Beyond Mindfulness

There’s a lot more to meditation than mindfulness.

While mindfulness practice is an integral part of traditional yogic forms of meditation, it is just one of several methods used. In both Tantra and other yogic paths, additional methods are employed to deepen the meditative experience and enter a state of concentrated flow and bliss.

In this course, you will learn the meditation techniques only philosophically described by Patanjali in the Yoga Sutras by a teacher who learned them from Tantric yoga masters in India.

Understand the philosophical and practical meditation lessons described in the Yoga Sutras.
Apply those lessons during sitting and walking meditation.
Perfect Tantric techniques to avoid new samskaras (madhuvidya) and “digest” old karmic reactions (hatha-paka).
Synchronize the breath with mantras and chakras to deepen focus and flow.
Understand the practice of meditation using pranayama (breath control), pratyahara (sense withdrawal), dharana (concentration) and dhyana (flow meditation) according to Tantra.
Learn to teach all these lessons to other students. Receive recorded and written lessons to deepen the practice and teaching skills at home

This module explores the helpful functions of the changes we experience in our nervous system (the adaptive functions) and how they are organized in order (a hierarchy). It allows students to unpack how the regulation of our autonomic nervous system follows a particulate functional design that can be easily understood through a number of examples. Discover how we have evolved from defence to connectedness and how shifts between these two poles occur when we have faced life-threatening situations.

Ramesh Bjonnes is the co-founder and Director of the Prama Wellness Center, a retreat center specializing in yoga and Ayurveda in the spirit that a balanced lifestyle is our best medicine. Ramesh is also a writer, yogi and workshop leader. He lived in India and Nepal for several years in the 1980s learning directly from the traditional teachers of Tantric yoga. He studied yoga therapy in India, Ayurveda at California College of Ayurveda and yoga detox therapy in the Philippines. He is the author of four books, including Sacred Body, Sacred Spirit (InnerWorld) and Tantra: The Yoga of Love and Awakening (Hay House). Ramesh lives and practices with his wife in an eco-village in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina. Websites: www.prama.org