Good morning great so we’ll begin our session for today so let’s just let’s just come up on the mat sit comfortably keep your back and neck straight and when you feel ready very gently close your eyes and just begin to connect with your breathing start connecting with the natural flow of your breath slowly and gently begin to deepen

your breath now going for slow long and deep inhalations slow long and deep exhalations just make sure that your body is correctly aligned you are stable however you are sitting back next should remain straight and just focus on deepening your breath

We will open today’s session by chanting om three times followed by the opening mantra so if you can chant it chant it along with me or else you can just listen to the mantra and then we will open our session take a deep inhalation for om
Om………………………………..
Om………………………………..
Om………………………………..

GururBrahma GururVishnu
GururDevo Maheshwaraha
Guru Saakshaat ParaBrahma
Tasmai Sri Gurave Namaha
Tasmai Sri Gurave Namaha
Tasmai Sri Gurave Namaha

Take a deep inhalation for Om
Om…………………………………….
Shanti Shanti Shantih

Just feel the vibrations connect with the chanting join your palms together and now begin to rub your palms together keep your palms on your eyes very slowly while blinking and looking at your palms begin to open up your eyes coming back with a big smile on your face namaste and om shanti

Let us begin our session for today so these are your yoga philosophy classes ah whatever you are doing in all of the other classes that those things have a basis a background to them okay and that background where these practices are coming from and what do these practices really mean this is going to be covered in the yoga philosophy classes so you will understand why you are doing what you are doing in all of your other classes right these classes will also help you to change the way in

which you do your regular practices okay so means if you are doing asan and practice so suppose you have been doing asan practice for some time so you would have some other target in mind but yoga philosophy classes will just nudge you in the direction in which the practices should go right where for what reason these practices were created so this knowledge will help you to redirect your goals will help you to redirect your vision so that you are more in alignment with the final goals of yoga and these classes will also provide you with some tricks some very practical ways in which you can implement philosophy in general into your life right because

If i just keep talking about certain things and you are unable to do them then you won’t be able to see the impact of those things right so i will give you simple tricks tips through which you can implement those things into your life experiment yourself what i am saying is it valid or not and then opt for the things which are the most beneficial for you right in your lives whatever you can implement those things you

can take out of these classes right so now in the beginning of the sessions only i make this clear so this is not a restrictive kind of class where i will just restrict it to certain beliefs it’s totally up to you again it is your free will whatever you like you can take it and whatever you don’t like you can at least keep it aside and listen until you can validate yourself right and i would say that if you don’t like one portion that doesn’t mean you cannot opt for what you like out of these sessions you can

absolutely do those things right so just take whatever is most relevant for you as we proceed in these classes and i would also begin by saying that this is not to contradict any existing views ok so these classes are not going to contradict any existing views if you have your own set of values and it is not matching it does not mean that i am contradicting it i am merely telling you things from the point of view of yoga right because you have enrolled for yoga teacher training you want to

understand more deeply what this is and philosophy is the basis the backbone of the yogic practices ok so with this keeping this in mind let us begin our session for today so today is your first session which is the introductory session so even though these are your yoga philosophy classes today majorly i will be talking about philosophy right because yoga and philosophy these are two terms you know which are very um

i can say deep and they have a lot of like um you know a lot of information within themselves also so yoga and philosophy these two terms are very very vast okay so today we are going to talk about philosophy what it means why did we feel the need for philosophy in the first place and then eventually we will reach to the point where we are uh you know discussing um yoga right so because it is one of the

philosophies like i said there are multiple philosophies out there so we’re going to today trace till the point of yog where yogi is coming in and then we are going to see in the upcoming classes what yoga is more deeply so philosophy let’s come to this term itself so the term philosophy it is split up into two Philo fellow and sophia okay

Philo and sophia if you divide the term philosophy the two words p h i l o Philo and sophia s o p h i a okay so this term Philo means love okay and sophia this term means wisdom okay so if literally translated the term philosophy this term means what love for wisdom or love for knowledge okay so

if we look at this term we understand okay this is what philosophy is we you know when you see philosophers also if you google the photos you will see you know very old people you know sitting with glasses reading books right so in western terms philosophy is more about acquiring of knowledge right uh it’s related more to the understanding of the things right and understanding them like um in a more like uh

wisdom and knowledge are slightly different in their approach right so knowledge is something you know right i know about this xyz thing so my fact check is very good but wisdom has to do more with my experience what i have learnt right so i can tell you that xyz thing is good for your health but once you start doing it like once you start practicing yoga in this case so you will see the changes come up right so that same knowledge right will now turn into wisdom as you go through the experience y

ourself so western schools of philosophy they are more knowledge oriented they want to increase your understanding your knowledge it could be of the outside world of the inside world right but it is it is mostly focusing on the knowledge but it is not pressing too much on the wisdom aspect of it right so that is why i said you know when you google the photos of philosophers you will see old men right old people basically so why why do we generally have that image only in our

head because the older you get you know the more experience you acquire the more understanding of life you acquire right so if today i’m at this age and five years later of course i would have learned much more about how i want to live what i want in my life what i don’t want in my life right so this only comes with the passing of time and with the experience that i have gained that i can say that now i have converted this knowledge into wisdom right so that is why you know you will see that indian

philosophy so yoga philosophy is a part of indian philosophy so indian philosophy in general in its entire approach it is quite uh like a spiritual in nature okay no matter which philosophy you pick up in the indian out of the indian schools you will see this thing that they have insisted upon bringing everything on your experience right if i keep telling you you know this is ah this is one reality of life this is one reality of life

and you haven’t experienced that thing how will you you can either believe me right which is what most people do you know when we are told certain things we just believe them or you can do your own experiments and validate it okay so Indian schools are more about the validation right that some knowledge is being given but

you have to balance it out with your own experience that is very very essential it is considered to be very essential no matter which school of Indian philosophy you pick up right so Indian philosophy is more spiritual in nature and by spiritual i mean it has certain target certain goals for doing certain practices ok so the goal is not just to attain more flexibility or the goal is not just to you know

increase your strength the goal is much more beyond that right and that is what we are actually going to understand in our classes right so philosophy this term overall comes up in its wisdom aspect when we talk of Indian philosophy now if you look at Indian philosophy again there are multiple schools but i want to come down to first the Indian term used for philosophy okay so

In English we are saying philosophy but in sanskrit or hindi we call it darshan okay d a r s h a n darshan okay so now when one word is translated from one language to the other it you know loses some of its essence when it is translated to the other language in this case darshan got translated into philosophy ok so when i come down to this term darshan so the scope the understanding this much explanation is

not required why because the word has the ability to capture the thing that i am talking about okay so darshan this term is coming from the root word drish d r i s h drisha okay and trish this term means to see or to observe ok so now you need to understand as soon as we we are also in philosophy also we are trying to observe or see something but as soon as i say the term darshan the observation the object of

observation directly shifts to something which cannot generally be observed okay so what can i observe easily all of the things that are around me right i can even i can say that i can see my own body right this is observable right right now the phone is in front of me and you can say there is this entire room that i am sitting in maybe where you are sitting you can see certain things around you so those things are very very easy to observe all right but when we use the word darshan we are talking about the things that are that cannot be observed so easily

right like the mind if i ask you to observe the mind do you think you can observe it right can you see it can you tangibly see that thing so of course you cannot right your thoughts can you tangibly see the thoughts no you cannot right so when we use the word darshan we are actually trying to observe something which cannot be that easily seen right so to begin with on the surface level you can say your thoughts your

mind you are trying to observe that thing how it is functioning you know and slowly and slowly you are trying to connect with the more subtle realities all right you’re trying to observe them and that is why when we talk of the term darshan we also have two other things all right so one is the person who is observing all right so suppose i am observing ok so i am observing something so i become the observer

all right then there is something i have to observe okay so that becomes the object so if i take the same example so i am the observer and the thoughts are my object that are the thing that i want to observe all right now there is a process through which i can observe this thing right so suppose i will take another example right now you see i am wearing glasses right so i want to when i want to observe something when i want to see something my if i remove my specs my eyesight is not supporting seeing

that thing right so if i remove the glasses then my eyes or me i am trying to observe and maybe the phone in front of me i am trying to observe that object all right but i am not able to clearly see the object okay so what i do i pick up my glasses and i wear them and now everything is clear to me right i can see everything around me clearly all right so this tool this thing this process which is allowing me to observe the object that i want to observe this process is what darshan is all right so in our earlier example

I am the observer the thoughts are my object and darshan okay if you talk of yog darshan if i take the example so yog is telling me you observe your thoughts in this way okay then you will be able to clearly see what is the nature of the thoughts okay so like that some other philosophy it will tell me that okay if thoughts are your object this is the way in which you should observe then you will be able to see them more

objectively at least to begin with okay so right now i am just wearing you can say these are transparent but you can say if i choose a color i’m just wearing blue colored glasses and i’m trying to observe something okay and because i’m wearing blue glasses i see that thing as blue but that doesn’t mean that the nature of that thing is blue only ok if i remove these blue glasses i take on the red glasses what will

happen that thing will catch that color for me right and i will say that the object is red yeah so what is going on around us all of us are wearing different different glasses so we all have our ways of observing the things okay but they are limited to just one color or maybe you can say two three colors maximum right but we are unable to see the quality the characteristics of the thing we are trying to observe as it is all right we

never really get to know what is the exact color of that thing or is even if that thing has a color or not right it is the process that you are utilizing to
observe something which is highly influencing the way in which you see it okay so yoga philosophy is again one of those ways and the thing about the philosophy systems is that eventually they work towards removing all these colors and getting it

to these transparent glasses okay so if you follow any kind of philosophy right yoke philosophy maybe you choose some other philosophy you want to follow right but if it has certain qualities it will lead to the cleansing of that color you know sometimes you dye something and then you want to remove that color so yog is such kind of process which will remove that color right because that color is hampering your

vision that color is not allowing you to see what is in front of you right so no matter which school of philosophy you choose it will eventually lead to removing that color only so you don’t have to get worried that oh yoga is asking me to view the things in this way only so i will you know restrict my approach no the practice when you do the practice you will realize this thing it will open you up more right it will make you more

accepting it will allow you to see if you are in conflict with someone right you don’t understand why they are saying this thing they don’t understand why you are saying that thing right so what philosophy any good school of philosophy what they will do if you actually implement those things in your life you will be able to step out of your shoes step into the other person’s shoe and then see why they are saying what they

are saying at least before you were only able to have one perspective at least now you can have two right then slowly it will increase to three four right and slowly it’s like the object is in between there is a circle right a circle of people who are trying to observe it so from where i am looking at the object i will only see that portion i will only get the understanding of that portion

But what any philosophy in general does is it allows you to jump and see the thing from all the perspectives now if i jump and see the thing from all the perspectives then i will get an actual idea of what that thing really is maybe from one side it will only appear to be something and then when i look at it from the other side i will see that the nature of the object is completely different okay so any kind of philosophy it

could be any philosophy if you choose it will allow you to have a deeper understanding ok of all perspectives because you are actually trying to just observe an object now it’s up to you if you believe you have a philosophy in life or not but as per the general understanding all of us have a philosophy in life okay all of us have a set of belief systems set of values that we follow and that is how we choose to live a lead our life with right so it is up to you if you acknowledge this or not but all of us

have a philosophy already so what these philosophies come and do they just correct you know if you have ever gone to someone who makes specs they will put in multiple lenses and then they will move that lens to get the number of your eye okay so it is something like that only you already have a philosophy you are just refining it to get to the you know clearest vision of the object that you are trying to observe

okay so now indian philosophy coming to indian philosophy indian philosophy in general it has been divided into two major branches one is the orthodox school and the second branch is the heterodox school okay so now to understand the difference between both these schools you need to

understand this thing that there is a basis for all of this knowledge okay so in India the oldest scriptures from where everything is coming out all the Indian philosophies are somewhere or the other coming out from here only like either trying to accept them or trying to go on your own path but somewhere the basis the foundation is formed by the Vedas okay so they are considered to be the sourcing the main source

of information these are considered to be Vedas are nothing they these are books okay of the um reality right uh which was generally observed and then this thing was written down or when it was experienced it was written down you can understand it in this way right so there are four such books overall Vedas are v e d a s ok so these

books they form the background ok and the orthodox schools what are they doing our first branch which was author of schools they are accepting whatever has been said in this foundational text or this base text okay they are saying whatever is stated in them it is correct okay and then they are coming up with with their own

understanding and their own practices right to reach a goal and what is this goal the ultimate freedom okay so you don’t want to be free from one of your sorrows or two right you should aim higher now you are in yogic practices you can aim higher right you can be free from all of your sufferings okay and that is what your philosophy is

you know it is the process through which you become free from all of your sufferings okay so when you like um to the orthodox schools they are directly accepting the Vedas whatever is being said it is true and then they are giving their own

understanding philosophy on this thing right now what the heterodox schools are doing the heterodox schools are not validating the information just like that okay the heterodox schools are not neglecting also okay they are not accepting they are not neglecting what has been said in the Vedas they are saying that you keep practicing and you keep seeing what is happening with this knowledge all right if it is supposed

to be true through these practices you will experience the reality and the truth of them and if they are not then also it’s fine right so what they are doing they are not accepting the Vedas nor are they rejecting it okay so one place you have orthodox schools one place you have heterodox schools now when you come to the orthodox schools we have six schools okay in Indian philosophy we have six schools in

orthodox and three schools in heterodox okay so in the um orthodox schools there is a pairing of two two schools okay if you see you will generally find all the six names not written like this but as a pair all right so i will take the most relevant one for us which is samkhya and yoga all right so like this you will find the others as well so i will not name them because that we are not going to focus on them but if you

generally also um type on google you will find all the other schools as well six orthodox and three heterodox all right so the most relevant one for us is samkhya yog you so now you can see in indian philosophy it is already coming under the head of the orthodox school so yoga philosophy directly it’s accepting whatever has been

written in the vedas as it is all right first thing you have to understand this now second thing is why is this pairing done right so you will like you will see the pairing of niai and vaishesik when sankhya yoga right like this so this pairing has been done because one

school is giving the deep theory all right the deep understanding of the components right how the components are viewed are divided what is the reality according to that school right so it is trying to view the things in a certain way all right so and then the other school which is attached with it it is giving the practice okay so if i look at this

example only samkhya s a m k h a y e you can write this this is very important and even though we will not talk about samkhya philosophy if you want to understand yog philosophy more deeply i would highly recommend that you know you also study samkhya philosophy why because you will there are so many things in yoga philosophy which are again directly accepted um you know yoga philosophy is

directly accepting those things from samkhya here right so its not again its not questioning its just saying that ok this is true and on this basis i will give the practice okay so if you want to understand you more deeply in the future right after your class is in so you can first deeply study yoga philosophy only and then as a way to more like to gain a more detailed understanding you can also go ahead and study

samkhya you will understand why certain things have been said in yoga so samkhya is deeply giving the theoretical background okay it is giving the understanding of how each and everything is what is its nature and then when you come to yog philosophy you see the practices that you can do on the basis of this understanding of the objects right so samkhya like divides the things into certain number of subdivisions so yoga is directly accepting this thing and then it is

saying okay so from this point of view let me give you the practices that you can do so that you can come to the point of union okay yoga literally means unions we will talk more deeply about the meaning of you in upcoming classes but just generally trying to trying to make you understand the pairing why the pairing has been done okay and then you will elaborate on all the things that you can do so that in alignment

with sankey philosophy you can reach the final goal all right so the understanding the path it is different according to different different philosophies all right so like this if you move to the heterodox schools one of the most famous schools throughout the world okay is the school of buddhism all right so the buddhist philosophy it is a part of the indian philosophy and now you can see it is coming under the heterodox schools right so heterodox is doing what it is going to validate the information on its

own it’s not going to say that okay whatever the vedas have said it is true nor is it denying that so what it is doing if you go ahead if you read any of the teachings of buddha you will see that he has greatly emphasized on the practice all right the practices that he has given he has greatly emphasized on them and buddha was one of those people who said this thing that if you know somebody else is saying a certain thing and it is not you have not experienced that thing that

information is not true for you all right so suppose i keep telling you you know the maybe everything is changing all the time right but you have not experienced that thing okay so this is false information right this is not true for you unless and until you reach a point where you experience this impermanence all right so heterodox schools are very very practice oriented and they have given their own set of

understanding and their own set of practices which one can do to validate the information all right so they have of course provided their own set of information but they are also balancing it out with the practice simultaneously all right so ah like if you talk of charvak so charvak philosophy has also become very famous especially in today’s world so charvak is more about materialism that you know this is the only reality this there is this observable world and then it is saying that it’s around the 

philosophy of you only live once okay so how you can lead this life more fruitfully all right so each and every heterodox school also has its own understanding and if you look at the third so there are only three schools in heterodox the third one is your journalism so in India and around India Jainism is again very famous but but you

have to see this thing that again Jainism if you see the practices there are they have kept the practices such that they are imbibed in the daily life right in terms of their food in terms of however they conduct themselves it is imbibed in their day-to-day life whatever they are practicing all right so these are the two divisions of the Indian schools you can go ahead you can do your own research right

but we are going to only discuss yoga philosophy in the upcoming classes and remaining of the philosophies western philosophies are also there there are a lot of other schools as well so if if you are generally interested in the subject of philosophy you can read up more about it and um let me come to the question of why philosophy is needed right i will um you know discuss this briefly right so what is the

need for philosophy in general let us come to this thing ok um as human beings we have always been very curious right so right now maybe you will not understand this thing why because now a lot of things you have become used to a lot of things happening around you your schedule being fixed everything going around in a certain way right but when you go to some place new or when you are put in a

situation which is very new to you you will observe this thing that you become very very curious you want to gain an understanding of what is there right what is this thing what is that thing right so this general curiosity of the human mind you know it led us to a point where first we try to understand everything around us right and then you know some people they wanted to understand themselves all right so this big question who are you right such deep and big big questions were coming up in the

mind all right so this is one of the you know gifts that we have we have the higher ability of the mind right if you see any animal they will not question why am i here what am i doing here right they will just go as per the nature right but we as human beings we have this higher capability where we are
questioning things at all times right so philosophy in general as a subject developed because we wanted to attain greater understanding we wanted to make more logic

out of whatever was around us what we were right and you will also see this thing there is this deep need to un gain this understanding ok one thing is we want to gain this understanding but second thing you will observe there is this deep need that we feel you know suppose you have everything in our life right you have the desired amount of money right you have the dream job you have the you know most luxurious house most luxurious car right everything that is on your list suppose all of those things are ticked right

do you think you will still uh you will you know that is the point which will be the culminating point for you or ending like you can say not culminating the ending point for you it will not all right i’m answering this for you right it will not because if you observe in your day-to-day life if you acquire something you really wanted it could be a very tiny product maybe from amazon suppose okay if you acquire that thing

suppose you are very excited about it so this excitement stays you enjoy that thing for a long period of time maybe a short period of time and then that thing loses its sense loses its value in your life right so this nature of human being right it doesn’t change even if you have everything ticked off your list this because you have trained your mind in this way right when i get this thing i will enjoy it then it will lose a sense

then again you know you aim for something so it’s an endless circle right so subjects like philosophy developed out of this desire to understand why is this happening you know why is it that i constantly want to acquire but i’m unable to enjoy it so right now whatever you have you are not even able to enjoy that thing right so this subject developed because of this higher ability of the mind and the curiosity of the mind

both these reasons are there and in order to look for a more sustainable uh you know understanding of being happy right so if you just want to acquire something you feel you will be happier after that then it goes away then again you want to acquire something new then again the same cycle repeat so it’s not a sustainable way no in this way i would want everything right

and even when i would have everything i would not like it right so this is not a sustainable way of acquiring happiness in life so the philosophies they focus on a more sustainable way to acquire happiness in life right so these are the two major reasons why philosophy you know as a subject it has developed and grown uh so much right it has if you step into if you just buy a book of philosophy also you will find so many philosophies and those will just touch the surface if you just buy a common

book it will just touch the surface of that philosophy so they are very deep in themselves right and it requires again when you study indian philosophy your focus should not be on acquiring the knowledge but implementing it and converting it into wisdom right so these two things should go in balance when we are you know going to conduct the upcoming classes also we are going to keep our mind you know focused on the implementation so any doubts questions queries so far any issues any questions no questions

all right okay so um let me just briefly uh like um talk about what you guys tomorrow we will cover it more deeply right so yoga are yoga in english and yoga in hindi sanskrit all right so yog this term literally means union all right so you know to join to yoke right so this has been derived from the root word y u j okay so this term yoga it has been derived from root word yuge which means to yoke to unite all right so when we talk of yoga this is like very very i would say far off right union all of these things

but i can say that in a common understanding you can say yoga is nothing but harmonizing yourself all right harmonizing yourself in the universal terms rather than in the specific terms so specific meaning like suppose the indian society has certain standards set you have to do this this this by this this this age right very common thing so this is what this is like somewhere developed by all the people who are existing who are living right but if you look at the universal things like nature you

know so you harmonize yourself more with the nature right like when it is morning you wake up when it is night you sleep right so this is also harmonizing yourself in one way right so i would say that for us a more understandable way to comprehend what yoga actually is is harmonizing ourselves with the ultimate realities right so we will discuss more on this what are these ultimate realities what how is the process of

yoga working in the upcoming classes so we’ll just close today’s session then i will chant the shanti mantra so if you know the shanti mantra you can go ahead chant with me or else we will uh you can just listen to me and slowly slowly you can begin to pick it up ah and then we will just sit for a while and just observe our breath okay so finally we will sit for a few minutes and just observe the breathing as it is and then

we will close the session so wherever you are just sit comfortably keep your back and neck straight and when you feel ready very gently close your eyes just start connecting with your breath we will chant om one time followed by the shanti mantra take a deep inhalation for om
Om…………………………………………
sarve bhavantu sukhinaḥ
sarve santu nirāmayāḥ
sarve bhadrāṇi paśyantu mā kaścidduḥ khabhāgbhaveta।
oṃ śāntiḥ śāntiḥ śāntiḥ॥

take a deep breath in for om
Om………………… Shanti Shanti Shanti’h

Fill the vibrations feel the impact of the chanting we’re just going to sit for a while and observe the natural flow of your breath make sure that your back and neck remains straight eyes are gently closed and just watch the breath as it goes in and comes out make no changes simply observe and each and every time your mind wanders very gently bring it back to your breathing just observe the breath as it is being aware of

Each and every breath now slowly suspend your practice join your hands together gently bow down just a sense of gratitude and respect begin to rub your palms together keep them on the eyes very slowly while blinking and looking at the palms begin to open up your eyes coming back with a big smile on your face um shanti namaste to everyone i will see you in the afternoon for your pranayama class so take care and bye bye.

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