SHANTI YOGA™ The Healing Path

Yoga - marvellous in theory, miraculous in practice, is an Indian philosophy, darshana, that is over 5,000 years old. The ancient Yogis revealed mind-body therapy that looks at the total person: from diet and environment to mind and consciousness.

The word 'yoga' can be defined as 'union' and is a way of living that brings together three fundamental needs of a human being for a contented and fulfilled life:
• the physical needs for health (body);
• the psychological needs for knowledge and heightened awareness (mind); and
• a strengthened inner focus, joy and inner peace (spirit).

Shanti Yoga is yoga made easy, effective and relevant to life.
A classical, truly integrated, simple but powerful system of wellbeing, designed expressly for the twenty-first century, it has been created as the direct result of the distilliations arrived from teaching, meditative experience, research and training programs authored by Yoga master, Shanti Gowans. It embodies all the highest teachings of the ages and delivers essential tools for an extraordinary life.

Shanti Yoga, the product of a selective and creative synthesis of the various yoga, meditation and movement arts is a system of conscious education providing vitality, wellbeing, hygiene, happiness, joy, laughter, ethics, feeling good about yourself and others, being able to cope, cultivating balance in everything, meditation and an even higher purpose to life. Instruction is clear and easy. It is simply the most efficient and effective personal, physical and mental health system in existence. With Shanti Yoga you dissipate tension, improve function, relieve chronic pain, restore health, get well and stay well.

The approach is therapeutic, healing and non-violent. It is tailored to meet individual requirements and layered for all levels. Working with or against gravity appropriately, ShantiYoga™ releases toxicity and is delivered with breathing instructions, leading to vigour. Each part of the body receives proper and sufficient exercise for health and wellbeing. It is energising and non-fatiguing; refines actions, behaviours, speech, thoughts; contributes to steadiness; enriches positive experiences; is suitable for all body types and ages, young and old alike - from the cradle to the grave. All benefit from the strength, looseness, lightness, health, vitality and personal growth.

Shanti Yoga offers an enriching and satisfying experience of growth, health and peace of mind. It is simply the most efficient and effective personal, physical, mental and spiritual health system in existence. Many modern systems attempt to make this claim, but under scrutiny they are but collection of mismatched techniques from a variety of other arts or competition sports attached together but lacking a series of principles, much less a vision, that integrates them into a whole; the result is an approached that is doomed to mediocrity on all levels. Government recognised graduate courses in Shanti Yoga are taught at The Meditation Institute on the Gold Coast, in Sydney and Melbourne.

“I never intended to create Shanti Yoga. It emerged and developed under its own intelligence and dynamics. Whilst it is true that I am the primary person responsible for presenting it, I feel that I have been more of a vehicle and much of the time a pilot case-study than one who intentionally developed it. At the beginning, I had no idea that a particular complete teaching was unfolding. With an intense interest in the inner path of liberation, I was on the journey of what it took to be real and open to the timeless Truth, together with being passionately committed to the reality of what it is to be human. I noticed that those times when I was loving Truth for its own sake and not for any personal gain, my experience opened up and deepened in ways I did not expect.

This experience increasingly became a flow of discoveries, realisations and insights, revealing amazing and unimagined qualities and dimensions of Being. As these discoveries emerged, they were accompanied by precise and detailed knowledge about them. I began to recognise this unfoldment and revelation of the mysteries of Being was not only for me personally. The arising of inner spiritual guidance of Being also led to the recognition that a wisdom path was unfolding, that the accompanying struggles and barriers were necessary for Truth to reveal how essence is related to egoic experience, and that contemporary teaching appropriate for our times was forming.

Being has revealed its mysteries in my experience in a way that has profoundly impacted my consciousness and transformed it. The person that I am has steadily become a vehicle, devotee and mouthpiece for the Truth that is being revealed as Shanti Yoga. My early students became guinea pigs for the development of the new teaching, which developed as my own personal needs and those of my associates and students I was working with, invoked, and thus developed as a response to real needs in our contemporary times and not just as a theoretical construct or a mere synthesis of existing teachings.

In the evolvution of Shanti Yoga - which is Universal - the physical attributes of Hatha, Tantric and Karma Yoga are assimilated and combined with the spiritual, philosophical and psychological aspects of Raja, Jnana and Bhakti Yoga as central methods to de-mystify and clarify many important concepts. I have borrowed freely from the yoga of other great, world philosophies, like Buddhism, Taoism, Christianity, Zen, Sufism etc. to reinforce teachings that realise and integrate our spiritual nature into our lives in the world. The outcome from this creative selection is a fresh look at the human potential and its spiritual dimensions, synthesized as Shanti Yoga - integrity, unity and peace for body, mind and spirit. It unites the forces of all the Yogas, philosophical wisdoms, healing modalities, body-mind-spirit wellness concepts and places them together, transforming you in a way that is difficult for any other form to achieve. The Shanti Yoga approach is whole and its central features cannot be cleanly or completely separated from one another. Its detailed and thorough teaching provides an over-arching theme and vision that synergistically blends a diversity of components derived from a wide-variety of origins and adapted into a uniquely broad, encompassing and proficient healing system capable of addressing any aspect of reality. The threads that appear teased apart are really interwoven elements of a larger and infinitely richer tapestry".

CORPORATE YOGA
The Meditation Institute (TMI) and Shanti Yoga is available to help enhance your corporate environment. It is widely acknowledged that both yoga and meditation are excellent in assisting with the management of stress. The effects of practising yoga and meditation have a beneficial effect, not only on life generally, but also in the way in people approach their work. A renewed alive feeling experienced when practicing encourages productivity and motivation in the work place.

Conferences
If your company is organising a conference and would like to include alternative activities for participants, we are happy to incorporate 'Shanti Yoga and Meditation' into each day's schedule. If suitable, we will come to the location of your conference and guarantee that the effects of this activity will increase the attentiveness and response of your colleagues and clients.

If you are interested in discussing what The Meditation Institute can do for your company, please do not hesitate to contact us on +61 (0) 7 5531 0511 or www.shantiyoga.com.au

Benefits of Shanti Yoga

1. Notice the difference in your work day after a rejuvenating class for body and mind that will leave you much more energised than that extra hours sleep - we guarantee!
2. Release aches and pains and bring strength, flexibility and focus back to body and mind. Classes are an excellent way to recharge and refresh.
3. We work to ease out tensions in both body and mind.
4. Our relaxation class is the perfect opportunity to bring a sense of calm back to your life. Using a combination of gentle physical postures to open up and relax the body and simple meditation techniques to help bring peace and clarity back to busy minds they are a restorative practice. Classes end lying down, with a guided relaxation that will leave you refreshed and renewed.

What you need
All you need is a quiet space cleared of tables and chairs. The class ends with one of our popular guided relaxations, blissfully restoring calm and focus to your mind, so please bring a mat, blanket or a towel to lie on. Any type of clothing is suitable for this class. Your everyday work attire is fine - yes, even a suit, although pants are easier than skirts.

Take home pack
We all know clients deserve time out in the luxury of their own home or office.  If you would like to give your clients a special take home pack, Shanti Yoga has the perfect gift.
Recommended Products:
Stress Ease: Release Neck and shoulder tension book.
Samadhi, deep relaxation c.d.
                    
CLASS DETAILS
Suitable for: All levels.
Class timing: Timing is completely flexible to meet your needs.
Clothing: Comfortable, stretch clothing such as tracksuit pants are all you need. Layered stretch clothing for the upper body.
Mats: We provide mats. Our ongoing clients are offered special packages on mats - please ask.
Class location: All you need is a quiet space cleared of tables and chairs - a meeting room, lunchroom or training room is usually good. The second half of the class is done lying down, so there should be enough room for this.