Transcription

Please email us to report any transcription errors

flowartists
Hello, my name is Rane and this is the flow artists podcast - every episode my co-host Jo Stewart and I speak with inspiring movers, thinkers and teachers about how they find their flow and much much more!
I would like to start by honouring the traditional owners of the land on where this episode was recorded, the Wurunderi people of the Kulin nation Jo and I pay our respects to elders past, present and emerging.
This week we are speaking to Nischala Joy Devi, who is well known and loved for her innovative way of expressing Yoga - from the physical to the subtle for spiritual growth and healing. Her deep love and respect for these teachings shines through as she reinterprets these sacred texts with the goal of empowering each individual reader to find connection, understanding and benefit from this wisdom, for their own personal growth and greater contribution to our world.

Nischala has created numerous books and trainings - although in this interview we are focusing on the newly released revised edition of The Secret Power of Yoga: A Woman’s Guide to the Heart and Spirit of the Yoga Sutras. This book is widely known and loved as the definitive feminine interpretation of Patanjali's Yoga Sutras, and the new edition is expanded to include all four padas.

She has a background in Western Medicine and is known for her work with Dean Ornish’s Reversing Heart Disease program and the Commonweal Cancer Help Program, as well as the Yoga of the Heart program that helps yoga teachers and health professionals adapt yogic practices for the special needs of this population.

Please be advised, we do discuss Nischala’s 25 years of monastic life at the Satchidananda ashram and right at the end of the interview have a deeper discussion of the fall out and her response to the abuse that took place there.
All right Nischala. Thank you so much for speaking with us today. It's great to get the chance to speak with you. I was just wondering if you could start by just sharing with us how you discovered yoga?


Nischala Devi
Oh okay, well thank you I just want to thank you for allowing me to be with you today and across the miles. It's wonderful. Um, you know how how I started in yoga... If I can really succinctly say the answer to that because I think it was something that was brewing in me for a long time in childhood but couldn't identify what it was and I was working, I was originally working in western medicine. I was a physician's assistant and I was really getting burnt out really burnt out and decided that I needed to take care of my body, my mind, but also my spirit.
Because the work I was doing was so intense and I walked up to this... and this was a while ago so you have to realize it wasn't there wasn't a yoga studio in every corner like there is now. And actually it's ah a pretty funny story because I was exhausted one night and I went to eat dinner at um, one of my favorite restaurants which is called the Good Karma Cafe and there was a man sitting across the table for me. He said "you look exhausted. He said why don't you try yoga. There's an institute right down the street". So the next day as it turned out I... I wasn't feeling well and I couldn't go into work to spread it around to the patients. So I decided to go walk down there. And as I walked up the steps I saw this picture of this being, this man, and I looked into his eyes and I said to myself at the time "I don't know what he has but whatever it is I want to feel like that" and that was it. I started and the rest is history.
Yoga drew me to it because of its expansiveness. That's what I loved about yoga. If you were devotional, you could be there. If you were analytical, you could be there. If you were physical, you could be there. There was something for everyone and I thought that to me is real spirituality, where no matter where you are, no matter what stage of life you're at there's something for you and it can take you through your whole life.
So after that there was no turning back I became a teacher and then eventually became a monk also, so and I still I still feel that way even today after many many years of practice and teaching. I just feel like it's just an extraordinary path. It's so inclusive, should I say? So inclusive everyone can do it? yeah.


flowartists
And I'm actually really intrigued at the decision to go from practicing and teaching to really take that Monastic path and I believe that you lived as a Monk for a number of years, would you like to share your decision about like how you decided to make that extra level of commitment?
Also do you still live that way or have you kind of returned back to the householder path.

Nischala Devi
Some very interesting questions. I'll start with the first one. I don't think it's a decision, I think it's a calling. When I was sixteen years old and interested in boys and learning to drive and it was all about hair and makeup and clothes. The last thing I ever thought I would do was become a monk. it's just it's not you know you think about becoming a princess, a wife, a mother but never a monk. But it was to me. It was a very natural movement into that, because as soon as I started on the path. It was so deep it was like it was like something I had done for thousands of years that I had forgotten and suddenly it came back to me.

So the next stage would be to just dedicate yourself completely and your whole life to it, and for me, it was just a very natural easy decision. There was no thought process. It was just this is what I did and my teaching came out of my monastic background because I think the thing is studying yoga is one thing, living yoga is another. When you're a monastic you're never not living it and that's what I wanted to do. I just wanted to know it from every side, from inside from upside down, all the scriptures and I think in the normal everyday world it's hard to take that much time for most people.
To answer your next question I pretty much still live that way. Although I married and he was also a monk for many years. We've made our home that way and I have never veered from it in a career choice.
Ever since then I've always been either teaching or working in medical research with yoga as the main modality. So I've really never moved. We still eat the same way. We're still vegetarian eat a little more fancy food now than we did as a monk but, it suits me it just suits me.
Would I recommend it for anyone? No.

Nischala Devi
I think you have to have the calling. It has to be there and what I feel. Ah, you mentioned the word householder and this has been a real wedge in in a lot of communities. The difference between the monastic and the householder I don't really see a difference. I think anyone who dedicates their life, look at the two of you, but what?
How could you be more monk like than that to dedicate your whole life that and you both believe it and you both live it?
So that's really what I think, at the day of the monastic is really something, that's not... It's almost over. You see monasteries that held 800 monks. There's 2 in there now. It's the time to me of relationships. Can you be in relationship with another person?
And also be in relationship with your higher self?
That's harder. Being a monk was easy. Nothing bothered me. I went to bed at night alone. Nobody argued with me. Nobody told me what to do in that way. But there's something rich about bringing spirituality into a relationship. I think that two of you know, exactly what I'm talking about right? yeah.

flowartists
And this is a bit of a side track but it's actually something that we've spoken about with each other just like wondering because. It seems like sometimes in yoga discussion there's like a tension, or a discussion around your spiritual practice is something that you do for yourself for your own wellbeing versus something that you do within your community for community wellbeing.

Nischala Devi
Yes.

flowartists
And it sounds like what you're speaking about now is really about that idea of living your practice in a way that benefits you and benefits others in the world as well, rather than something that happens in a cave on your own.

Nischala Devi
Exactly and I really feel too and this is something that I'll often do when I counsel couples who are not getting along I'll say meditate together every morning sit together. You don't have to even say anything just by being there. Something is coming together. There's a meshing of spirits that will then trickle down to the emotional level and people get along better. So I really think that. I wish, I really wish that more people would embrace it in the world. Think it would be a kinder world and I think that's something we can use right now is some more kindness. Yeah.

flowartists
Absolutely and I actually um, one of the stories I really enjoyed within your Book. You were sharing about how you had a not very good relationship with another monk at the Ashram who was kind of really disagreeable and you could tell that he didn't like you. And you used your own mantra practice to shift your own state of being when you interacted with him and I loved hearing that just as a strategy to kind of shift an uncomfortable relationship but also...

Nischala Devi
Yeah.

flowartists
A glimpse into humanity within the monastery because I think I had this idea in my mind that once you'd chosen that path you had evolved beyond being a disagreeable person and you just like lived with love and compassion in every moment. But um, we're still human beings and we still have human emotions.

Nischala Devi
Yes.

Nischala Devi
And you know it's almost worse because if you're grumpy, let's say you get up in the morning and you're grumpy. So you said to yourself I'm grumpy. Maybe I'll do some more asanas or maybe I'll do an aerobics class or maybe I'll meet a friend for lunch and dissipate some of that energy.
In a monastic setting you don't have those options, so you can do Asana but you can't go out for an aerobics class. You can't meet a friend for lunch so it really makes it more compressed.
I think a lot of people have that I that mistaken idea that when once you enter a monastery you become a saint and all your shortcomings just fall away. I don't think there's anything further from the truth. There's a beautiful quote by Paramahansa Yogananda and he said "The ashram will protect you from the world but who will protect you from the ashram?"
That's some from someone who's lived there, because you know I always think of that now. I thought to myself you know now I have one husband. That's it. There I had many husbands. Many wives. You know you have a whole group that you're living with a daily basis intimately right?
You eat together. You meditate together. You know you even use the bathroom together in certain situations. So we're all human. No matter what our title is and to me the most important thing is to mesh the humanity with the divinity. We want to bring those together and whatever way we can do that but to just have one or the other doesn't seem to to work in this world. Yeah. So yeah, that's a good story and it's a true story.


flowartists
Oh I could tell and I guess to flow on into that idea of compassion in action and using your practice to help other people. You're really famous for developing the yoga portion of the pioneering yoga for life-threatening diseases study - Dean Orish's program for reversing heart disease and am I right in thinking this is like the none major evidence-based study in Western medicine involving yoga and that just would have opened so many doors and brought this practice to so many people.

Nischala Devi
Yes, yeah.

flowartists
Would you like to share a bit about your experiences with this study?

Nischala Devi
Yeah, you know when I hear you say that I actually get goose bumps because when you're doing it, you don't think about that. You just think about what's in front of you and how to do this and you're absolutely right. It was the really none evidence-based yoga research and we didn't just take we didn't just take sore backs or lower backs or something like that. We went for heart disease which is the number one reason people die and we really had the whole team have so much confidence. They were all yoga practitioners and everybody felt like, in fact, it was funny I met dean, he came to the ashram and I was sitting out in the garden with him one day and I said well what are you up to now?
And he started telling me and he said to me "I have a question for you" I said "okay" and he said "do you think a yoga based program can reverse cardiovascular disease?" and I looked at him I said "I have no doubt".

flowartists
That was your job interview.

Nischala Devi
He said "you're hired" I said "I didn't know - I mean that was a job interview right?" But that's how people were hired and I'll tell you it was one of the most extraordinary experiences of my life. To see these people come in very serious disease and within a relatively short time leading normal lives and watching them not just physically change, but emotionally change. They became kind. Became caring and loving and I just it was just amazing to me, just amazing to me, that this could happen and it's still happening and trying to be a little modest about it. But at the same time I think that study. That we did 2 studies the Multicenter Lifestyle Heart Trial and the Multicenter Life Trial 10 hospitals along around the United States when the results came out. I really feel it changed the way we practice medicine today in the United States. It's very hard to find any major hospital without a wellness center or something like that and that was unheard of then. So I think people that. Because we did it as a bona fide study and we published in these really prestigious journals that I think people got it and still it's happening and now the whole yoga therapy. Ah, just exploded. But I think that's the seed it came from. Yeah.

flowartists
And so after such a heart filling and intellectually challenging experience like it must have been very immersive being part of the study was there a feeling of like what do I do next after that?

Nischala Devi
Oh yes, yeah no, you know I always have a couple projects lined up because...

flowartists
Ah, did you already know that you had your book to write?

Nischala Devi
I love what I do I love what I do because to me there's no difference between what I do and who I am, and that to me is the best. So as I do my service, I'm actually expanding myself also in that. I'm learning from teaching et cetera. So I think that was one of the questions you had asked me about Shastraji...
So what I had decided is that I was going to... I was going to stop. We actually started on the prostate study and I wrote the protocol for it. But I didn't really want to be, I wanted to get out of Western medicine even a little bit that I was in it and I wanted to go back into what I considered my aspect of yoga that I loved and that was the yoga sutras, so I started and I had been teaching them all along.
But I started to move into this and when I got the blessing from Shastraji to do this work, I knew that that was the right thing to do and I just dove into writing the first version of The Secret Power because like the heart trial, it wasn't that different from the heart trial, in that I felt like people knew a part of yoga. But they didn't know the essence of it where does it come from. Why does, when I bend and stretch does it make me feel better?
What is it about yoga?
So that's what I wanted to show people "hey, look look at this scripture. We can relate to this. Let's look at this look at this in the year now, not how it was two thousand years ago" so with his blessing because you know, I was a little shy. It's interesting, like the heart disease. No one had ever done this before as a woman right?
All the other versions were written by men. No one had bothered to say to a woman "What do you think?" right? "does this apply to you?"
After all we're more than half the population of the world at least. At least one book should be dedicated to us!
But it was a hard... It was a hard decision and I was warned "you know you're very sensitive. You're going to get a lot of criticism from it". But then when people like Shastraji, a great

Nischala Devi
Vedic Master said "it's about time a woman should do this" it bolstered me and it gave me the confidence to do it and then of course the women, and men the men that were interested just loved it. So it gave me the confidence, and also that I had done the right thing. I felt I had done the right thing.

flowartists
Yeah, just reading your writing, you are in this really interesting position because you already have the sensitivity of kind of examining a text from another culture, and then examining the commentaries on that text and it seemed like a lot of the commentaries really spoke more of the time they were written in and the patriarchal values of that time, rather than the time that the text was originally written in. So in some ways you were doing a bit of a radical interpretation that was sometimes quite different from...

Nischala Devi
Ah

flowartists
The English translations but I got the sense that you were actually trying to get closer to the heart of the original text. So. It's this interesting tension between trying to be true to the text but also being a bit radical in your interpretation compared to others, would you like to share a bit about the challenges of those interpretations and also the challenge of how much of yourself do you put in?

Nischala Devi
Wow! These are really good questions. You really thought about this. Radical was my middle name! Ah I just...

Nischala Devi
People say "you think out of the box". I don't even see the box. I don't even know there's a box.
It never occurred to me that this was something that was unusual. It just never occurred to me. I thought because what happened, and it was a very organic process. Really um, that moment that I talked about before when I walked up the steps and I saw Swamaji's picture when when they finally opened the door. What I said to them is "I want to learn the sutras". And they said "you have to learn hatha yoga first" and I said "I don't want to learn hatha yoga I'm a medical person I know all about the physical body. I want to learn the sutras" and they said "no" so I had to go through the channels and there was something about the sutras that just touched me so deeply. Yet, I couldn't identify with certain things like controlling the mind. I mean what I always say to people "how many of you have actually tried to control your mind and how many of you have succeeded?" No one raises their hand, right. So to me it was not about control. The sutras were telling us "this is your nature. This is who you really are and this is how to get back to it". To me, it was like a roadmap. So when I started, I was teaching, I'd been teaching for a long time and the students. Oh because there was basically books at that time were How to know God by Swami Prabhavananda and Christopher Isherwood and Raja Yoga by Swami Vivekananda.

Brilliant books but for a woman in the twenty first century or the twentieth century then it's not relatable.
I couldn't relate to it, I had to change it to relate to it and that's what I started doing in my teachings so we'd read something and I'd say "okay, it could also mean this... let's talk about it" and the students started saying "why don't you write the book" and I said well "I'm not a scholar I can't write books". They said "no, we don't want a scholar what we want is someone who understands it because they live it and then to go from there" so that's how it all started and then I started writing down little notes and and then ah and then I got addicted.

Nischala Devi
I got hooked on it. It was so exciting to me. I would go in "I Say do you know? what? this sutra really means and people would look at me like a why?" "What does she tell" but I would get so excited about a sutra and they came alive to me. In a way that I had never seen them before and I still loved them. I was a little sorry actually, when I finished my book I was you know, just a little bit because I just I didn't want to let it go so that I must be prepped a little bit like having your child. Go off to college or something you know. You love them and you want them to to go but you want them also this day. So It's just been a love of mine and what I want what I was hoping to do with the books is to translate and transfer that joy that I feel. To other people because I want them to love the sutras too.

flowartists
And this is quite a I guess nerdy. Um, technical question. But um I was really interested. Did you translate from the Sanskrit yourself? or like how did you choose which translation to work from? because when you read different ones, like interpretations can be really different.

Nischala Devi
Yeah, so how I did it was very interesting. I don't I don't have a Sanskrit background. That's not my background and there's a part of me that feels it would have been a very different book if I had. Because it a tendency is to take things more literally when you know the translation of a language and the thing I've really learned about Sanskrit is it's not a literal language. It's a vibrational language. So what I did is, I took every book that I knew and I could relate to and I had 12 to 15 books. All different translations. What I learned is they're actually not all different translations. Most of them are very much the same and then I started to find the ones that really resonated more with me and all the time I had the Saraswati mantra playing on a continuous loop and I had her statue right in front. And every morning before I started writing I would pray to Saraswati to give me the advac - you know what advac is?
She jumps from the tongue and she's the goddess of Speech, so I had all that around me I remember, I had this big desk and there was copies of the book everywhere and sometimes I would read it and have no idea and I would just say okay, just let it sit and sometimes I would fall asleep. I would dream what the future meant I'd wake up my husband would say "where you going it's three o'clock in the morning" I say I just found out figured out what it meant and I'd go and write it down. Yeah so that was the process. And then do you remember the story in the book about my darshan with Shri Patanjali in India? so that okay because that was you know I had already written most of the book.

flowartists
Yes, but please share it.

Nischala Devi
But somehow that propelled me to another level all right? So let me I'll try to make it as short as possible. Um, when you're dealing with a major publisher they have deadlines. So I told my editor I said I'm going to India. He said "okay turn it in before you go" so December first I turned in the manuscript and went off to India. Now when I was writing the manuscript. One of the things when I was going through all the different samadis, I thought to myself "do people really need to know this?"
I mean is this really important? and I decided it really wasn't, it was just maybe a distraction and I just put a little note in and I went off to India and at a certain point. Um. We were walking through one of the big temples in South India. One of my favorite temples Rameshwarapurum for those of you that might know and we we went in and they have 22 sacred wells that you bathe in first, before you go in to the temple. And we're walking around and I, I actually have two students with me and I said to them "there's a shrine to the angry Hanuman", like everybody thinks of Hanuman is the great servant which he is but he got angry at one point and they have this statue of him. He's bright red with his teeth bared like like he's ready to attack and so we went and we saw him and then I said "let's just sit meditation for a few minutes" and then we all got up and I was kind of not quite there. So I was walking very slowly and as I was rounding the inside of the the shrine all of a sudden I felt this wall of energy come down and I couldn't permeate it I couldn't go any further. My husband and the students were ahead and all of a sudden this vortex. Swung me around to this what looked like just a plain stone wall I didn't there was no cognition so I wasn't thinking and I was just pulled very close to the wall and then I heard my husband coming behind me talking to someone he had found a priest and the priest was showing him some things and the priest saw me at this wall and as it turned out. There was a tiny little window maybe about three inches by five inches glass with a little candle in it and the priest walked up behind me and he said


Nischala Devi
"You know what that is?" and my heart I couldn't talk but my husband said "no what is it?" He said "that's the Maha Samadhi shrine of Sri Patanjali" everybody gasped I mean I had been thinking about him, meditating on him, thinking "what did he mean by this?"
"Why did he say it like this?" for so long and then he drew me to him. I felt so validated I can't tell you and when I got home I rewrote the entire Samadhi chapter and that's why it's in the book now. So it was I didn't get validated by the normal people one would think. I got validated by things like that by Shastraji and also Sri Patanjali himself and it was interesting when I talked to some of the men teachers when I got back. They said "how do you know?". Not only that, how you there I said look when you have the experience. You don't need anybody else to say anything you know what it is so anyway, that's my Patanjali Samadhi Shrine story

flowartists
Well actually I did have a question about the nature of samadhi you know, just a simple question. Um including the concept of is sabija or with seed and without seed. The idea of seeing samadhi as a state that we experience and then we learn from, rather than it just being this like destination state that once we get to we exit the rest of the world and I guess that's the Maha Samadhi that's death, but along the way like I Just really like to explore a bit the idea of like the different states of Samadhi and I guess it's coming back as well to our practice being something that we live and something that we share rather than a separate state that we exit to.

Nischala Devi
So again, very astute question and very could be a very long answer I'll try to do my best. Um, the first thing I think we have to look at is how the structure of the yoga sutras so they're they're divided into 4 padas or 4 books and the first 2 basically tell us our our nature and how to get back to it if we've lost it. That's that's a simple when we move into books 3 and 4 we're getting into a very esoteric and not something that anyone can practice. So if you notice when you look at Ashtanga Yoga you'll see that the only the first five are described in book 2 book three is where we find dharana, dhyana and samadhi, because book 3 is called Vibhuti Pada which means the gifts or powers. So what to me how I interpreted it Patanjali was saying to us. You can practice everything up to Pratyahara. But if you really want to get into dhrana and dhyana and then the many samadis those are no longer practices. Those are states of being that have come because you did the practices, so and that's that's difficult for people. I think it's very difficult because that means when you sit there, you're actually not doing something you're letting go. So that's when you enter dharna and itself is a very deep and then you get into dhyana finally when you get into samadhi you get into all these with form without form it goes through, but what I always tell people if you try to identify which samadhi it is, in samadhi you're out, because the mind is not in the mind. Um, but it's that being willing to let go. Of everything your identity your practice and you know when I say this to people I almost I almost got in big trouble I was talking to a group they were kind of friends more than students.

Nischala Devi
And I so and they asked me about the new book and I said something and I said you know the thing is at a certain point you have to let go of all your practices you have to let go of your mantra they looked at me I thought they were going to come after me, they said let go of my mantra. Never. Never would I let go of the mantra and um, but that's what's necessary. You cannot go in carrying anything. Everything has to be let go. So I think that samadhi and what I also feel is important to show people. Is how each of us have been in Samadhi at certain points looking at a beautiful sunset. You know you just get absorbed into that watching looking at a brand new baby um things like that that take us out of our ordinary thinking. And present us into an experience instead of trying to create something does that make sense.

flowartists
Absolutely and so much about the contradictions of the more that you push and you strive and you try further away you're getting from this goal that you have in your mind, which maybe even in itself is a limited perception of what is possible.

Nischala Devi
Exactly! We can't even begin to imagine it. The only what I help people I'm trying to explain to people this and it's it's difficult because there's no words. But what I say. Once you touch Samadhi you're never the same again. Something has changed in you that will never change back. It may be very subtle. Maybe you don't dislike someone as much as you used to. Maybe you're a little kinder to somebody. Maybe. Ah, concept comes to you clearer. So It's a very um, it's a very hard thing for Western minds to understand because we're always taught don't just sit there do something right in this case, not only do you sit there and not do something but there's no... There's no doing.. It's just a state of being and we don't understand, that Eastern philosophy understands that more, but I think people are wanting to learn that and wanting to come to that. And but still when you talk about yoga they're thinking of doing yoga. Let's do our yoga right? And instead how about being yoga. Can we be yoga. Yeah.

flowartists
And that philosophy actually flows into um one of your explanations or translations of the concept of ahimsa which I think is really beautiful and quite unique to your book which is embracing reverence and love for all - ahimsa. We experience oneness so it's not just like the absence of violence but it's actively cultivating love and living in that state. would you like to share a little bit more about that beautiful idea?

Nischala Devi
Thank you so much because you know it always bothered me to have this extraordinary um virtue reduced to nonviolence and I think, one of the things I've really learned as a writer ah is the english language is a very difficult language especially to talk about anything spiritual. What the english language has a habit of doing is taking a negative word. And putting a "non" or a "un" in front of it thinking it's going to change it. Well the human mind doesn't work like that. If they see a "non" they get rid of it and you're left with violence.
One of the the things I always say to people is can you ah okay, imagine this scenario. His holiness. The Dalai Lama is getting ready to give a talk. He's in the green room right? and he's talking to himself and he's saying because they always describe him as being nonviolent which I think is a terrible thing to say about the Dalai Lama personally but and he starts talking to him and himself said "okay I'm gonna go out there and I'm not going to be violent right? No matter what happens I'm not going to be violent". Well, that's preposterous right? instead he says "my religion is kindness". H never says he's nonviolent. Why would you put that on someone like that? He's kind. He's loving. He's compassionate. So this is what I tried to do in the whole book. I tried to take out all those negatives that we're so wrapped up in. And make it into something positive. I use the the thing that I think we say as a child even "don't tell me what not to do tell me what to do" because if you say to me "don't touch that" well okay, then what do I do? What can I touch right?
That's what I tried to do, and to me ahimsa is the pinnacle of the yamas. That from there everything else comes into to form and what is ahimsa?
If you're seeing everyone as yourself. That's it you have love and compassion and if you're not going to have love and compassion. What's the point of doing all the yoga practices?
That's how I feel.

Nischala Devi
So that was a very important one for me to translate as that, and I have never seen it translated any other way... that that way before but it felt to me that it was right and so many people have reacted positively to it.

flowartists
Yeah I guess you had now that you pointed out the idea of um, describing it as Nonviolence, it sort of seems such a ah weird place to start? Yeah, like set the bar real low.

Nischala Devi
That I knew it was, yeah, that was it the right thing to do.

Nischala Devi
Doesn't it. No. Yeah yeah, and I so you know there's a lot of things that I could say bad about the western world. But there's also a lot of great things about it and one of the things is I as a woman can put up out a book and it's okay. If no one reads it. That's another story, but I have the right to do that and the privilege to do that. This is just how I see it, if someone else sees it a different way. There's many other versions of of the sutras, read another one. It's okay, but what I found is that people reacted so positively to it like you're saying reducing. This great thing to nonviolence or non-harming I mean because then people take themselves out of it. They'll say "well I'm not violent. This isn't for me right?"
I mean I'm not a violent person. I don't think I've ever hit anybody in my life you know, but, that doesn't mean I'm loving and compassionate and that's what we're striving for, and the other thing is I changed all the mind to heart and that came from the Upanishads. So as I was reading all these volumes something was missing because you know the word mind is very new. It's just in the last couple hundred years they've they've even talked about mind, they talked about heart before - the thoughts and feelings came from heart. So what I did is I skipped over the sutras and I went back to the Upanishads, and in the Upanishads that's where it says the light of our divine self is housed in the center of the heart, and so I knew that what I was feeling was um... maybe not the popular but it was something that was very very strongly talked about in the Upanishads. So that's where I it always bothered me the mind because the mind just does what the mind does, you know?
It's just the mind it likes to argue it likes to get into things but the heart doesn't, the heart just wants to love everybody. That's all that's it simple and I really feel that um that that's where it comes from. Yeah.

flowartists
Another one of your interpretations that I really appreciated because it's something that when I've read other texts just hasn't felt appealing to me and that is the concept of Brahmacharya because I don't necessarily want to live a celibacy life and...

Nischala Devi
Yeah.

flowartists
It feels like denying an aspect of humanity, and hearing about you're just spelling out how much of that is about patriarchy and how much of that is the puritanical mindset of the author of that text really made sense. Would you like to speak a little bit more about that?

Nischala Devi
Oh you got one of my favorite topics. Um a matter of fact, when I wrote it I wrote more pages on Brahmacharya and my editor may cut it back. Because you're so right!
It's so misunderstood. Where they got this, it's just unbelievable to me, because it's words are beautiful words brahma a charya right? Brahma is an aspect of the divine, and charya can mean either student, or one who follows or teaches even. Where do they get this from?
So if you look the in the Vedic text it talks about 4 ashramas. 4 stages of life, excuse me and the first one is called the brahmas charya stage and that's usually somewhere up till about 25 years, this is the time when you study. When you get all your knowledge about what you're going to do in your life et cetera you learn to be a doctor or an engineer or a yoga teacher. Whatever you're going to do and the idea was that you wouldn't have any relationships at that point because all your energy goes into studying and then after you finish studying you took on a partner and had a family and went on like that. So. The first stage was brahmacharya, instead of taking it for what it was intended to be to study to. You really understand what was going on with nature. They reduced it to celibacy and I think they've done a real disservice for people. That's where the divide came between the monks and the householders and being having been both a monk and a householder it doesn't matter. It's it's your it's your attitude, it's your practices and what it did also it made the woman the sorcerer. It made her the bad one and even today and I'm sorry to say this but you go to certain places and women are not respected uncovered. They're hidden.

Nischala Devi
Some places they can't even go out. I think this just makes it perpetuates that myth and as a woman writing this,. There's no way that I could have written it like it's written. So I really, really got into it and saw what is this? What does it mean to be with another person and have a sexual relationship. What does that mean and I really think to me it's, it's a spiritual practice if done right.
And how I always say this to people, I said it should be karma yoga when you make love to someone. You shouldn't think about yourself being satisfied. You think about satisfying the other person and they think about satisfying you. Then to me that's a perfect act and that's a spiritual practice. That's how I feel about it and not just in the yoga tradition. But there's a lot of other traditions where they force the celibacy and with the notion that you're going to be more spiritual if you do that and that has not been my experience at all. If fact, sometimes people who force it are more frustrated and angry and grumpy. You know, rather go out, and find somebody you love and then then you're filled with love and joy and you can spread that around the world. So I really felt probably that was of all the sutras that was probably the most profound sutra. The reinterprets from me because I felt that it had just been destroyed. Just terrible, and and then this whole notion... well if you if you if you can't control yourself then get married even in the bible. It says that better to marry than to Burn. No, it should be Ah, it should be a sacrament to be married to someone or to be with someone and um, there's no shame in it. It's a beautiful thing. That's how I feel about it and I felt that way when I was celibate. When I see people in love I thought it was a most wonderful thing. It wasn't... There was no fear around it. It was just a beauty and I still love to see people in love much better than being miserable. That's for...

flowartists
And that's really what I thought about um, kind of reading those chapters. It's like I don't think I want to choose this path, like I don't think this is the kind of energy that I want to cultivate in my life.

Nischala Devi
You know...

flowartists
Even if there is a mystical spiritual goal at the end of it.

Nischala Devi
You know I don't think I've ever seen anything as beautiful as a couple who share the same spiritual life and share the love together. The whole world looks at them. And says how beautiful it is, because you can do so much more with a partner than you can otherwise and you know I was happy with both. I was happy as a monk and I'm happy being married. But. I haven't changed. Maybe the way people look at me I've changed, but I haven't changed I still feel like a monk It's just to me, how kind are you - it doesn't matter what you do and this is what I was trying to explain to someone the other day. I was talking to them and they said "what's their profession?" I said that "it really doesn't matter what they do, is how they do it. You know you can be scooping ice cream out for someone. You do it with enough Love doesn't matter you know" and there are people like that. They're just happy people that. Just when you're in their presence. They make you feel good. So I Think that's the most important thing and if your path is Brahmacharya or if your path is celibacy. Great! Enjoy it. But I don't think it's a high spiritual value. I said, if that was true most of the senior people, senior citizens in the world would be realised! Right at 90 very few of them are still sexually active but they're also... but realize, it's not the celibacy. It's it's It's how you act in the world. Yeah.

flowartists
And I guess that brings me to my next question which is actually a really hard one to ask because I know what a painful topic it is but unfortunately it really is a reality in the world that we live in, that in most major lineages... There is some kind of abuse which has happened and I see in your writing like your deep respect for your teacher Swami Satchidananda and I know how much pain there's been within your ashram community and within the global community when abuse comes to light and your whole book is about honoring and empowering women so I felt like I really had to kind of raise this and get your thoughts around it because there's so many layers to this.. There's can I still learn from this person when they have committed harm to others?
Like how do I navigate this as student and I'd really like I'd really appreciate your perspective and um I thank you as well for being willing to tackle this because I know what a tough topic it is.

Nischala Devi
Very few topics are off the table for me. Um you well you know it's it's a very complicated um situation. It's not simple. And I I think what I what I'm going to go back to is imagine if it was your father, not a spiritual teacher but say you found out that your father had abused somebody at a certain point or what. I don't I won't say your sister but you know just maybe somebody - you're split at that moment. You know all the good that he's done, and how much you love him. But he's done something that is not okay. I'm saying it simply um and. Where do you go with it?
So you're split and I think this is what happened to a lot of us. Um, when this finally came out you have to understand that in a spiritual community. There are a lot of secrets. And the guru is separate. You don't really know what the guru is doing most of the time he doesn't, just at least in our lineage and he just didn't come and sit down with us and um have tea most of the time, you know, so you really didn't know what was happening and. So most of it was very much hidden. Um, when it finally came out it. It just blew the community into bits because some people believed it. Some people didn't believe it some people would stay with him no matter what, and it was a very difficult thing for me. I was not involved in the abuse because one of the things I've seen um is who the predators pick on and I was not their type. I have been too opinionated. I have too much too much to say um and so what happened for me I was teaching at the time. Been teaching for many many years and when this all came out I was in the forefront of explaining to people what happened and I had no explanation for it and I have no excuses for it and but did I want to throw out the previous 20 years of learning because what he had taught was beautiful.
It was scriptural. So it shows that you can really split. There can be a split that a person can have some lot of good. And then do something horrific. Also so I think at that point everyone in the community who was close made a decision. They either made a decision to stay and deny that he's ever done it. They made a decision to stay and know that he had done it, but people do things and you forgive them and then there was the ones that left and I think that that is the pattern that I've seen in most communities.
Now as you said this is not an isolated incident I wish it was um this is still going on today. Absolutely, and to me I'm more horrified at what happens today that I was then because we know better now. It's not like it was back then we had this whole idea that they were beyond any physical needs or wants etc and I traveled with Swamaji and I knew that wasn't true. You know he got hungry and grumpy just like I did, when he showed wasn't there or after an old night flight or something like that. I tried to maintain the humanness in him and it was easy because I was traveling with him. But there were certain things that were just not okay and my line at the time. What I said to people when they asked me do I think it's true I just said something very simple from my experience. That's all I can go by groups of women do not lie about something like this. They have nothing to gain and all to lose. They're usually made to look really bad like what just happened with this legal case in the United States just horrific what they did to this woman this movie star. Um I tried to stay out of it. But it was impossible. It was just impossible. Um I was too much of a leader in the community and um, shortly thereafter I left yeah and...

Nischala Devi
It taught me a great deal. It taught me a great deal. It taught me first that people can have different sides. They can have this magnificence that he had it was a magnificent human being and teacher and then this darkness just this darkness. And you know it goes back to the old adage absolute power corrupts absolutely, and I think what it taught me as a teacher that I had to be pristine. My actions had to be so clean and my intention had to be so clean because it could happen to anybody. That's how I that's what it made me see anybody at any moment can slip. If you're not totally vigilant. Yeah, totally vigilant, you know not being in the same room with a student that there may be an attraction. No, you always have a another person there and you know it's something that I learned in medicine, because any time and especially then there are a lot of male doctors doing kind of gynaecological examinations on women. Always a female had to be present. No question that was it they would call me. Come in I'm doing an exam now right? So why would it be any different with a spiritual teacher. Yeah, so that's pretty much I don't know if that's what you would.

flowartists
Oh. No, that's that's that that's fantastic and um, this is clearly a a subject that's very sensitive for you. So We really appreciate you. Yeah, speaking with us about it.

Nischala Devi
Yeah, Well I think I think people deserve to hear from me. The worst thing you can do is hide something, to me secrets are poison. That's how I feel about it. They're poison because they go all through your system and you have to keep covering things up and just I made a mistake. It was wrong and I'm going to do something to make sure it never happens again. But that's not what the men are doing. They're all covering it up and I think it's sad and that teachers now are doing it with a me too movement and everything. No, it's not okay for me. No No I I don't I don't think they're bad people. But I think they've done bad things and that's a difference. Yeah, you don't. You don't take advantage of someone who's trust you that way. Yeah, anyway.

flowartists
I guess ah just got 1 more question. Um, yeah, no, no, no, no, no so I guess and this is going to be another um, interesting question. We'll say it's a big line. It's a big so I guess if you could distill everything that.

Nischala Devi
Oh good, Let's not end with that. Yeah.

flowartists
You've learned and everything that you teach down to one core essence. What do you think that one thing would be? and I'm feeling you've you've spoken about it in in many different ways during this this last hour or so so but I look forward to hearing your answer.

Nischala Devi
Very simple answer. Love that's it. It's all this is about you know one of my great teachers. Um, actually my my none and basically my only real. Female teacher was Mataji Indra Devi and I was talking to her one day and I said "what is all this Mataji? What is all this about?" and she said, this how she talked, she was from Russia, she said "darling" she said. "Yoga is just an excuse to love them." That's it and you know I've never ever forgotten it and whatever I do I try to add that as the main ingredient and um. This is all this is what we need I would start singing the Beatles song but you don't want to hear me sing but love is what we need. Um, but I think all religion and spirituality boils down to that.

flowartists
Ah.

Nischala Devi
And if we can't love each other and ourselves you can't touch your spirit. That's what your spirit is - love. So I think that's the simple thing and I'm hoping that in my writing as it comes across I really. Don't like judgmental um scriptural Testimony I think once you bring judgment into it. You're no longer in the spiritual realm to me a spiritual heart accepts everything and that gets back to the last question too. Did I stop loving him because he did that no but that doesn't mean I condone it. So I think you can be in a few places at the same time and ah, but always leading with love. That's the most important thing whether you're teaching us enough. But you're doing asana that's when people hurt themselves when they don't love themselves enough and they bend forward. They stay oh I'm gonna push it now if you really loved yourself. You would back up a little bit so that to me is the essence of that. Um, of all the sutras and all the scriptures and all the traditions. It all comes down to that. Yeah.

flowartists
Beautiful. Yeah, that's amazing. Thank you so much and that absolutely shines through your text and I think it's something that shines through your life as well like you're sharing yoga with people who are struggling with health and then sharing the.

Nischala Devi
Thank you.

flowartists
Deeper layers and the mental and emotional aspects of this practice in a way to a group of people women and also other people like non-binary people who've been cut out of that particularly masculine patriarchal translation and maybe I felt like these words or these practices.

Nischala Devi
Yeah, yep.

flowartists
Somehow not for them or not for them on the same level, like I think what you've really done is just shared from the heart and really opened up these practices so that we can all learn from them and we can all grow and we can all live in a more love-filled way.

Nischala Devi
That's what and what else is there. That's it is it and whether however you identify yourself the spirit is one. That's really what what it is and if the spirit is. None then whatever anyone does or however they identify themselves. It's all okay, every person should have the ability to identify as whatever they want nobody tells you how to identify but to me the best identification is as a spiritual being that's.

flowartists
Beautiful.

Nischala Devi
Then everybody's one. Everybody's one. Yeah.

flowartists
Beautiful.

We hope you enjoyed our conversation with Nischala Joy Devi!
We will include all the links to her book and website in our show notes, as well as Nischala’s free weekly sutra and commentary email which is ideal for people who would like to begin learning about the yoga sutras in bite sized pieces.
I’d like to thank our Patreon supporters for their help with making this episode possible! If you would like to support us, just go to patreon.com/flowartistspodcast you can help out from just $1 a month!
Our theme song is baby robots by ghostsould and is used with permission - check it out at ghostsoul.bandcamp.com.
Thank you so so much for listening - we really appreciate you spending your precious time with us - He arohanui maua ki a koutou katoa - Big Big love!