What is Ananda Yoga?

Yoga pose

Ananda Yoga brings yoga back to its original spiritual essence.

Above all, it seeks to raise your level of consciousness by reinforcing the natural effects the yoga postures. With this, it is also designed to harmonize your body, mind, and soul.

Ananda Yoga includes:

  • Asana (yoga postures)
  • Pranayama (breathing and energy-control techniques)
  • Yogic meditation techniques
  • Applied yoga philosophy

What Is the Practice Like?

Yoga posture practice in Ananda Yoga® is gentle for beginning students, becoming more challenging with experience. It is an inwardly directed practice, and is never aggressive or aerobic.

The primary emphases are:

  • Safety and correct alignment
  • Being relaxed at all times, even during the midst of effort
  • Working directly with the body’s subtle energy via the yoga postures
  • Using the postures to raise your consciousness
  • Adaptation – modifying each yoga posture to fit the needs and abilities of the practitioner rather than trying to force the practitioner into some "ideal" position

What Makes Ananda Yoga Unique?

Energization Exercises

The Energization Exercises are a series of 39 special energy-control techniques that Yogananda developed in order to help the practitioner increase, focus, and control the life-force.

Affirmations

Each yoga posture is paired with its own affirmation, which one practices silently while in the posture. The affirmation is designed to reinforce the posture’s natural effect on one's state of consciousness, bringing the mind actively and directly into one's practice.

Yogananda’s Autobiography

The Lineage:
Paramhansa Yogananda and Swami Kriyananda

Ananda Yoga comes from the renowned Raja Yoga / Kriya Yoga tradition of Paramhansa Yogananda, author of Autobiography of a Yogi.

Yogananda was the first great master of yoga to make his home in the West. Ananda Yoga arose from his teachings and was developed into a definite system of practice by his close, direct disciple, Swami Kriyananda, the founder of Ananda.

For More…

See our free yoga videos and articles, explore our yoga workshops, or check out the Ananda Yoga Teacher Training.