House of Ananda Yoga

10/12/2025

It's been too much Zooming for too long.

The studio in summer is an indoor-outdoor kind of space. Leaves blow in with the light.
As we get ready to open the space this winter, the big door closes, we light the stove and coziness is the code.
November is the perfect time to come in and take time for ourselves. Updates are coming this week for new class series and one-time get-togethers.
Tea, candles, big socks. Music, journals, sketch pads.
Healing, connection, and renewal.
Let me know your comments or questions ~ see you soon.

10/11/2025

The Future of a Generation: Hyperkyphosis from Excessive Screen Use 😬

We’re witnessing a troubling trend — the posture of a generation being reshaped by screens. Hours spent hunched over phones, tablets, and laptops are leading to a condition known as hyperkyphosis — an excessive forward curvature of the upper spine.

What was once seen mostly in the elderly is now appearing in teenagers and young adults, their necks craned downward for hours each day. The constant strain on the spine, shoulders, and neck muscles gradually alters posture, causing the classic “tech neck” or hunchback appearance.

Beyond looks, the consequences run deeper: chronic pain, reduced lung capacity, nerve compression, and long-term musculoskeletal damage. Doctors warn that these posture issues, left unchecked, could become one of the most widespread lifestyle-induced deformities of the 21st century.

It’s a silent epidemic of our digital age — one text, one scroll, one slouch at a time.

02/01/2022

08/27/2021

"What I experience is that you and I are beings who are open to, and seeking, truth. Truth has no form. Truth isn't this or that. Truth, one can't know; one can only be. It's a process... One metaphor is we are dying into truth. We're on this journey together. I'm on it just as you're on it.  
 
The fact that I sit on the riser and you sit in the chair, and that I give the Dharma talk and you listen: just observe your own projections about what that is. Because, as I've said many times, I'm a Rent-A-Mouth. I'm somebody that says what we are doing. I am a motor-voter. I'm a person who expresses a process that we are all involved in. And in the times when we're doing questions and answers – your questions are my questions, and my answers are your answers." 
 
- Ram Dass 
 
☀️☀️☀️☀️☀️☀️☀️☀️ 
COOKBOOK FOR A SACRED LIFE 21-DAY E-COURSE 
 
Join us to continue celebrating the 50th Anniversary of ‘Be Here Now’ with a 21-day e-course exploring essential tools for awakening. Each day will bring alive and expand upon topics taken from the ‘white pages’ (the practical section that appears at the end of ‘Be Here Now’).  
 
In the 21-day course, you’ll receive a daily distillation of Ram Dass’s practical, perennial wisdom from Be Here Now plus supplemental teachings incorporating modern perspectives from our eclectic list of wisdom teachers. 
 
❤️ THE COURSE BEGINS SEPTEMBER 13TH! ❤️ 
 
🌈 SIGN UP to join in bio, story or ramdass.org/practice 🌈 
 

08/20/2021

A change in class schedule: Level II Yoga will move from Wednesday to Thursday at 5:30. Other classes are Saturday 830am and Tuesday 10am. Everything is still on Zoom for the time being, and we will let you know when that changes. Zoom will always be available since we have a number of students from Omaha attending remotely. Hopefully in person classes are coming soon!

For those of you inquiring about adding weekly classes in your area - I would love to be able to accommodate these requests. At this time, the schedule is completely full for remote classes. Personal Yoga on a flexible schedule, and Workshops are still available on an open weekend - however weekends are filling up as well.

I am very humbled and honored about the yoga requests. I love what I do. And I love my clients and friends. Thank you so much for your interest and your questions. Feel free to reach out anytime if I can be of help. Have a beautiful day. Anita

08/13/2021

9 Meditation Tips
from Paramhansa Yogananda

1. “In meditation, you must go beyond thought. As long as you are busy thinking, you are in your rational mind, on the conscious plane. When you sleep and dream, you are on the subconscious plane. And when your mind is fully withdrawn in superconsciousness, it becomes centered in the bliss of the spine. That is the level of the soul’s existence.”

2. “Do not be anxious if you don’t have meditative experiences. The path to God is not a circus! Don’t even be anxious about such fruits of meditation as inner joy and peace. Everything will come in time. Meanwhile, consider meditation, too, as a form of karma yoga: action without desire for the fruits of action. Meditate above all to please your higher self, not your ego.”

3. Every sincere effort is registered in the Divine consciousness. Your duty…is to accept whatever He sends you — and, for that matter, He doesn’t send. God alone knows what past karma keeps you from perceiving Him right now. He may want you to finish up your karma in this life, before giving you eternal bliss.”

4. “Don’t waste the perception of the God’s presence, acquired in meditation, by useless chatting. Idle words are like bullets: they riddle the milk pail of peace. In devoting time unnecessarily to conversation and exuberant laughter, you’ll find you have nothing left inside. Fill the pail of your consciousness with the milk of meditative peace, then keep it filled. Joking is false happiness. Too much laughter riddles the mind and lets the peace in the bucket flow out, wasting it.”

5. “Meditate regularly, and you will find a joy inside that is real. You will then have something you can compare to sense pleasures. That comparison will automatically make you want to forsake your sorrow-producing bad habits. The best way to overcome temptation is to have something more fulfilling to compare it with.”

6. “Never count your faults. Just think about whether you love God enough. God doesn’t mind your faults, only your indifference.”

7. “Many people meditate till they feel a touch of peace, but jump up then and leave their meditation for their activities. That’s all right, if you have important work waiting for you, for it is always better to meditate before any activity, that you may feel at least some peace as you work. Whenever possible, however, sit for a long time after your practice of techniques. That is when the deepest enjoyment comes. Intuition is developed by continuously deepening that enjoyment, and, later on, by holding on to its calm aftereffect.”

8. “God answers all prayers. Restless prayers, however, He answers only a little bit. If you offer to others something that isn’t yours to give, won’t that be a merely empty gesture? If you pray…similarly, but lack control over your own thoughts, that prayer will be without power. Thoughts and feelings, both, must be focused when you pray. Otherwise God will meet your little trickle with another trickle in return! Answers will be doled out to you in a teaspoon. Too often, prayer is more like the halfhearted mumbling of a beggar than the confident, loving demand of a friend.”

9. “You won’t find God by making constant excuses: for example, saying, ‘When I find a quiet place, I will meditate.’ That is not at all the way to get there! If you tell yourself, however, “Right now I will plunge into deep meditation!” you can be there in a moment. When you are really sleepy, you have no difficulty in sleeping no matter where you are. When a person is in love, he or she finds no difficulty in thinking of the beloved; rather, it is difficult not to think of him or her, even to the point of ignoring work. Be in love with God! It is easy to meditate deeply, when your love for God is deep enough.”

>>>Join our meditation class this weekend:
Based on teachings of Paramhansa Yogananda

Time & Date:

In English
Saturday, 07 August : 5-7:30 PM
OR (attend any one class)
Sunday, 08 August: 10 AM-12:30 PM

In Hindi
रविवार, 15 अगस्त: 10 AM-12:30 PM

Fee: Rs 400 (includes soft copy of handout)

Register: https://bit.ly/2Vf7c1o

More details: https://anandaindia.org/ahmedabad/

Call: 9023863562

08/10/2021

This:

One summer afternoon during a meditation retreat, I discovered that I contain the entire universe. It happened quite unexpectedly, all in a rush. I was sitting with my eyes closed in a room with several hundred other people, very much aware of the sensations in my body and of the faint rustles, coughs, and other sounds around me. The next thing I knew, there was a kind of implosion. Instead of being around me, the room with all its sensations and sounds was inside me. My awareness started to swell until I could feel the earth, the sky, and even the galaxy inside me. In that moment, I understood, with a surety that was both exhilarating and terrifying, that there is only one thing in the universe—that it is Awareness, and that Awareness is me. The experience faded after an hour or so, but the understanding
it gave me has never gone away.

What had happened that afternoon was an awakening of the kundalini shakti, the inner energy that nearly every esoteric tradition recognizes as the force behind spiritual transformation.

The effects of this awakening on my life have been widespread and various. Mainly it has shifted my sense of being. Once I had seen that vastness, no matter how caught up I might get in my thoughts or emotions or agendas, a part of me would always know that I contain a reality beyond all that: that in truth, “I” am expansive Consciousness. Over the years, I have come to measure my spiritual progress by how much I am in alignment with that initial insight—by how firmly I am able to identify myself with Consciousness rather than with the person I sometimes think I am.

Find out more in 'Meditation for the Love of It' (https://www.sallykempton.com/books-and-audio/)
**ra

08/01/2021

07/30/2021

A really important book for all teachers. Its a lot of information. I've had to go very slowly and really think and reflect after small portions of the information, but its so worth it.