Remember when Prof. Bill Mahony and Scott Lewicki led a Yoga and the Way of Spiritual Love workshop? It’s now online in four separate parts as a premium workshop so that you can download away and dive deeper into heart-centered spiritual practices can open us to the experience of love for the world, for others, for ourselves, for life itself, for divinity.

Here’s the full workshop description: The complexities and possibilities of life’s journey give us an opportunity to strengthen, deepen and clarify this love. In this workshop we will focus on some of the characteristics and possibilities of a yogic life illumined by the light of spiritual love. To help us do this, Bill will lead us in reflecting on teachings from the Narada Bhakti Sutra 10th century text from India, that can inform us as we refine our understanding of the spiritual love that can stand at the heart of a deep yogic practice. This is a wonderful text consisting of short, aphoristic teachings that can give us guidance regarding ways to cultivate higher levels of spiritual love and to bring it forth more fully in our lives. The workshop will incorporate the yogic ideal that integrates philosophy with practice. Woven through the workshop will be asana sessions led by Scott Lewicki based on themes drawn from Bill’s talks. The workshop will also include periods of meditation led by Bill.

The full workshop is available for purchase as one complete set or you can purchase individual sessions:

• What Is a Heart Centered Yoga? - This session introduces our text, The Narada Bhakti Sutra, and introduces the way we will be approaching it as yogis and yoginis. We listen to and then reflect at depth on the meaning of a small selection of sutras, and do so through conversation with each other in the spirit of satsang. In this session we define bhakti in the context of a Heart-Centered Yoga and as the highest form of love (paramaprema). We identify several types of devotional love – such as the love of a mother for her child, the love of friends to each other, the mature love of those in a long-time relationship, and the love that builds in times of separation. We explore these types of love through examples in timeless stories and from our own experiences. The asana in this class reinforces these teachings in the body and mind by looking at our intentions in practicing yoga and how we can always come from a place of higher love. The practice includes jumping for joy in handstand, connecting to each other in standing poses, and opening the heart wide in backbends, illustrated by the types of Bhakti.
• What is the Nature of Spiritual Love? - Continuing our study of the Narada Bhakti Sutra through hearing them (the yogic process of shravana) and reflecting on them (manana),  in this session we deepen our definitions of Heart-Center Yoga and of spiritual love. We explore what the Narada Bhakti Sutra means when it says that higher love is of the essential nature of ambrosia. We also discuss a number of practices and modes of conduct – such as unwillingness to do harm, generous compassion, and others that can be can be nourished in our daily lives and express the deep, loving yearnings of our hearts. The asana in this class examines how we can use our yoga practice to help burn away any obstructions to a deeper connection to our hearts. In this practice we use visualizations to cast these obstructions into a ritual fire built from continuous sun salutations and deep hip openers. Includes an introductory heart-centered meditation, including basic sitting instructions.
• Inner Stances on the Path of Love - This session provides additional practices and ways of being in the context of bhakti as a yoga, emphasizing that modes of doing emerge from inner states of being. We discuss the importance and value of practicing illuminating discernment between what is loving and what is not loving in a yogic context and reflect together on methods of transforming and releasing inner states that deflect our love. The asana in this class again focuses on ways to burn away any obstructions, by offering them to the fire pit of the heart (tyaga) and to have emerge an experience of higher love. The practice includes freely flowing sun salutations, deeper back bends, and preparation for deep meditation. Includes a gentle meditation based on the experience of sound dissolving into clear awareness.
• Fruits of the Path of Love – In this session we reflect on the ways in which a life based in a yoga oriented toward higher levels of spiritual love informs and illumines all of the other goals of our lives (purusarthas). We experience love as not requiring an object, as independent, and as timeless. Our satsang discussion reinforces our understanding that our very embodiment as human beings in all our wondrous particularity is a graceful gift, and that our heartfelt response to this gift is one of gratitude. The asana in this class creates visualizations in each pose that enable us to see our practice on the mat as a practice of love in all parts of our lives (purusartha). The session includes students freely choosing the poses that they like practicing and then choosing the poses that they for any reason avoid practicing, and then finding a connection to higher love in all the easy and challenging situations in our lives.  Includes a heart-centered meditation oriented toward the awareness of inherent joy.

Enjoy!