Svastha Yoga Online

In summary, in this course, you will: 

1. Understand the key types of awareness practices.
2. Examine the ancient yoga frameworks that structure and explain awareness practices.
3. Explore how we can use different types of awareness practices optimally on our journey of wellbeing.
4. Classify objects of awareness, what we can practice mindfulness or meditation on, based on practical samkhya and yoga frameworks. 
5. Practice yogic mindfulness extensively and in-depth.
6. Experience absorption practices in sight, mantra, breath and body, positive emotions and more. 
7. Practice composite visualizations of sensations, images, and more.
8. Explore the neuroscience of consciousness and attention.
9. Understand the connections between yoga and modern positive psychology and neurobiology on the topic of meditation and mindfulness.

Topics covered include:

What and why of awareness practices 

1. The categories of directed attention: mindfulness, absorption, contemplation. What are their key features and the differences between them? 
2. The stages of progressive absorption in meditation practices.
3. dhāraṇā, dhyāna, samādhi, samyama in traditional yoga.
4. Ways that awareness practices play an important role in supporting holistic wellbeing and self-transformation: monitoring, focus, insight, goal-setting. 
5. Experiencing holistic states of change (bhāva). 6. Recalling one’s attention (smṛti-sādhana). 
6. The arising and role of insight (prajñā) in transformation. 
7. What to meditate on? Objects or experiences of focus: body, breath, senses, emotions, abstractions, I-sense (grahītā, grahaṇā, grāhya).
8. Contemplation and abstractions in meditation pathways: vikalpa, vitarka, vicāra. 
9. Awareness and the three guṇas of yoga as an underlying framework.

How of awareness practices

1. Balancing effort and relaxation in attention practices, walking the line between energy and dullness.
2. Growing the qualities of steadiness and entrainment.
3. Understanding and practicing focused vs. expansive awareness states. 
4. Managing the emotional background of mindfulness and absorptive states. 
5. Cultivating a stable meditation pathway over time.
6. Finding salience or importance in objects of absorption.

Yogic mindfulness: cultivating sattvic presence 

1. Understanding the cautions, challenges, recommendations in mindfulness practices. 
2. Developing and deepening sattvic mindfulness of breath, body, senses, thoughts and emotions. 

Yogic absorption: foundations of mantra, imagery and more 

Understand the principles of, and practice absorption in: 

1. sound, mantra, speech. 
2. light, images. 
3. breath and body sensation.
4. positive emotions. 
5. peace, stillness. 

Science of consciousness and attention 

Understand the neuroscience of the self, including:

1. emergence and purpose of self-construct.
2. nerve signaling, neural circuits. 
3. theories of consciousness.
4. top-down monitoring and feedback systems.

Explore the neurobiology of:

1. mindfulness, absorption. 
2. flow states, default mode network. 
3. mystic and alternative consciousness states. 

Traditional yoga frameworks 

1. bhāva
2. dhāraṇā, dhyāna, samādhi, smṛti-sādhana 
3. prajñā
4. vikalpa, vitarka, vicāra
5. grahītā, grahaṇā, grāhya