Sahṛdaya Upāya
200 Hours of Education: Sādhana School 2026-2027 plus a mentorship program in the theory and practice of Subtle Liberation-Based Teaching.
Sahṛdaya Meditation Teacher Formation & Practicum Program
In a yoga marketplace saturated with fitness, Subtle Liberation-Based Teaching (SLBT) begins from a different premise: nothing is acquired or attained. Consciousness is already full. A teaching is liberatory not when it installs new information, but when it removes what obscures the knowledge that was always there.
Subtle Liberation-Based Teaching
Drawn from the Non-Dual Śākta-Śaiva tradition, SLBT is both a theory of education and the pedagogical model behind Sādhana School. It starts from the recognition that our prevailing model of education is insufficient and in crisis, and that the assumptions we've inherited from it need critical assessment. Apprentices take that inheritance seriously as one object of study among several.
The pedagogy is rigorous, relational, and revelatory, rooted in the liberative aims of kriyā-yoga: deep practice (tapas), textual study (svādhyāya), and inquiry into reality itself (īśvara-praṇidhāna). It trains teachers not to perform scripts or regurgitate doctrine, but to transmit the teachings from the ground of experiential knowledge earned through sustained sādhana.
This 100-hour apprenticeship is for teachers, facilitators, therapists, and scholar-practitioners. Across eight monthly immersions, you'll train in Sahṛdaya Meditation and the six SLBT competencies, supported by monthly one-on-one mentorship with Jacob Kyle & guest faculty, supervised practicum work, and a year of daily sādhana.
Yoga teaching has outgrown the model it inherited. The drop-in class as the basic unit. The 60-minute fitness session as the product. The student as a customer whose commitment is entirely optional.
That model worked for a while. It offers real stress relief, but it asks nothing of us with regard to yoga's deeper framework, and what asks nothing of us cannot change us.
Meanwhile, the origin myths that carried yoga through the 2000s have expired. Many teachers who took the new historical scholarship seriously have quietly lost confidence in what it is they're teaching. Some will stick to the script. Some will leave the profession. Others will take this as an opportunity to refine, integrate, and expand.
Sahṛdaya Upāya is for the third group.
If the crisis of education comes from focusing on information rather than being in-formation, any serious response has to begin with how a student is actually formed.
For all Sādhana School students
The Open Session
A complete, standalone workshop on one pedagogical theme. You don't need to teach, or intend to, for it to change how you practice.
The first half's teachings become exercises. You rehearse, embody, and translate concepts into teaching skill, with supervision and feedback from Jacob and the cohort.
For Mentorship students
Practicum Session
Running alongside the Sādhana School year, Sahṛdaya Upāya develops skills for teaching that center the Tantrik tradition's liberative aims. Each monthly immersion opens with a workshop available to all SS students; trainees meet for an additional half-day session, where teaching is practiced and rehearsed. The program is available to interested students who have enrolled in the year-long Sādhana School program. Applications will be sent to students following enrolment.
Tasting the Real
February 20-21, 2027 - 10:00am ET
December 5-6, 2026 - 10:00am ET
Shadow Speech
The Ethics and Philosophy of Ferocity, Discomfort, & Discernment
Focus: Relational Pedagogy & Language Ethics
Rasa Theory as
a Contemplative Method
Focus: Philosophical Grounding & Transmission
Beneath the Pose
Guiding Movement Practitioners into the Subtle
Focus: Subtle Attunement & Energetic Literacy
November 15-16, 2026 - 10:00am ET
Two Tongues
Teaching the Subtle
in Secular Rooms
Focus: Ethical Speech
& Cultural Responsibility
February 6-7, 2027 - 10:00am ET
Grace & Initiation
April 10-11, 2027 - 10:00am ET
Śāktipāta, Dīkṣā, and
the Timing of Transmission
Focus: Thresholds, Rituals, & Curriculum Design
May 29-30, 2027 - 10:00am ET
Focus: Lineage-Informed Creativity & Teaching Integrity
On Inheriting a Tradition
You Were Not Born Into
The Spectre of Authenticity
Embracing Dissolution
on the Path of Sādhana
Dying Before Death
Focus: Embodied Observation
& Holding Intensity
March 13-14, 2027 - 10:00am ET
Focus: Institutional Structures, Consent, & Community Dynamics
Authority, Consent, and Dependency in Spiritual Groups
Cult or Community?
May 8-9, 2027 - 10:00am ET
Weekend
Immersions
Eight weekend immersions across the year, each with a supervised cohort practicum.
Monthly one-on-one check-ins for mentorship and articulation support (9 months).
One-on-One
Mentorship
75% off any Tarka Journal issue, translation, or printed teaching resource.
A 100-hour SLBT and Sahṛdaya Meditation Certificate on completion.
Certificate of
Completion
Discounts on
Teaching Resources
Daily Practice
A personal Sahṛdaya sādhana every day, sustained across the year.
Running alongside the Sādhana School year, Sahṛdaya Upāya develops skills for teaching that center the Tantrik tradition's liberative aims. Each monthly immersion opens with a workshop available to all SS students; trainees meet for an additional half-day session, where teaching is practiced and rehearsed. The program is available to interested students who have enrolled in the year-long Sādhana School program. Applications will be sent to students following enrolment.
The pedagogy can't be transmitted by anyone who isn't practicing. To complete the program, apprentices carry these commitments across the year.
Study
Assigned readings, integrated and articulated in group sessions.
Monthly Reflection
A written post on what is ripening in your practice and your teaching.
Peer Practicum
Partnered and small-group languaging practice between immersions.
A 60-minute teaching offering, delivered live and recorded, plus a reflective essay on lineage, positionality, and your application of SLBT.
Teaching workshops at the Sādhana School summer retreat, in person or online.
Retreat Practicum
Final Project & Report
Jacob Kyle
Jacob Kyle is a meditation teacher, writer, philosophy educator, publisher, and the Founding Director of Embodied Philosophy. His work turns on the conviction that the modern divorce between scholarship and spirituality has impoverished both, and that healing this rift is among the more urgent tasks of our time. That conviction runs through everything he writes and teaches — his critique of a disenchanted academia, his wariness of doctrine and ideology, his quarrel with the stories our culture tells about God and science. Across all of these areas, what binds them is his desire to recover (or create) a way of knowing that is both intellectually serious and spiritually alive.
Jacob is a third-year doctoral student at the University of Oxford, researching Pratyabhijñā Philosophy with advisors Diwakar Acharya and Monima Chadha. He holds an MPhil in Classical Indian Religions from Oxford (2023), an MA in Philosophy from the New School for Social Research (2017), and an MSc in Political Theory from the London School of Economics (2007). Jacob is a passionate advocate of Kashmir Śaivism and a devoted practitioner of the Śaiva-Śākta Darśana.
Teacher & Mentor
Enroll in Sādhana School
Choose full tuition or the monthly payment plan for the 2026–2027 year.
Running alongside the Sādhana School year, Sahṛdaya Upāya develops skills for teaching that center the Tantrik tradition's liberative aims. Each monthly immersion opens with a workshop available to all SS students; trainees meet for an additional half-day session, where teaching is practiced and rehearsed. The program is available to interested students who have enrolled in the year-long Sādhana School program. Applications will be sent to students following enrolment.
Sahṛdaya Upāya is by application, and every apprentice is a Sādhana School student first.
Receive confirmation email
We email you a link to apply for Sahṛdaya Upāya after you enroll.
Submit your application
Tell us about your teaching, training, coaching, or facilitation experience by October 16th.
Hear back from us
If accepted, the apprenticeship starts when SS begins. If not, continue in Sādhana School, or receive a refund within your first 30 days.
Join our 2026–2027 School Year of Contemplative Study and Practice with 15% off Tuition — until October 2nd.
Most meditation is taught as a kind of “mind control,” where the emphasis is on stopping the activity of the mind. The Tantrik tradition understands meditation differently. Not as an austere practice of self-negation, but a radical practice of Self-cultivation, creativity, and reposing in the wonder and dynamism of life’s intrinsic beatitude.
From October 2026 - July 2027, you'll join a committed community of over 100 students for three 8-week sādhanas and a 7-day immersive retreat, weaving together the study of root texts, daily meditation practice, and guided philosophical reflections.
Each semester is anchored either in one of the Śākta-Śaiva tradition's seminal texts or in an over-arching theme. This year we will study the Pratyabhijñā-hṛdaya (The Heart of Recognition), the Śivastotrāvalī ("Garland of Hymns to the Absolute" by Utpaladeva), and the fierce wisdom teachings on Goddess Kālī. The year culminates in a Summer School 7-day Retreat rooted in deep Sahṛdaya Meditation practice and intentional community (kula), while exploring the variable dimensions of subtlety within.
Sahṛdaya Meditation is the discipline of meeting the good, the bad, and the ugly with a heart awake to the wonder in everything: to recognize, to relish, and to remember the astonishing experience of life itself.
Where most meditation asks you to muscle down the activity of your mind, Sahṛdaya Meditation begins from the premise that meditation is a life-affirming practice — one that includes the mind's activity rather than transcending it. Sahṛdaya Meditation, as a form of Tantrik meditation, is uniquely interested in the potency and power of mantra. The breath is itself a mantra in the form of haṃsa, a sound spontaneously performed through every inhalation and exhalation. This mantra, "recited" some 21,600 times a day, is the gateway to understanding mantra at a more esoteric level and the ground of perceiving its many benefits.
Where Sahṛdaya Meditation names the practice, SLBT names the context — the Non-Dual Tantrik theory of knowledge, and the critical perspective on our cultural circumstance that derives from it. This orientation is woven throughout the Sādhana School curriculum, and this program offers the opportunity to refine your grasp of it and to practice implementing it in your own teaching. Whether you are a teacher, facilitator, coach, or therapist, SLBT refines how you speak, guide, listen, and live — so that how you show up in the world becomes a mode of transmission.
Sādhana School is entering its Third Year!
Listen to students Joan and Lee speak about SS during the recent summer retreat in Taos, New Mexico (July 2026).
- Margaux
- Virginia
Hear from past and current students . . .
- Jonah
"It was wonderful to dive deep into the theory and practice that many of us get a taste for when we first practice asana and attend teacher training school. I learned so very much during the program and I am immensely grateful to have been part of it... what I feel now is an immense joy, a sense of wonder, that I can be a part of this awesome sadhana group from my home in a small African country called Malawi... Thank you, Jacob, for your huge work and for bringing the teachings of yoga alive for me, and for so many of us around the globe."
- Katherine
"There are endless thoughts and feelings that I could be describing. Apart from the huge learning, that I can be in a relationship with this life and its source in a profound intimate way… All of this has been made possible through your work, and I want to thank you again for that. You have created an incredible space, filled with so much authenticity - a word much overused, but absolutely necessary in this context. I loved the mixture between the intense practices and the rich theoretical knowledge! I soaked up every word and am excited for more."
[The teachers] have an encouraging style that invites me to open... I get to see so much more of the traumatized self I threw at Baba's feet so long ago. I'm still aching for clarity between dissociation and transcendence... This is a breakthrough for me to get this far.
- Turiya
- Serena
It was a special and profound experience for me... Thank you for sharing your gift of teaching, your deep knowledge, dedication and commitment to the path is what is needed for such precious information... I have a feeling the vibration is going to help me to open the energies of my throat and communication and so much more.
100% Satisfaction Guarantee
We know that you'll find this learning experience informative, educational and inspiring.
But we want you to know that even if you don't, refund requests submitted within 30 days of the purchase date are fully honored. To request a refund, contact our support team at hello@embodiedphilosophy.com. We promise to have your refund issued within 5 business days.
Early Bird Offer — 15% Off through October 2nd Only
Join us for 2026-2027 Sādhana School
Following enrolment, you will receive an email with a link to apply for the Sahṛdaya Upāya Program.
$1997
1-YEAR of SADHANA SCHOOL (100 Hrs)
$1697
Monthly Payment Plans Available
-15%
$218 per month
1-YEAR of SADHANA SCHOOL (100 Hrs)
$195
-12%
MONTHLY PAYMENT PLAN
On average, Sahṛdaya Upāya adds about 2–3 hours a week to your Sādhana School schedule. The rhythm varies through the month: immersion weekends carry the most, with a 2.5-hour Open Session and a 2-hour Practicum. Between immersions, the time goes to peer articulation practice, study, a monthly written reflection, and your one-on-one with Jacob. Expect more time in the spring, as you prepare your final teaching project. Alongside this, you keep your Sādhana School commitments, the weekly 150-minute live sessions during each 8-week term, and a daily Sahṛdaya practice of 20-40 minutes (spread between two sits).
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