With Dr. Swami Shankardevananda

Saturday/Sunday June 9-10, 10 am to 4:30 pm

At Crossings, 8505 Fenton Street, Suite 202, Silver Spring, MD 20910 ● Inquiries: 202-333-0430 or 301-565-5024

The Experience of Prana:

Pranic Practices for Vitality, Mental Strength and Higher Awareness

A weekend of intensive exploration of the potential of Yoga to promote wholeness

This series of four classes will introduce the concepts and experience of prana in an accessible way. You will learn to feel and manipulate your own prana (life force). When the prana is balanced and in harmony with the energy of the world around, we feel healthy, vital and able to respond to life in a joyful and creative way. If it is out of balance, we feel weak, unwell, and unable to deal with life effectively. Wherever energy is blocked and stagnant, there is the opportunity for disease and dysfunction. Pranic healing techniques liberate trapped energy and promote healthy function of all the organs, the emotions and the mind. Yoga practices support healthy and balanced prana. We need to become more conscious of prana so that we are able to manipulate it for greater health, strength and higher awareness. This is especially true during stressful times. This weekend will teach you asana and other techniques from the Tantric tradition in ways that are rarely taught, to both increase healing and consciousness. The four classes are connected and it is recommended to attend all of them but you could also choose individual sessions.

Foundations of Prana

You will be introduced to the definition of prana as intelligent life force and to the approach to working with prana that will be used in the rest of the classes of this weekend seminar. The introduction will also define the three levels of prana: gross, subtle and causal. The class will include techniques to move consciousness into these three levels and will teach methods of focusing on inner tensions and obstructions.

Awakening Prana

This session works with asana and breath (pranayama) to awaken the experience of gross and subtle prana. This process leads to spontaneous meditative experience.

This session will teach how to pulsate prana into different areas of the body. The pranic pulsation balances and strengthens the parts of us that are healthy and starts repairing the parts that require healing. The aim of this process is purification and integration.

Class 4: Sunday, June 10, 2 - 4:30 pm……...….$40 ($45 after May 30)

Distributing Prana

This session will teach how to move prana as a wave through our whole being drawing on processes taught in previous sessions. It will teach techniques that heal and integrate all of our parts into a more conscious and powerful self.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Dr Swami Shankardev Saraswati is an eminent Yogacharya (authority), medical doctor, yoga therapist and internationally acclaimed author. A direct disciple of Swami Satyananda Saraswati, he lived with his teacher in India for 10 years (1974-1985), where he studied the highest practices of yoga Tantra. During this period, he participated in the editing of many of the books on Yoga and Yoga Therapy published by the Bihar School of Yoga (BSY) and wrote several of his own. Dr Swami Shankardev’s teachings focus on the mind-body connection and its role in illness and healing, as well as on the special ability of Yoga to promote health and healing. He integrates western psychological medicine and psychotherapy with eastern methods of mind-body development.

As a medical therapist, Dr Swami Shankardev specializes in the treatment and rehabilitation of chronic physical and mental conditions. His 30-year medical experience and extensive esoteric studies combine in a revolutionary and authentic approach to total health.

Dr Swami Shankardev has toured extensively throughout Europe, USA and Australia teaching yoga, meditation, psychology, philosophy, yoga therapy, and Ayurveda. He is a senior teacher of Yogic Studies and the Teacher Training Courses for Satyananda Yoga Academies (Australia & India). He is the author of such widely known books as Yogic Management of Asthma and Diabetes, The Effects of Yoga on Hypertension, and The Practices of Yoga for the Digestive System. Shankardev has recorded a number of rarely available relaxation and meditation practices, his CDs include: Three Easy Steps to Deep Relaxation, Introduction to Meditation & Yoga Nidra, Introduction to Prana & Pranic Healing, Core Strength Calm Mind, and Purify Strengthen Awaken the Chakras (Chakra Shuddhi). He is a regular contributor to the Yoga Magazine published by the Bihar School of Yoga.

PLEASE NOTE: In addition to this program, Swami Shankardev will hold an evening session in Washington -

Chakra Shuddhi:

Practices for Purification of the Chakras

Thursday, June 7, 7 - 9:30 PM