Ancient Texts, Living Paths: Embodied Wisdom for the Modern Mystic, Seeker, and Scholar-Practitioner

Creating a wiser, more contemplative world requires cultivating a new contemplative imagination, one that grounds the formation of new ideas, methodologies, and modes of relationship. Studying the contemplative texts of yoga is not a conservative turn to an idealized past, but rather the harnessing of time-tested technologies that put us in a more direct relationship with the source of all creativity, insight, and meaningfulness.

Contemplative learning is a lifelong process. If we lack a space to explore knowledge systems that reveal a depth beyond the social status quo, the possibilities of life are easily limited to the dominant knowledge systems that pre-define modern life. In a world that suggests education ends at eighteen (or perhaps sometime after university or graduate school), the traditions of esoteric wisdom suggest that when you no longer take an interest in contemplative education, the personality can begin to harden and ossify. The lack of flexibility in one’s heart and mind easily leads to rigidity and dogmatism.

One need look no further than the social challenges of today to observe the effects of individuals who think they know all there is to know. Our contemporary crisis of cultural divisiveness is a case study in existential ignorance, limiting beliefs, and cosmic forgetfulness. The decline of organized religion – while understandable due to the historical ways religion has dogmatically asserted its domination over human creativity – has subsequently triggered a pandemic of cosmic meaninglessness. What currently seeks to fill the void of meaning are various forms of ideological conformity, religious fundamentalism, narcissistic spiritualities, and reactive forms of political dogma.

Sādhana School starts from an acknowledgment of this situation, and engages with the deeper teachings of contemplative traditions to reveal novel ways that the wisdom of these traditions can be applied to modern life. The objective is to re-animate our relationship to reality, re-align our interior worlds, and hopefully re-orient us toward an interconnectedness that will hopefully have broad-ranging implications for how we show up in the world. And as we engage in this collective process, while the impacts of our study and practice may feel localized to our lives and our immediate relationships, the threads of wisdom, clarity, and creativity born through sādhana can cumulatively coalesce into a critical mass of contemplative beings. This critical mass may eventually reach a tipping point, when the cumulative effects of sādhana ripple out through the social, cultural, and even political fields of awareness, bringing into being possibilities for experience that are subtler, deeper and more expansive. Through the process of sādhana, we learn about the philosophy that explores how expansion and contraction takes place individually and collectively. Through practice, we experience this dynamic within ourselves, which gradually reveals the unique ways we can participate in life more skillfully and imaginatively. By refining our knowledge, cultivating our emotions, and tasting the subtle structures latent within, we recognize a truth of what was always already there and learn of how we can “be the change you want to see in the world.”

Since Embodied Philosophy first opened its virtual doors in 2015, we began developing a comprehensive library of contemplative traditions, teachings, and practices. After 10 years of programming and having served over one hundred thousand students and seekers, our next phase involves a greater commitment to a core community of students who wish to dedicate themselves to sustained study and practice.

The Sādhana School is designed for those seeking a community of practice in a context of deep study. Now entering its second year, we meet in three different eight-week sādhanas and an annual virtual seven-day retreat. We combine a rigorous exploration of yoga’s meditative traditions through a deep investigation of seminal Sanskrit texts and a commitment to daily practice. During the 2025-2026 periods of sādhana, we meet once per week, and each period of sādhana we are anchored to a Sanskrit text that represent a different facet of the non-dual Śaiva-Śākta Tantrik tradition.