Purify the Mind, Body and Behavior
Lady Niguma lived in India about a thousand years ago. She was the partner of Master Naropa, the yogi who brought yoga to Tibet around in the eleventh century. She was, herself, a very accomplished yogini. She designed a yoga practice to remove the stress and trouble of modern life.
Her yoga, called machine of the body in Tibet (trulkor), is unique in that the asana is described as a method for enlightenment. It works at the level of the emotions — in the subtle body — the place where the prana (called lung ["loong"] in Tibetan] flows. Her yoga works to open the chakras in the body, creating the climate for happiness.
Lady Niguma’s yoga purifies the mind and the body. Working from muladhara chakra (at the root/perineum) up to mahasukha chakra (at the crown of the head), each knot in the subtle body is loosened and stretched so that constricted prana can be released from the side channels (ida and pingala nadi) and flow in the central channel (sushumna nadi).
We regularly practice Lady Niguma’s yoga at Diamond Heart Center (ACI-Reno). Please contact email Lora Rose through our contact form or call (775) 544-7165 for more information on our yoga program including Lady Niguma’s yoga.
More About Lady Niguma Yoga
There are written records of yoga postures (asana) in the Hatha Yoga Pradipika and other later texts, however, Lady Niguma wrote her yoga asana one thousand years ago. It is the oldest known written yoga asana. The Yoga Sutra, written ~250 A.D., is a text on yoga philosophy; it doesn’t include any reference to specific poses (asanas).
Teachings on Lady Niguma’s yoga (audio and written materials) can be found at The Knowledge Base.
Yoga is an ancient philosophy that has been an integral part of Indian culture for thousands of years. The Yoga Sutra written by Master Patanjali around 250 A.D. is the first major text on yoga; all modern yoga traditions root here including Tibetan Heart Yoga, the style of yoga we offer at Diamond Heart Center.
The first few lines of the Yoga Sutra have an immense amount of meaning.
Atha yoga-anushashanam.
I will now review for you how we become whole.
Yogash chitta virtti nirodhah.
We become whole by stopping how the mind turns.
Later in the Yoga Sutra, Master Patanjali clarifies,
Yoga-anga-anushthanad ashuddhi kshaye
jnyana diptir aviveka khyateh.
Yama niyama-asana pranayama pratyahara
dharana dhyana samadhayoshtava-angani.
If you engage earnestly in the various practices of making yourself whole, all your impurities will be destroyed; and then you will gain the light of wisdom, a revelation beyond even discrimination. The eight limbs are:
- yamas – ethical restraints/self control
- niyamas – personal observances/commitments
- asana – physical postures
- pranayama – control of the breath
- pratyahara – withdrawal of the senses
- dharana – focus/inner awareness
- dhyana – fixation
- samadhi – perfect meditation/union with the divine
Many of us come to yoga hoping for strength, flexibility, energy, a trimmer body or peace of mind. All of these goals are completely achievable through the practice and come simultaneously. How about the goals of total happiness and pure bliss? They also come from working the eight-limbed practice. Yoga is a journey; a practice requires one to be both patient and kind to oneself as it is explored. The hard work is totally worth it.
The beginning of the path is finding a teacher. But who IS your teacher? WHERE is your teacher? Here Lama Marut gives us a lesson in one way to find your teacher, by looking at the people closest to us. Write to us at: podcast@aci-la.org. to subscribe to Lama Marut’s audio podcasts please go to http://aci-la.org/mg-podcasts.html. Visit Lama Marut’s blog at: http://www.Lamamarut.org. For complete audio teachings, please go to http://www.aci-la.org
Great News! We have started a little Dharma library in the Diamond Heart Center. And just like a real library, you will be able to check out books for your learning pleasure. Right now the number of titles is limited, but if you have books (in our lineage or other spiritual texts) you would like to donate please do! For now, simply drop off books with a note or go to the website for additional contact information.
Yoga Classes at Diamond Heart Center
Please check our online calendar for all our current weekly class offerings.
Current Yoga Classes at ACI Reno Diamond Heart Center:
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First Sunday of the month: Special Yoga Nidra Click here for flier
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Wednesday Evenings at 6:00pm – 7:00pm: Gentle Yoga with Molly Dahl Click here for flier
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Friday Yoga with Tracy, 9:30am 11:00am. Start your Friday on the right foot with an energizing yoga practice with Tracy Daynes.
You are encouraged to bring your own mat and props for your practice (if you have them). We have a few extra mats, cushions, and blankets that you are welcome to borrow during practice.
Yoga rate is $10 per class, however, no one will be turned away for inability to pay.
Tibetan Heart Yoga
Yoga came to Tibet from India approximately a thousand years ago, developing its own unique character and expert teachers. Tibetan poses strengthen and complement their sister Indian poses. Pointed focus of your mind during the poses is a hallmark of our classes.
At Diamond Heart Center (ACI-Reno), we offer yoga in the Tibetan Heart Yoga tradition developed by Geshe Michael Roach and Lama Christie McNally. Rooted in Tibetan Buddhism, this yoga strengthens the heart by combining outer movements and inner concentration.
By practicing yoga properly, training in the correct ways to perform the physical postures with proper breath, and understanding how all this works together, your being will be transformed.
We work where the body and mind meet. The best practice is a daily one as it allows you to cultivate gradual, cumulative effects. We recommend practicing with us (each yoga class is an hour and fifteen minutes) a couple of times per week and doing yoga at home on the other days. You don't have to practice for hours each day, 30 or 45 minutes is enough; the changes come from consistency over time. The practice habituates the mind to stillness and the body to smooth-flowing prana.
~Namaste
Our lineage is grounded in ancient wisdom. The Dharma has been passed down, teacher to student, in an unbroken chain of wisdom that reaches back more than 2500 years. Traditionally, this is an oral tradition, supported by texts that are often esoteric and hard to interpret without an authentic teacher. This is done in part to maintain the integrity of the Dharma, so that it retains it's effectiveness as a vehicle for awakening; at no point in our lineage, has a teacher picked up the scripture and made up their own conceptual version of the path without direct experience of the Dharma under the guidance of their teacher. In this way, the student has access to the direct realizations that are possible on this path.
There are, however, many ancient sources of wisdom that have been inaccessible to Western practitioners, unless one was a Sanskrit or Tibetan scholar. Thankfully, there are teachers in our lineage who are scholars of these ancient tongues, and have translated these texts into modern languages for the benefit of all beings.
The Knowledge Base
The Knowledge Base is an ongoing project to preserve and publish the life work of Geshe Michael Roach, one on the world's most prolific teachers of Buddhism, yoga and meditation. The Knowledge Base Archive currently contains over 7,000 hours of teachings by Geshe Michael Roach and his senior students in twenty-four languages, and more than 12,000 pages of original translations, books and course materials. If you were to listen to a single class per day, it would take you over nine years to hear everything!
Asian Classics Input Project
The ancient Buddhist and yoga scriptures are disappearing from the world. Millions of texts were destroyed during and after the 1959 invasion of Tibet, and many others are disintegrating, unread, in libraries throughout Asia. Since 1988, the Asian Classics Input Project has saved thousands of these endangered masterpieces by combing monasteries, libraries and archives throughout Asia. After finding these texts (often the only known remaining copy), we scan them, type them into computers, and then distribute them free of charge to scholars and teachers worldwide.
Yoga Studies Institute
The Yoga Studies Institute is a non-profit educational institute that thoroughly grounds students in the classical tradition of yoga. The YSI program reunites the "outer" methods (working with the physical postures and breath) with the the traditional "inner" methods (cultivating the ethical restraints and commitments, meditation, and wisdom) into a powerful synthesis the ancients called "royal yoga."
Asian Classics Institute
The Asian Classics Institute is dedicated to the serious study and personal practice of the original teachings of the Buddha. The Institute was established by Geshe Michael Roach under the spiritual direction of Khen Rinpoche Geshe Lobsang Tharchin, a distinguished scholar and master of Buddhism from Tibet.
The Institute is staffed by volunteers and offers a wide range of programs for spiritually minded people of all levels, from beginning to advanced. We welcome all comers, all our teachings are offered without charge, and our teachers are well trained and experienced in the authentic Tibetan tradition. The purpose of the Institute is to provide a thorough, accurate Tibetan Buddhist education to anyone interested.
LamaMarut: Past, present, and future—change one, you change them all. - A Spiritual Renegade's Guide to the Good Life 