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Dharma Central is your guide to the path of Sanatana Dharma &ndash; The Eternal Natural Way (commonly known as Hinduism).<br />
Make Dharma Central your reliable source for understanding Dharma Spirituality. Dharma Central brings you the most authoritative, highest quality information about authentic Dharma spirituality, meditation, Yoga philosophy, self-realization, and healthy living available anywhere on the Internet today. Let Dharma Central help you with your search for spiritual meaning.

SPIRITUAL MESSAGES: A First Timer's Visit to an Ashram - Acting in Gratitude - Dispelling Illusions On the Path - Growing into Light - Healing and Relaxation - Hidden Messages of Hatha Yoga - Hidden Language of the Mountain - Light, Mind &amp; Video - On Health and Healing - The Path to Divine Light - The Power Within - The Practice of Dream Yoga - Sacred Dance - Women and Spiritual Leadership - Yoga, A Way to Make Changes

Sahaj Hatha Yoga is a classical science practised by ancient Yogis in Himalayas . <br />
We are greatful to many saints, great masters, yogis and sages who gavewonderful knowledge of Yoga to this world. <br />
Himalayan Hatha Yoga is founded by Himalayan Yogacharya Yogi Ashokananda, who has been practicing yoga since childhood under the guidance of great yogis.<br />
He is also a qualified Master of Reiki - an ancient Japanese healing art and has learned the art of sukhsma vyayama (an ancient science of Himalaya).

Kauai's Hindu Monastery, founded in 1970 by Satguru Sivaya Subramuniyaswami (left, 1927-2001), is a traditional Saivite Hindu monastery-temple complex on Hawaii's Garden Island, dedicated to the divine within everyone and all things. It is part of the Saiva Siddhanta Church, founded in Sri Lanka in 1949. Its spiritual heritage derives from the Nandinatha Sampradaya, which goes back to 2,200 bce. <br />
This website, provided by the monks of the Saiva Siddhanta Yoga Order, is a window into the monastery's many facets, including our guru lineage, temples, spiritual teachings, publications and study programs. Our 353-acre sanctuary on this tropical isle is a theological seminary, publishing center, home of Iraivan Siva temple, and a destination for Hindus who come on pilgrimage from around the world.

The great seer and saint Shri Kartikeyaji was born in a highly respected and distinguished Brahmana family of Uttar Pradesh, a State in Northern India. Even in his early days he gave ample and unmistakable signs of a promising genius. He was gifted with a faculty of prescience, and as a small boy he was able to recite great Sanskrit classics like the epic Mahabharata with a perfect ease and scholarly fluency. He surprised everybody by chanting the famous and sacred incantations of the Gayatri-Mantra on his own, though he was never taught it. Still a child, he left home and roamed about amongst the desolate peaks of the Himalayas, like those of Kailasha, and visited places like Lake Manasarovar, which for centuries of the hoary past have been the abodes and the seats of the mystics and the votaries of spiritual practices. A visit in the shrine of Badrinath inspired him unequivocally to dedicate his life to the service and uplift of mankind.<br />
During his lifetime Maharshi Kartikeyaji toured extensively throughout the length and breadth of India and benefited countless number of persons. In the year 1953 he finally reached Ayodhya, the birth-place of Lord Rama, where on the bank of river Sarayu, while the evening-prayer was on, he entered into Maha-Samadhi, sitting in Siddhasana before a large gathering. It is generally believed that he was 335 years old at that time.

Fundamental Yoga-Practice handed down from Maharshi Kartikeya and Swami Dhirendra Brahmachari to their disciple Reinhard Gammenthaler.<br />
The exercises can prevent and cure diseases, but they are even more valuable in imparting positive health in the form of increased energy and well-being, which no system of medicine can do.<br />
It is now being recognised that the mind and the body interact and influence each other. Yoga maintains that farreaching effects can be produced by the effect of the mind. This affects not only the physical health of the body but may even overflow into states which are beyond the average, normal experience. This does not mean that these are miraculous or abnormal on any score. But it does mean that the true limits of &ldquo;normal&rdquo; are hardly realised by most people. The greater part of humanity has for generations adopted a basic level of existence and has unknowingly accepted a maimed, crippled existence as normal.<br />
Yoga affords an opportunity for a bold departure from this limitation. However, it must be realised that dealing as they do with matters of far-reaching and vital importance, the yogic practices require the outmost precision and the care due to them.<br />
It is, therefore, essential that a capable teacher or Guru introduces the students to the exciting mysteries of Yoga to obtain maximum benefit.

Just like his life and his death the origin of Swami Dhirendra Brahmachari is shrouded in mystery. There are no records of the day of his birth, and during his lifetime the public was speculating about his real age. He never talked much about his past, but when he remebered his early childhood he used to say that he was a wild and naughty boy with a great sense for adventure, which often put him in difficult and dangerous situations. When he was twelve years old he started to read the Bhagavad Gita and he was deeply impressed when Krishna says to Arjuna: &ldquo;The Yogin is verily superior to the Tapasvins (those observing austerities), Jnanins (the knowledge-ables) and Karmakandins (those who perform the ceremonial rites). Therefore you should try to become a Yogin!&rdquo; So he decided to become a Yogi. From this moment he pursued this arduous path with great devotion and deep interest, and he left his family to search for a true Guru. During these years of wandering he met many masters and holy men, but in spite of his ardent efforts it seemed impossible to find the one personal Guru. Many so-called masters turned out to be charlatans or they were demanding a certain hairstyle or dress from him, changes which the stubborn young man wouldn`t accept. While this struggle between light and darkness was in full swing, he finally met his Guru Maharshi Kartikeya, whose Ashram stood at Gopal-Khera, about twelve miles from Lucknow. There his Guru initiated him into the untold secrets of Yoga. He practiced Pranayama in an underground cave and reached a state of perfect mental equilibrum, which made him enter the realms of higher Yoga. Now he was a Swami, a Siddha and Yoga-Master, and he was directed by Maharshiji to propagate the Yogic Kriyas. <br />
In the year 1981 he was asked by some journalists if he would leave his body as old as his own Guru Maharshi Kartikeya, who entered Maha-Samadhi 1953 in the age of 336 years, while he was meditating with his favourite Chelas. He answered: &ldquo;I would gladly do that, if I shouldn`t die in a plane-crash.&rdquo;<br />
It was in the Vishwayatan Ashram in New Delhi in the beginning of june 1994 that he announced his final departure from this world to the unbelieving staff and students. A few days later, it was the 9 th june 1994, he crashed with a small airplane in the mountains near Mantalai (J &amp; K).

Born in 1887 in Pattamadai, Tamil Nadu, South India, Swami Sivananda whose name was then Kuppuswami, was a brilliant boy at studying as well as gymnastics and naturally inclined toward spiritual and religious practices.<br />
His natural selfless spirit lead him to a career in the medical field. His amazing eagerness and ability to learn and assimilate his studies earned him the respect of his professors who invited him to attend surgeries while still in his first year of medical school. After finishing the medical school, in a short time, he was given the responsibility of running a malaysian hospital. One day Dr. Kuppuswami had the opportunity to cure a wandering Sannyasin (renunciate or Monk) who then gave the doctor instruction on Yoga and Vedanta. From that day on his life changed, and gradually Dr. Kuppuswami became more introspective and could not stop pondering the great questions of life. Now he felt the need to help people on a more profound level, not just healing their physical body, but helping them to find a cure for all suffering.<br />
Filled with a tremendous desire for spiritual growth and enlightenment Kuppuswami went to North India in search of his Guru. After spending time in Varanasi (Banaras) he travelled north to the Himalayas. There in the holy town of Rishikesh Kuppuswami discovered his Guru who gave him Sannyas. After taking these vows, Swami Sivananda Saraswati, as he would be known henceforth, started an extremely intense daily Sadhana and Tapas for the next 10 years or so. <br />
From that time Swami Sivananda became one of the most prolific Yoga teachers who has ever existed. Although he rarely left the little town of Rishikesh Swami Sivananda's teachings spread quickly throughout our entire planet.

A spiritual genius of commanding intellect and power, Vivekananda crammed immense labor and achievement into his short life, 1863-1902. Born in the Datta family of Calcutta, the youthful Vivekananda embraced the agnostic philosophies of the Western mind along with the worship of science. <br />
At the same time, vehement in his desire to know the truth about God, he questioned people of holy reputation, asking them if they had seen God. He found such a person in Sri Ramakrishna, who became his master, allayed his doubts, gave him God vision, and transformed him into sage and prophet with authority to teach. <br />
After Sri Ramakrishna's death, Vivekananda renounced the world and criss-crossed India as a wandering monk. His mounting compassion for India's people drove him to seek their material help from the West. Accepting an opportunity to represent Hinduism at Chicago's Parliament of Religions in 1893, Vivekananda won instant celebrity in America and a ready forum for his spiritual teaching. <br />
For three years he spread the Vedanta philosophy and religion in America and England and then returned to India to found the Ramakrishna Math and Mission. Exhorting his nation to spiritual greatness, he wakened India to a new national consciousness. He died July 4, 1902, after a second, much shorter sojourn in the West. His lectures and writings have been gathered into nine volumes.