For those who don’t know Swami Vidyanand, he is a great master who dedicated his life to practicing yoga and meditation.
He was born into a family of renowned Bhakti Yogis with an unbroken tradition of over 500 years. Swamiji received his initiation into spiritual and yogic practices at an early age and was trained in the traditional Indian way, his first guru being his father.
Since his youth, he has developed an interest in knowing his self better and getting closer to the Divine. For Swamiji, the Divine means, what we might call the universe, that great spiritual power around us. He was always looking for answers: what is the Divine, who is the Divine, am I in a relationship with the Divine, how can I approach my divine self?
Thus he gradually developed his system, which he called transformational yoga. Transformational yoga is based on this concept, that we all have this divine part within ourselves, and the way we can live our lives in peace, harmony and balance is when we get closer to this divine self, our inner self, our source, what we call source.
The meditation system that Swamiji developed, called TIME meditation, is closely related to transformational yoga. Transformational Integral Meditation Education – TIME, that is, the transformational education of integral meditation is based on the fact that meditation helps us explore our self, know ourselves better, and when we reach self-knowledge, we are closer to our source, we are closer to the Divine and our life becomes easier.
Everything in life can be meditation and everything in life is yoga. This is what Swami Vidyanand teaches us, that we don’t have to sit for hours on a mat to practice asanas, we can do that, it’s very useful, but it’s not just about that. Yoga is not just about asanas, meditation is not just sitting in silence. We need to develop the ability to be in a state of meditation in real life, at every moment of life.
In developing the systems of Yoga and Meditation, Swamiji was inspired by the teachings of Shri Aurobindo, who said: all life is yoga.
We can also say that all life is meditation. That is, we must remain aware of ourselves, connected to our source in everyday life, because this is how we can find peace in all the activities we do and in any situation. We just need to understand HOW.
These are the teachings that Swami Vidyanand wanted to spread to the world when he created Yoga Alliance International and Meditation Alliance International, respectively, which are two of his main organizations aimed at spreading the correct yoga and meditation practices, supporting schools and students to further spread the authentic values of these practices.
