Dr. Avdhoot Shivanand and his Yoga
Dr. Avdhoot Shivanand is a modern yogi, a spiritual scientist, a social reformer and the Father of Indian Healing. He belongs to a celebrated tradition of Himalayan Yoga and Meditation from India. Dr. Shivanand has been quietly working on raising human consciousness all over the world for the last two decades.
To be more specific, he has been working tirelessly all over the globe to bring a revolution in human consciousness to make a global impact on four fronts:
- Health for all
- Healthy food for all
- Protection and preservation of nature and,
- Restoration of family values
A typical human being goes through life as if on a roller coaster ride – up and down, again and again, endlessly. A series of unconscious choices and unwanted results. Some pleasant and others truly unpleasant. Everyone will attest to having felt helpless at some point in their life. While some brave it out, others experience extreme pain and suffering. In any case, for a lot of human beings, life feels like a prison and they are waiting to get out. Dr. Shivanand says, you do not have to feel helpless or needlessly suffer. The solutions to all your life problems lie within yourself. You just need to learn how to go inside yourself and unlock those solutions. He teaches a system of yoga and meditation that helps you do precisely that.
Psychic impressions are the end result of a person’s emotional reactions to the actions of other people and the events of his life. These psychic impressions are stored as intra-cellular memory. The sum total of these impressions is responsible for shaping the personality of a person, how he or she perceives the world and life in general. These psychic impressions create patterns of thought and behavior in a person that ultimately affect the person’s health, financial condition, relationships, family life and worldly success. “Thoughts become things”, and thoughts are controlled by your psychic impressions.
His yoga involves going into a deep state of consciousness where a person is deeply relaxed and highly alert at the same time. In this state of mind which is beyond waking, sleeping and dreaming, the individual rises above his narrow self-identification with his body and mind and becomes connected to his higher self. Being established in this state, he can then create the situations and circumstances of life of his choosing. He can also undo the negative or unwanted circumstances he has created due to the unconscious wrong choices he made under the influence of his psychic impressions.
Dr. Shivanand’s yoga helps one to enter into a state of consciousness where these psychic impressions and the incidents that led to their creation can be revisited, witnessed and released. An intellect imprisoned by psychic impressions can be an obstacle in one’s progress in life just as a mirror covered in dust does not serve the purpose for which it was created.
As these psychic impressions are released a person begins to regain the mental clarity and emotional intelligence to make the right choices in life (choices that are in his or her best interests). It has been observed during recorded medical investigations of these release processes that as soon as people release these negative psychic impressions, there is almost a spontaneous reversal of negative health conditions. Life circumstances also improve and it has been observed that a person once again becomes creative and productive and enjoys a full life. There is a balance achieved between the inner and the outer world.
Dr. Shivanand’s assertion is that the human organism is the most powerful computer in the universe designed and built by nature. However, most human beings never utilize more than 4% of their inbuilt potential and leave this earth never having fully realized their life’s purpose. He has spent long years in deep and intense yogic and meditation practices in the most powerful spiritual centers of India. During these periods of deep meditation, Dr. Shivanand investigated why such a large section of humanity dies unfulfilled and how a human being can realize 100% of his true potential. Through a combination of decades of inner research, spiritual experimentation and a deep analysis of his own reactions to life situations he was able to develop a system of yoga and self-management that can help the entire humanity and through that the whole of nature.
The yoga that Dr. Shivanand has developed is helping millions of people around the world to fully recover from the most serious health conditions, overcome relationship problems, create wealth and abundance and live a life they have always dreamt about.
There are some distinguishing features of this yoga that is making it possible for people from all corners of the world to learn, embrace and practice it, regardless of their religious, cultural and ethnic background.
- Shivanand’s yoga is not a religious system and is free from all superstitions and dogma.
- It is based entirely on inner science and a deep knowledge and understanding of the science of energy.
- It has been subjected to many scientific studies and analyses and has always come out with flying colors baffling even the most celebrated men and women of science.
In fact the medical world is so impressed with this Yoga and so grateful for Dr. Shivanand’s contributions for furthering the cause of modern medical science and making it complete that he was awarded a doctorate by a prestigious medical university in India earlier this year. Nassau county in Long Island, New York has declared the 18th of June as “Dr. Avdhoot Shivanand” day.
The recognitions keep pouring in from everywhere. His work and contributions have also been recognized by the governments of India, USA, Canada, Mauritius and other countries. None of this recognition and attention seems to distract Dr. Shivanand from his life’s mission. In fact he has set bigger and tougher goals for himself and mankind for the coming years.
His work is not limited to working with the common man or with the medical scientists. He has done path breaking work in the field of agriculture and is helping to make farming healthy for the average person and lucrative for farmers. He is progressing rapidly on his goal of making healthy and toxin-free food available to everyone. Not only that, he is helping children all over the world experience the power of their own mind through developing enhanced powers of memory, concentration and focus. He and his army of yogis are feeding the hungry, clothing the naked and caring for the old and the infirm.
Dr. Shivanand seeks no glory or attention to himself and lives in a state of total oneness with the entire universe. One of the most noticeable things about this spiritual giant is his remarkable simplicity, humility and compassion. Through his comprehensive system of personal and societal well-being, he is helping people overcome all kinds of mental and emotional conflicts and holistically enhance those aspects of life that are universally important to every human being.
His teaching of unconditional love, forgiveness and acceptance is helping to bring peace to individuals, families and societies around the world. Thus he has become an oasis of ultimate calm and peace in a world beleaguered with political and religious conflict. He seeks to positively transform the world by helping individuals transform themselves.
Dr. Shivanand’s Yoga is called “Shiv Yog” but by Shiv he does not mean God in a religious sense. He is using the term to refer to what he calls as infinite. The infinite power in nature that is responsible for all creation. Yog is the process of becoming one or united with something. Shiv Yog then translates as union with the infinite. This infinite is beyond concepts that are created by the mind. It is beyond the mind and can only be experienced but not described or explained through words.
Thus Shiv Yog is actually a journey: From mindlessness to Shiv Yog Mindfulness, From Mindfulness to mastering the Yoga of Inner Consciousness and from Inner Consciousness to Self-Realization.
A self-realized person has realized who he really is – what his true identity is. And that he is not finite. In fact he has realized the infinity that is within him. And so the phrase, “Emerging Infinite.”
Dr. Shivanand says all of our problems arise from a limited identification with our body and mind. No one will disagree that the body and mind have limitations. Everybody knows what they can and cannot do with their body and what things are beyond the capabilities of their mind.
There is a story from India that is quite relevant in this context:
“We are all tigers living amongst sheep!”
There lived a tigress in a jungle near a remote village in India. She was pregnant. One day she came upon a flock of sheep grazing happily in the jungle. She pounced upon the flock from the top of a rock, but in the process gave birth to tiger cub and died. The cub grew up among the sheep and thought of himself as a sheep but not until he was rescued by a male tiger years later that he realized the truth about himself. The moral of the story is that we are all tigers living amongst sheep. As long a tiger thinks its a sheep, it will live like one. Only after realizing its true nature does it roar.
Thus this union with the infinite is needed to realize that you are not finite, you are not limited and you are not weak and helpless. And this is what Shiv Yog facilitates – the transformation from finite to the infinite. In fact, it is the realization of one’s infinite nature and potential that Shiv Yog makes possible. It is Dr. Shivanand’s life’s mission to release the maximum number of human beings from their self-created prisons built of wrong and limiting beliefs and help them live a life of supreme happiness and bliss.
Dr. Shivanand has worked tirelessly over the years to make Shiv Yog simple and easy for everyone. In Shiv Yog nothing is an obstacle and everything is a stepping stone to realizing your true potential. As Dr. Shivanand continuously reminds us, “ You are the creator of your own destiny.”
The great thing about Shiv Yog is that it is not something that isolates you from your family or society and you do not have to forcibly give up anything and run away into the mountains. In Shiv Yog, you don’t run away from anything but you stand and face everything. You transmute the negative energy into positive energy. In fact you resolve all issues with all your relationships, deepen your family ties, contribute to the well-being of society and live in harmony with the environment. You might say that these sound like lofty goals and probably next to impossible to achieve. However, in Shiv Yog these things happen very naturally if one sincerely follows the teachings and practices of this great modern day spiritual scientist.
Shiv Yog is a path of experience. There is no room for theory or blind belief. Every Shiv Yogi directly experiences the teachings of Shiv Yog. This is not about endless debates about the existence or non-existence of God and meaningless intellectual speculation. This is a process of true inner transformation that the individual and the people around her can distinctly see, feel and experience.
Shiv Yog’s success rate in producing all around transformation and turning around lives is turning heads everywhere. The reasons for this remarkable level of success are many, but one that really stands out is that it is a way of life that brings positive transformation in every aspect of an individual’s life. As you spend more and more time with Dr. Shivanand’s teachings and begin to embrace Shiv Yog as a way of Life, you can literally see your life changing right in front of your eyes.
Take the example of Neil Shah of Fremont, California (real name changed) who was battling with poor self-confidence, obesity, weak finances and enormous relationship problems. He felt stuck, unable to move forward and the future looked very bleak. He had the opposite of the Midas’ touch. Nothing seemed to work for him. His condition is best described through that old Frank Sinatra song, “Everything Happens to Me” –
Black cats creeper cross my path
Until I’m almost mad
I must’ve brought the devil’s wrath
Cuz’ all my luck is bad I make a date for golf, and you can bet your life it rains.
I try to give a party, and the guy upstairs complains.
I guess I’ll go through life, just catching colds and missing trains.
Everything happens to me.
And then one day, an acquaintance of his who was a well-wisher suggested that he should attend Dr. Shivanand’s week long transformation program. He was even willing to pay for him to attend the event. Neil took him up on his offer and promised to pay him back as soon as things got better. In the program, Neil experienced several deep and intense meditations every day. During these meditations he was able to release the negative beliefs and self-limiting ideas that were holding him back. He also felt an amazing lightness of body and being. He felt as if an enormous weight had been lifted from his chest and the world began to seem like a nice place. He suddenly found himself feeling extremely grateful to a friendly universe. During the meditation sessions he wept like a baby, laughed like a child and sometimes even slept like a log.
He did not understand everything that was happening but it did not matter. What mattered was that in just a few days, he was feeling more hopeful about life and his prospects for the future. He felt more energetic, healthy and confident than he had ever been in his whole life. He also made lots of new friends from around the world. They made him feel like he was a part of their family! Neil’s new friends seemed so much more intelligent and mature than he was. He began to feel that he belonged somewhere. In Dr. Shivanand he saw the father, the teacher, the friend, the philosopher and the guide that he never had but had always wanted.
