Light on Yoga and Meditation

Swami Shankardev was recently interviewed by Dr. Lauren Tober as part of The Yoga-Informed Therapist Interviews—a series that brought together therapists and yoga teachers who are integrating these two worlds with care, depth, and ethical rigor. The series covered the scope of practice, nervous system regulation, trauma sensitivity, and the training pathways that allow this kind of integration to be done responsibly.In this interview, Swami Shankardev traces a fifty-year journey that began with medical training at Sydney University in 1976 and ten years of immersive study at the Bihar School of Yoga in India — a dual formation that has shaped everything since.He describes how he integrates yoga not as an add-on to conventional care but as a complete parallel system: Sāmkhya philosophy as the theoretical foundation, pranayama, mantra therapy, chakra work, and Jungian depth psychology as the practical tools, all applied to the individual's specific constitution, temperament, and stage of development.Central to his approach is the principle that foundation comes before depth — a stable, resilient ego must be built before deeper meditative or kuṇḍalinī work is introduced — and that both yogic and Jungian frameworks insist on treating the person in front of you rather than applying a formula.He addresses the ethical dimensions of this integration directly: cultural integrity, scope of practice, and the amplified responsibility that comes with holding both the doctor-patient and teacher-student relationship simultaneously.His vision for the future is clear and unambiguous — yoga in healthcare needs to move well beyond stretching and stress reduction toward a genuine recognition of yoga psychology as a rigorous clinical science, with mantra and pranayama as legitimate therapeutic tools and the deep inner work of the tantric and Jungian traditions understood as fundamental to healing.This interview with Swami Shankardev Saraswati and Dr Lauren Tober was created by the Yoga Psychology Institute for the Yoga-informed Therapist series.📩 Subscribe to our Newsletter🎙️ Big Shakti Podcast🎧 Big Shakti Meditations🌿️ Big Shakti’s Yoga and Meditation Courses🧘🏻‍♀️️Jayne Stevenson’s intuitive healing and dream therapy practice🧘 Dr. Swami Shankardev’s medical and psychotherapy practice📹 Big Shakti’s YouTube Channel

Welcome to this episode of Big Shakti’s podcast, an interview with Dr Swami Shankardev by Janie Larmour, the organizer of Yoga Day Sydney, which will be held at Sydney Boys' High on Sunday, June 22nd, 2025.Get 20% off your ticket price using the coupon code BIGSHAKTI20.https://www.tickettailor.com/events/yogaday/1413531Janie states - "Swami Shankardev is this year’s featured teacher and headline speaker. He is a medical doctor, yoga acharya, psychotherapist, and all-around wisdom ninja.In his keynote, “The Principles of Yoga Therapy for Mental Wellness—Ancient Wisdom for Modern Minds,” he’ll unpack how Samkhya, Vedanta, Patanjali’s Yoga, and Tantra can team with modern psychology to develop mental strength and emotional resilience and illuminate the path to deeper Self-realisation."Yoga Day—Sydney is a full-on, feel-good yoga festival created to “teach, inspire, and unite” the community in one jam-packed day. There will be 30+ yoga, meditation, and wellness sessions running four at a time from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., a buzzing marketplace for healthy goodies, and plenty of space to meet kindred spirits of every bendy (or not-so-bendy) level.The doors swing open at 8:30 a.m. on Sunday, 22 June 2025, at Sydney Boys High School in Moore Park, giving you a whole winter-solstice weekend reason to roll out the mat and warm up body, mind, and humor muscles.Yoga Day is a fantastic gateway for individuals to delve into various yoga styles and wellness practices that they might not typically encounter in their daily lives. By attending this immersive event, participants can learn new skills, broaden their perspectives, and embark on a journey of exploration and growth. Yoga Day 2024 was a huge success for all attendees, yoga teachers, and vendors.The founder behind Yoga Day is Janie Larmour. With a career spanning 30 years in health and wellness, she has been sharing her passion nationally at large expos and festivals for 16 years and most intensely, internationally for the past 9 years in the USA and UK. Her extensive global experience has exposed her to the transformative power of yoga events, witnessing firsthand the excitement and wonder they create in both beginners and experienced yogis.Janie was inspired to create Yoga Day, recognizing the need for a dynamic platform in Australia. The vision is to provide a remarkable opportunity for yoga teachers, studios, and wellness brands to showcase their offerings to a large and diverse audience. ​📩 Subscribe to our Newsletter🎙️ Big Shakti Podcast🎧 Big Shakti Meditations🌿️ Big Shakti’s Yoga and Meditation Courses🧘🏻‍♀️️Jayne Stevenson’s intuitive healing and dream therapy practice🧘 Dr. Swami Shankardev’s medical and psychotherapy practice📹 Big Shakti’s YouTube Channel 

Welcome to this episode of Big Shakti’s podcast. I'm Dr. Swami Shankardev. Over my nearly 50 years as a medical doctor and yoga therapist, I've discovered that true healing requires us to look beyond symptoms to understand the deeper architecture of our minds and consciousness. In this podcast episode, I'll introduce you to an ancient map of consciousness called Samkhya that has revolutionized how I practice medicine and help people heal.This episode offers a glimpse into the framework we'll be exploring in depth through our upcoming workshop series at Big Shakti. Starting in March 2025, we'll be hosting monthly workshops that dive deep into this fascinating intersection of Eastern wisdom and Western medicine. Today's episode will give you a taste of how this 4,000-year-old wisdom surprisingly aligns with modern neuroscience and can be practically applied to challenges like anxiety and depression.The workshop will help you to understand how your mind really works - not just the surface thoughts and emotions but the deeper patterns that shape your experience. Whether you're struggling with mental health challenges, working as a healthcare professional, or simply curious about integrating ancient wisdom with modern medicine, you'll get a sense of the practical insights we'll be exploring in our workshop series.The monthly workshops at Big Shakti will build on these foundations, offering in-depth training in combining traditional practices like meditation and pranayama with modern medical understanding. We'll create a comprehensive framework for understanding mental health through both Eastern and Western lenses.Let's begin this journey of mapping the territory of consciousness and discovering practical tools for lasting change. If what you hear today resonates with you, I invite you to join us for the full workshop series, where we'll explore these concepts in much greater depth.📩 Subscribe to our Newsletter🎙️ Big Shakti Podcast🎧 Big Shakti Meditations🌿️ Big Shakti’s Yoga and Meditation Courses🧘🏻‍♀️️Jayne Stevenson’s intuitive healing and dream therapy practice🧘 Dr. Swami Shankardev’s medical and psychotherapy practice📹 Big Shakti’s YouTube Channel 

This podcast episode is divided into two parts.The first is about how chronic, unresolved stress wrecks your brain.The second is about how yoga and meditation repair the damage of chronic stress. We describe the four stages of repair, moving from basic repair of the damage to stabilizing normal function, then building a stronger neural architecture, and finally, the phase of mastery in which you optimize brain function.Stress is an unavoidable part of life. While acute, short-term stress helps you cope with challenging situations, chronic, long-term, unresolved stress is different. Long-term stress doesn’t just deplete your energy and affect your mood; it damages your ability to think clearly, process information, and handle emotions.Chronic stress wrecks your brain—it physically reshapes it, changing the size, structure, and function of parts of it. Over time, persistent stress alters neural structures, shrinks key regions involved in memory and decision-making, and overactivates the parts involved in emotional control.While these changes often develop slowly and are initially subtle, their effects can profoundly impact cognitive function, emotional well-being, and behavior patterns throughout life.The key takeawayChronic, unresolved stress creates an imbalance between the self-aware, rational, decision-making, and problem-solving parts of the brain (the pre-frontal cortex) and the emotion and memory-controlling parts of the brain (the amygdala and hippocampus). However, yoga and meditation can restore normal function, build stronger neural architecture, and optimize brain function in the final phase of mastery.Stage 1 - Relaxation techniques such as  Three Easy Steps to Deep Relaxation guided meditation series and Yoga Nidra.Stage 2 - Techniques such as Ajapa Japa and Meditations on the Third Eye of Intuition.Stage 3 - Advanced methods of Chakra and Ajapa Japa meditation.Stage 4 - Advanced Chakra and Kundalini Meditations.📩 Subscribe to our Newsletter🎙️ Big Shakti Podcast🎧 Big Shakti Meditations🌿️ Big Shakti’s Yoga and Meditation Courses🧘🏻‍♀️️Jayne Stevenson’s intuitive healing and dream therapy practice🧘 Dr. Swami Shankardev’s medical and psychotherapy practice📹 Big Shakti’s YouTube Channel

This podcast episode focuses on the third eye of intuition, ajna chakra. We have compiled two talks by Jayne and myself. The first is the introduction to the Awakening The Third Eye of Intuition Course. The second is from the Light on the Chakras and Kundalinī Course held in 2022 and 2023. Welcome to the Awaken Your Third Eye of Intuition course.The purpose of this course is to support you in activating and awakening ājnā chakra, your third eye, also called the divine eye. It is the eye that can see into your soul. One of the great byproducts of activating your third eye is the development of a powerful intuition to gain access to the knowledge and wisdom in you. Intuition is the ability to perceive all the possibilities inherent in the present moment and know which is best for you at that time. A powerful intuition enables you to make good decisions in line with your life purpose. It also helps you support others and form meaningful relationships. Unfortunately, intuition, which is potential in all of us, is usually dormant or functions erratically unless it is developed through regular meditation practice. This is why Jayne and I have designed this course to give you the knowledge, techniques, support, and inspiration to initiate and develop a stable relationship with your ajna chakra, your third eye. The meditation techniques in this course activate your ājnā chakra, enabling you to “see” the subtle dimension of your inner being - the part of you that is rich with knowledge, meaning, and purpose, and infinite possibilities. By turning your attention inward, you connect with yourself and your latent, dormant powers. This connection turns on inner guidance, which is what most people need. Most people look outside of themselves for guidance, have lost connection with their own inner wisdom, and, therefore, feel lost and confused. As you develop your third eye, you also have access to your own inner wisdom, which is your intuition. Of course, we all need to learn from the world, but we also need to tune in to our inner sense of what suits us. That is important. Without that inner sense, the outer world can’t make an impression and loses its power and ability to change things for you.You will learn how to reduce your mental noise so that you can tune into the silence at the core of your being, where great power, knowledge, and wisdom reside. And this is where you will find your intuition.Excerpt from the Light on the Chakras and Kundalinī Course.This section aims to explore each chakra individually, deconstructing the chakra and kundalini system. It's very important that you spend some time contemplating each chakra, allowing the various elements within it to come alive within you. Some of these elements are easily accessible to you; you have a karmic relationship with them. Some of them are not accessible, you don't have a karmic relationship with them, or you have a negative karmic relationship. Those are the elements that you need to examine.See the course📩 Subscribe to our Newsletter🎙️ Big Shakti Podcast🎧 Big Shakti Meditations🌿️ Big Shakti’s Yoga and Meditation Courses🧘🏻‍♀️️Jayne Stevenson’s intuitive healing and dream therapy practice🧘 Dr. Swami Shankardev’s medical and psychotherapy practice📹 Big Shakti’s YouTube Channel

Following our episode on self-awareness, self-regulation, and self-mastery, episode 13 of our podcast series, quite a lot of people have written to us asking us which meditation practice they should start with and how to use all the various meditations we have on the website. Which meditations are particularly suited to cultivating self-awareness, which is for self-regulation, and is there a path that can be followed to support successful meditation? These are great questions because we need to understand what techniques are available and how to apply them properly.We discussWhat is success in meditation?Should we use one technique or many, and if many, how do we use them?The success path is defined.The journey begins with relaxation techniques because self-awareness is difficult if you’re not relaxed. The first is the 3 Easy Steps to Deep Relaxation, which teaches this.The second stage begins once you have attained a degree of relaxation and is when you cultivate self-awareness. The primary practice for this is Inner Silence, Antar Mouna.Being inside the mind is like being inside a washing machine. Inner Silence gets you outside of your mind.The third state of self-awareness and self-regulation is mastering our energy systems, our life force, prāna. Initially, this can be done by learning the breathing technique Ujjayi Pranayama.Once you have developed ujjayi and connected to the breath and prana, you will move to the Pranic Healing Meditations series, which teaches you how to direct prana to specific parts of the body, facilitating healing and revitalization.Once you can charge your body with energy, we teach a very important series of meditations called the Core Strength, Calm Mind. It teaches grounding, the ability to remain grounded and stable in the present moment, and self-awareness while facing stress and life's challenges.Once you can work with your prana and these grounding and energizing practices, you can move into the next stage by developing your connection to your highest self, the source of your intelligence and intuition. Advanced mantras and Ajapa Japa Meditations are taught at this stage.The fifth stage takes self-awareness and self-regulation to self-mastery.📩 Subscribe to our Newsletter🎙️ Big Shakti Podcast🎧 Big Shakti Meditations🌿️ Big Shakti’s Yoga and Meditation Courses🧘🏻‍♀️️Jayne Stevenson’s intuitive healing and dream therapy practice🧘 Dr. Swami Shankardev’s medical and psychotherapy practice📹 Big Shakti’s YouTube Channel

Here are the main points of this podcastSelf-awareness is the core principle in yoga and meditation. It reflects consciousness and helps us transcend life’s problems by anchoring us in the self.Consciousness is our center. The body and mind are composed of energy, which can be gross, subtle, or causal. Cultivating self-awareness allows us to experience these various forms of energy more deeply.Advanced yogis refine their consciousness to perceive causal energy, the highest form of spiritual energy, through deep self-awareness.Self-regulation involves adjusting our body, mind, and reactions to achieve greater self-control and stability, building on self-awareness.Self-mastery is achieved through a cycle of self-awareness and self-regulation, leading to a profound alignment of thoughts, feelings, and actions with higher aspirations.Yoga philosophy distinguishes between the egoic self and the universal cosmic self, with spiritual practices aiming to integrate and transcend the egoic self towards enlightenment.From a psychological standpoint, self-awareness involves recognizing and understanding our internal experiences and how they influence our behavior.Practices like mindfulness meditation, journaling, and reflection help cultivate self-awareness by observing our thoughts and emotions without judgment.Self-regulation, essential for deliberate and constructive actions, is the ability to manage and modulate our emotional and behavioral responses through self-awareness.The progression from self-awareness to self-regulation to self-mastery is sequential yet cyclical, with each stage enhancing the others and fostering continuous personal growth.Big Shakti offers courses and meditations, such as Inner Silence Meditation, Yoga Nidra, and Ajapa Japa, that focus on self-awareness and self-regulation to support personal and spiritual development.The Find Life Purpose Course helps individuals define clear goals and purpose, facilitating the practice of self-awareness and self-regulation to achieve meaningful and fulfilling lives.📩 Subscribe to our Newsletter🎙️ Big Shakti Podcast🎧 Big Shakti Meditations🌿️ Big Shakti’s Yoga and Meditation Courses🧘🏻‍♀️️Jayne Stevenson’s intuitive healing and dream therapy practice🧘 Dr. Swami Shankardev’s medical and psychotherapy practice📹 Big Shakti’s YouTube Channel

This podcast episode is from an interview with my good friend Ron Ehrlich in 2019 for his podcast Unstress. For many years, Ron was my holistic dentist. However, he has recently found a new life purpose and has retired to focus on health education. You can find out more about Ron and the wonderful work he is doing at his website, Unstress Online: https://www.unstressonline.com.In this episode, we discuss the vital importance of self-awareness, self-knowledge and how that is the key to Finding Life Purpose. Ron asked me to talk about the admonitions of the great philosophers over the last millennia to know ourselves and to address the question of who we really are. Ron and I both agree that it's never been more important to ask the question “Who am I?" because of the growth of technology and AI and the fact that, if we don’t ask ourselves this question, technology may know us better than we will ourselves. And this is a dangerous thing.Topics in this podcast include1.        The importance of Self-awareness in knowing who we are and finding purpose.2.         The three types of purpose – common purpose, life purpose, and ultimate purpose.3.        What is the self?4.        What is the difference between the authentic Self and the ego self.5.        How the ego and all our different selves form.6.        How to manage negative ego patterns?7.        How the ego and shadow form.8.        Midlife crisis.9.        Chakras.10.  Different types of meditation practice for health and wellbeing.Check out Big Shakti's Find Life Purpose Online Course https://bigshakti.com/shop/online-courses/finding-life-purpose/📩 Subscribe to our Newsletter🎙️ Big Shakti Podcast🎧 Big Shakti Meditations🌿️ Big Shakti’s Yoga and Meditation Courses🧘🏻‍♀️️Jayne Stevenson’s intuitive healing and dream therapy practice🧘 Dr. Swami Shankardev’s medical and psychotherapy practice📹 Big Shakti’s YouTube Channel

If you only ever study one yoga meditation technique over your lifetime, you would be wise to choose Ajapa Japa. Ajapa Japa combines many forms of meditation into one powerful practice that heals and transforms your mind.Ajapa Japa is a potent guided yoga and meditation technique that you can use to improve every part of your life: physical, mental, and spiritual. The practice circulates the light of awareness through the body and mind. The result is that you become more Alive, Aligned, and Enlightened.Yoga TantraAjapa Japa is the foundation meditation upon which all Yoga-Tantra practice rests. Ajapa Japa is a complete system for healing, self-development, and spiritual awareness. Of all the techniques in the yoga tantra system, Ajapa Japa, the movement of your breath, prāna, a mantra in a psychic passage, is one of the most powerful. The word japa can be defined as the continuous repetition of a mantra. When the suffix ‘a’ is added, it implies that the process of mantra repetition becomes spontaneous. While japa requires continuous, conscious effort to repeat the mantra verbally or mentally and to turn the beads, ajapa requires no effort. It is said that japa comes from the mouth, whereas ajapa comes from the breath and from the heart. Japa is the preliminary practice of mantra repetition, and ajapa is the perfection of this practice.The Ajapa Gāyatrī MantraThe theory behind Ajapa Japa is that there is a mantra called the Ajapa Gāyatrī Mantra, vibrating in you all the time. This is the breath mantra SO HM, which is also called the Ham-sa mantra. Ajapa japa is a technique in which you repeat the mantra of the breath, SO HM, while you tune into the mantra that is always present in you. As such, you do not need any initiation from a guru to give you a mantra, as it is already and always within you. This core Yoga-Tantra teaching reveals the mantra hidden at the core of your being that is vibrating you into existence. In both human beings and the cosmos, there is a universal sound vibration, a powerful mantra that can be heard in the subtle breath that arises from the spiritual dimensions of your being. In the ancient yogic texts, this mantra is the song of the soul singing you into existence. Ajapa Japa meditation enables you to tune into this most powerful mantra resonating at the very heart of your being. As you tune into the sound, you cognize the intrinsic connection between your individual self, your universal self, and the cosmos as a whole.Kriya yogaAjapa Japa is a form of kriya yoga and kundalinī yoga. The word kriya means active, and kriya yoga is an active form of yoga, which activates kundalinī, the primal cosmic power that lies dormant in the base chakra, mūlādhāra. The word kriya comes from the same root as the word karma, which also action. So Ajapa Japa is a powerful technique that, once learned, is used in many more powerful forms of meditation to activate the latent powers and abilities that lie hidden in you.By aligning yourself with this great and powerful mystery, you synchronize your deepest self with the expansive cosmos. Your inner and outer worlds become one, and you experience the bliss of living an authentic, meaningful, and harmonious life.To learn moreTo learn more about how to apply Ajapa Japa meditation for healing and for your spiritual evolution, Big Shakti teaches guided yoga and meditation techniques that systematically take systematically guide you into the practice of Ajapa Japa. This guided training program is called Ajapa Japa, Breath and Mantra. https://bigshakti.com/shop/guided-meditations/ajapa-japa-breath-mantra-consciousness/If you wish to really understand how to use Ajapa Japa to support the healing of mental illness and to cultivate a strong mind, then we highly recommend that you enroll in the online course, Healing the Mind Meditation Course – Ajapa Japa Stage 1. https://bigshakti.com/shop/online-courses/healing-the-mind-ajapa-japa-meditation-course/📩 Subscribe to our Newsletter🎙️ Big Shakti Podcast🎧 Big Shakti Meditations🌿️ Big Shakti’s Yoga and Meditation Courses🧘🏻‍♀️️Jayne Stevenson’s intuitive healing and dream therapy practice🧘 Dr. Swami Shankardev’s medical and psychotherapy practice📹 Big Shakti’s YouTube Channel

This episode is taken from Big Shakti’s Light on the Chakras and Kundalinī training master class series. This masterclass is taught once every two years and is conducted over nine months.In this episode, which comes out of Lesson 1, we discuss the concepts of yoga, meditation, tantra, and yoga-tantra.The Sanskrit word yoga means connection or union. The English word meditation also means the connection of the meditator (the consciousness of the meditator with the object of meditation via the act of practicing meditation.Yoga and meditation are, therefore, synonyms. One is Sanskrit. The other is English. However, they point to the same thing, conscious connection. The aim of all systems of yoga is to consciously connect with your body, mind, and consciousness so that you are more in touch with yourself. You can then be more in touch with all of life.Tantra is a wisdom tradition and an empirical philosophy, like Raja Yoga, that places major emphasis on embodying knowledge and experience rather than intellectual speculation. It is a profound system of self-transformation that teaches liberation of consciousness through the release of energy trapped within the chakras, particularly within the mūlādhāra chakra.So, while Raja Yoga is a science of consciousness, tantra is a science of energy. It is the science of self-transformation that is most appropriate for us in this day and age.All of Big Shakti's meditations and courses are based on yoga-tantra and teach you how to cultivate and amplify self-awareness, liberate trapped energy, and awaken higher consciousness.📩 Subscribe to our Newsletter🎙️ Big Shakti Podcast🎧 Big Shakti Meditations🌿️ Big Shakti’s Yoga and Meditation Courses🧘🏻‍♀️️Jayne Stevenson’s intuitive healing and dream therapy practice🧘 Dr. Swami Shankardev’s medical and psychotherapy practice📹 Big Shakti’s YouTube Channel

This podcast episode is from an interview with my good friend Ron Ehrlich in 2022 for his podcast Unstress. For many years Ron was also my holistic dentist. However, he has recently retired to focus more on health education. You can find out more about Ron and the wonderful work he is doing at his website Unstress Online https://www.unstressonline.com.In this podcast, we discuss my approach to mind-body medicine and how I incorporate meditation and Eastern and Western methods of mind-body medicine and psychotherapy into my medical and yoga therapy practice.We discuss the history of mind-body medicine, what it is, and how relaxation is a foundation technique that enables positive changes.I describe how both Western methods of healing and psychology and Eastern healing, psychology, and various spiritual and wisdom philosophies have defined my journey. The main focus of my approach to medicine and therapy is based on yoga and meditation as methods of connecting more to oneself, developing the power to feel, experience, and what is actually happening within the body and mind so that you can make appropriate changes and optimize your life. Meditation and psychotherapy also support you in understanding the role that illness plays in the world and that it plays in your life.To achieve these goals, methods to cultivate self-awareness have been the foundation of everything I do.When you are self-aware, you can strengthen your sense of self, both as an individual and as a universal being. Jungian depth psychology and Eastern approaches to psychotherapy really facilitate your ability to pierce your awareness deep into the psyche, in the dark recesses of your soul, to discover your strengths and your weaknesses, which means your humanity and how wonderful each one of us is despite our flaws.We also discussPolyvagal theory, which is a revolutionary new view of the autonomic nervous systemThe difference between counseling and psychotherapyWhat reparenting means in therapy and how we focus to develop a mature internal adult, which enables you to stand on your own two feet in life, physically, mentally, and spiritually. This means that you no longer depend so much on external sources to make decisions but have access to your own inner strengths and abilitiesAnd how I use yoga and meditation to support patients in connecting with their inner strength and ability to heal themselves.📩 Subscribe to our Newsletter🎙️ Big Shakti Podcast🎧 Big Shakti Meditations🌿️ Big Shakti’s Yoga and Meditation Courses🧘🏻‍♀️️Jayne Stevenson’s intuitive healing and dream therapy practice🧘 Dr. Swami Shankardev’s medical and psychotherapy practice📹 Big Shakti’s YouTube Channel

This podcast episode is all about Yoga Nidra, a wonderful relaxation meditation technique developed by the great yoga adept Swami Satyananda Saraswati of the Bihar School of Yoga in India. Yoga Nidra, as a meditation technique, enables you to remain awake and alert as you venture into the deep sleep state. Instead of becoming unconscious, you experience an exalted state of consciousness and a deep, blissful connection to the highest Self. We describe Yoga Nidra:How it enables you to systematically relax each part of your physical body and move your awareness to your subtle layers, emotions, and deeper mind. As you do this, you relax and rejuvenate your whole self.The three stages of Yoga Nidra, which include recuperation from exhaustion, purification of old tensions and traumas from the unconscious mind, and the attainment of an exalted state of consciousness.The importance of Yoga Nidra for deep rest and how it can be used to overcome the negative effects of sleep disturbance and insomnia.How it removes deep-seated tensionsYoga Nidra in therapy and psychotherapy How to practice Yoga Nidra using a guided MP3.Included in this podcast is the first track from Big Shakti's Introduction to Meditation and Yoga Nidra MP3 series.To purchase Big Shakti's Introduction to Meditation and Yoga Nidra MP3 series, click here.📩 Subscribe to our Newsletter🎙️ Big Shakti Podcast🎧 Big Shakti Meditations🌿️ Big Shakti’s Yoga and Meditation Courses🧘🏻‍♀️️Jayne Stevenson’s intuitive healing and dream therapy practice🧘 Dr. Swami Shankardev’s medical and psychotherapy practice📹 Big Shakti’s YouTube Channel

Today's podcast episode describes what yoga and meditation are, how meditation is both a technique and a state of being, and how meditation is a process of self-discovery that unfolds in stages. The stages of meditation are described in detail, including the stage of relaxation and introversion, the stage of concentration, the true meditative state, and the state of absorption into cosmic consciousness culminating in self-realization. The benefits of meditation are also described, as well as the types of meditation that Big Shakti offers to support you in moving through the various stages. 📩 Subscribe to our Newsletter🎙️ Big Shakti Podcast🎧 Big Shakti Meditations🌿️ Big Shakti’s Yoga and Meditation Courses🧘🏻‍♀️️Jayne Stevenson’s intuitive healing and dream therapy practice🧘 Dr. Swami Shankardev’s medical and psychotherapy practice📹 Big Shakti’s YouTube Channel