Alan Finger (7/7) Integrating Yogic Sciences

Published on 2013/11/29

Speaker: Yogiraj Alan Finger of NYC ISHTA Yoga
Organizer: The National Institutes of Health (NIH)
Video: iHanuman
Transcriptionist: Dylan Robertson

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) is part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and is the primary Federal agency for conducting and supporting medical research. In May 2008, NIH held its first Yoga Week featuring yoga demonstrations, classes and speakers each day. The event was free and open to the public.

Yogiraj Alan Finger, was the opening speaker for the 2008 NIH Yoga Week. In this series of seven videos, he describes the system of yoga he developed called ISHTA YOGA, an acronym for the Integrated Sciences of Hatha, Tantra, and Ayurveda. Although it was now 5 years ago, this video series has been very popular and the content is timeless, so we thought to share it with our readership.

  1. The Purpose of Hatha Yoga
  2. Power of Breath
  3. Tantra Cosmology
  4. On Ayurveda
  5. On Yoga and Trauma
  6. Yoga and Modern Science
  7. Integrating Yogic Sciences (this post)

Kriya Yoga of Yoganandaji. He formulated something, which in that time, when he came to the states, he taught just those tools and he had his pattern of teaching. But, the sciences of Yoga, Tantra and Ayurveda are much bigger than that. And if you can use all of those sciences you’re getting to the state of nothing much easier.

So, using all of these different sciences that I’m sharing with you and all the tools of them just get you into being able to feel a Kriya breath like that.

So, if you do Nadi Shodhan Pranayama and you balance left and right brain, your senses are able to draw in quicker. And, when your senses can draw in quickly, you’re already there.

For a normal individual, you’ve got to sit for couple hours and do a practice. So they’re tools; Asana, Pranayama, Kriya, and then Samadhi. And, Samadhi is what we want. So, it all integrates and just makes it a little bit more of a consolidated package.

Of course, my ashram is on the Eleventh Street in Manhattan. So I have to have a technique that is very quick for New Yorkers. Otherwise, they won’t stay with me long enough! And every week, I have four classes where I teach them to sit and do nothing, and it’s so popular because the healing, and the clarity, and the Siddhis, the miraculous powers of yoga, actually come about when you can reach that state of nothing.

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