During this 20-week program, Acharya Shunya weaves together inspiring, authoritative goddess stories with immersive practices (including mantra chanting and meditations) to evoke the energy of each goddess from within you. Taking the teaching one step further, Shunya links the goddesses to our individual chakras, creating an embodied and systematic pathway to transformation.
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Ram Dass's Yoga of Heartfulness
In this four-week course, Ram Dass' Yoga of Heartfulness, you will learn how to integrate wisdom from Bhakti, secular, and inter-spiritual traditions into your daily life as an antidote to division, polarity, and tension.
You will follow in Ram Dass' footsteps by learning how to revive your heart and, in the process, help to germinate goodness in the hearts of others. Not in a "phony holy” or “spiritual bypassing” way, but by authentically embracing your humanity while simultaneously tapping into the abiding space of loving awareness that is your true nature.
Read MoreFinding Harmony In Today's World
This 6-week course weaves timeless teachings with present-day introspection and provides context for walking confidently through a rapidly evolving world. We are thrilled to announce the release of the re-mastered original footage from Naropa in an updated 6-week virtual course: Finding Harmony in Today's World: Ram Dass on the Mystical Wisdom of the Bhagavad Gita
Read MoreWaiting For Grace with Nina Rao Finding Harmony Podcast
It is with great pleasure that we introduce our esteemed and most honorable guest: the beautiful, humble, and one might say, divinely inspired human, Nina Rao!
What Nina enchants us with is an opportunity to reflect more deeply on what it means to cultivate a spiritual practice.
And, the shadow side, which is to examine just how often we fail at this noble endeavor. As she reminds us, this too is OK -- even part of the path. We all have families, obligations, children, and the whole point is that we keep trying to do better every day. Even when we can’t always be at our best.We also had a wondrous opportunity to talk about cultural appropriation and our earnest efforts to have an authentic experience in a post modernist world of self construction.
For those of us not born into a specific lineage, we have the gift and freedom to resonate and choose different spiritual paths and practices.
However, there is something to be said about digging a single well and going deep. Discovering what insight lays buried within the repetition. True learning. And, in the end, we touch something beyond this behavioral reality — we begin to transcend our ego-selves
As Neem Karoli Baba (Maharaji) said, “Go on chanting your false “Ram, Ram” some day you’ll get it right.” And, perhaps you’ll also find yourself running across the lake after your guru seeking to get the pronunciation exactly correct as you embark on your chosen path to enlightenment.
Spiritual practice is something that’s continually evolving as we grow and change as ‘spiritual beings having a human experience.’ And it's our birthright -- It's our dharma!
(A side note: The movie referenced in the beginning of our conversation was For the Benefit of All Beings.)
Also available on Spotify:
Everyone is Everything Podcast Ep 26 with Nina Rao
Live Talk with Kavitha Chinnaiyan
Śabdollāsa | Live Talk with Kavitha Chinnaiyan (@kavitha_chinnaiyan) and Nina Rao (@nina_rao) | Part 1
Śabdollāsa | Live Talk with Kavitha Chinnaiyan (@kavitha_chinnaiyan) and Nina Rao (@nina_rao) | Part 2
David Nichtern – Creativity, Spirituality & Making a Buck – Ep. 39 – Chanting, Music, & Sri Siddhi Ma with Nina Rao
Nina Rao joins David to share the clarity and wisdom of her Guru, Sri Siddhi Ma, and discuss chanting, music, Maharaj-ji, the Goddess, and Hanuman.
“It’s all about purifying. The practice is helping us drop all the stuff considered obscurations or kleshas to seeing clearly. If we see clearly we can understand. If we understand we can have a compassionate heart. With that compassionate heart we can feel our interconnectedness. Then what else is there to do in this body but feel that interconnectedness, feel that love, and share.” – Nina Rao
In this episode Nina and David discuss:
How all aspects of our self and life weave together
Nina’s relationship to Sri Siddhi Ma, Maharaj-ji (Neem Karoli Baba), and Hanuman
Sri Siddhi Ma as a fully integrated being of wisdom, clarity, love, and presence
Meeting Maharaj-ji through Krishna Das’ chanting
Nina’s life-changing first darshan with Sri Siddhi Ma
Western culture, Eastern spirituality, and cultural appropriation
Kirtan, chanting, music, and creativity
Goddess, Shakti, and the Divine Feminine
Connections between Bhakti and Buddhism
Lama Live! Lama Tsultrim Allione with Special Guest Nina Rao
Please enjoy this recording from Lama Live! offered on August 14th, 2022 with Lama Tsultrim Allione and special guest Nina Rao.
The event opens with Lama Tsultrim Allione welcoming everyone and reminding us of the importance to truly understand what our intention is to come together in this way as a group. Lama Tsultrim then begins the prayer requests and states that a prayer is “mind energy” and that we are sending this mind energy with intention as prayer to be of benefit to the individuals in need. Lama makes a special request to include fish and other beings that live in the Oder River which runs through Poland and Germany that is currently being impacted by an unknown toxin. The focus for this event is on the 12th Tara, who is the Tara connected and most suited to help with the impacts of climate change. Special attention will be given to these deceased fish that are washing up on the shores of the Oder River. Lama Tsultrim leads us in an expansive loving-kindness meditation to come home to our bodies and to heal both ourselves and all beings with this ambrosia of loving-kindness. Lastly, Lama introduces our very special guest, Nina Rao, who offers teachings, shares past experiences and provides details about important environmental projects she is engaged in. Nina shares that she is dedicated to preserving the precious habitats on earth that are remaining, planting native species and urges us to be careful about what we are putting into the earth as a way to help Tara’s activities to reduce climate change impacts. Nina then leads us in chants of the mantra of the 12th Tara. We close the event with an invocation to the goddess as a dedication of merit.
BHNN: Healing at the Edge – Ep. 84 – Mantra Repetition with Nina Rao and Dale Borglum
Published on Aug 15, 2022
Nina Rao joins RamDev Dale Borlgum to share in the simple yet powerful devotion of repeating mantras.
Both Nina and RamDev share in the magic of repeating mantras. Nina says that even just repeating the name Ram is enough to ground you into the moment and offer clarity. We can let go of obstructive thoughts and emotions when we put all of our focus onto the mantra, over and over again. We do not even need to think about what the mantra means, just saying it is enough.
Nina Rao – BHNN Guest Podcast – Ep. 117 – Inner Mountains with Wasfia Nazreen
Nina Rao speaks with Wasfia Nazreen about her adventures as a mountaineer, her friendship with the Dalai Lama, her work as an activist, and how she climbed her own inner mountains.
Wasfia Nazreen is best known for being the only Bangladeshi and first Bengali in the world to climb the Seven Summits, the highest mountains of every continent. She is also the only woman to hold the simultaneous titles of National Geographic Explorer & Adventurer. An outspoken activist since her late teens, her passion has always been driven by causes close to her heart. A human-rights activist, an environmentalist, a writer, educator, pilot, and producer – Wasfia wears many hats, all of which are grounded in strong foundations of meditation and self-realization practices.