Ananda Yoga

Ananda Yoga includes:

• Asanas (classic yoga postures)
• Pranayama (traditional raja yoga breathing and energy-control techniques)
• Time-honored and effective meditation & centering techniques
• Yoga philosophy applied to daily life

What are the Key Characteristics of Practicing Ananda Yoga?

Yoga posture practice in Ananda Yoga® is gentle for beginning students yet becomes more individually challenging with experience. It is an inwardly directed practice, and is never aggressive or aerobic.

The primary emphases are:

• Safety and correct alignment
• Being relaxed at all times, even during the midst of effort
• Working directly with the body’s subtle energy via the yoga postures
• Using the postures to raise your consciousness
• Adaptation – modifying each yoga posture to fit the needs and abilities of the practitioner rather than trying to force the practitioner into some “ideal” position

What Makes Ananda Yoga Unique?

Energization Exercises

The Energization Exercises are a series of 39 special energy-control “tension” techniques that Yogananda developed in order to help the practitioner increase, focus, and control the life-force.

Affirmations

Each yoga posture is paired with its own affirmation, which one practices silently while in the posture. The affirmation is designed to reinforce the posture’s natural effect on one’s state of consciousness, bringing the mind actively and directly into one’s practice.

What is the lineage and tradition of Ananda Yoga?

Ananda Yoga comes from the renowned Raja and Kriya Yoga tradition of Paramhansa Yogananda, author of Autobiography of a Yogi.

Yogananda was the first great master of yoga to make his home in the West. Ananda Yoga arose from his training of close disciples and was later developed from Yogananda’s core principles into the system of Ananda Yoga by his direct disciple, Swami Kriyananda, the founder of Ananda.