavad Geeta he said that it comprised of four parts that form the essential stages for the management of personal crisis.  These are: Acceptance, Breathing, Curiosity and Distance. A for Awareness When Arjuna turns to

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Allopathic Mindfulness Vs. Yogic dhyAna

The newest game in Leadership and management seems to be ‘Mindfulness’. There is a lot of research that is getting published, and most of it focuses on CEO’s and how they benefit from 20 minutes of mindfulness practice. I am sure every member of the organization will gain immensely from its practice. One of the

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SaptaSwara in the Himalayas