Vishoka Meditation- The Yogic Practice for Moving Beyond Sorrow with Ishan Tigunait

What is Vishoka Meditation, and how can it help us move beyond sorrow? I sit down with Ishan Tigunait of the Himalayan Institute to discuss consciousness, breath, meditation, and the deeper purpose of yoga practice.

Episode Highlights:

• Himalayan tradition and lineage
• Understanding consciousness
• Technique versus experience
• Foundations of Vishoka Meditation
• Moving beyond sorrow and suffering
• Obstacles on the spiritual path
• Body, breath, and prana awareness
• Significance of the navel center
• Characteristics of healthy breathing
• Breath qualities and meditation
• Role of the teacher
• Qualities of a sincere student
• Individual versus group meditation
• Meditation and community service
• Living as a fuller expression of self
• Daily meditation as self-discovery
• Learning Vishoka Meditation

Pranayam Teacher Training 2026

Prana & Presence: An Immersive Week of Yoga, Stillness & Soulful Study in Southern Italy

Join our mailing list

Find all the resources mentioned in this episode

Connect with us on Instagram

Subscribe to Aham Yoga on YouTube

Let’s Talk Yoga Podcast on YouTube

Leave us a review and share this podcast with your friends!

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hi everyone, welcome to episode 223 of the Let's Talk Yoga Podcast. I'm Arundati, and we are back this week with a brand new guest and a topic for the show. But before we jump into today's fascinating episode, I want to take a moment to remind you that we are just a few weeks away from launching our online pranayama study program and optional teacher training. This program begins on June 19th and the early bird is ending on June 5th, a few days after this episode drops. So if you have been waiting to build a relationship with your breath to understand breath literacy in many different layers and learn some pranayama techniques, then this course might just be the right fit for you. You can find all the details at ahamyoga.com. I've also linked it in the podcast description as well as in our show notes. Again, the course begins on June 19th and the early bird ends on June 5th. And I'd love to have you in this program and getting nerdy about the breath and many layers of breath literacy and praniama. Now let's jump into today's episode. This episode is special because I have Ishan Tignuwait on the show this week. I have been wanting Ishan on the show ever since we launched. For those of you who do not know who Ishan Tignuwait is, he is the executive director of the Himalayan Institute. And having grown up at the Himalayan Institute, he received many of his spiritual lessons from Swami Rama. And then he continued his spiritual education in the Himalayan Institute under the guidance of his father, Pandit Rajmani Tignuait. Ishan today is, like I said, the executive director of the Himalayan Institute, and he's been a driving force behind many of the humanitarian projects that the institute does in Africa. And he also serves as the managing director of the Himalayan Institute in India. Now, Ishan and I met a month ago at the Sedhuna Yoga Festival, and I've always wanted to have him on the show. I have done some of his online lessons and I have been following the Himalayan Institute on and off for the past few years. And I am thrilled that we get to sit down and talk about Vishoka meditation in this conversation. Ishan's passion is sharing modern reflections of this very ancient tradition in a way that is easy for us to digest. And he communicates this eloquently and effortlessly. And as a faculty member of the Himalayan Institute, he is a key contributor to their Vishoka meditation program. In this episode, we explore everything from what is consciousness to many layers of the Vishoka meditation, or let me say, introductory layers to the Vishoka meditation. I quiz Ishan about the characteristics of a student. Is meditation more powerful if we do it in a group? What are some of the obstacles? The importance of a teacher. And once we have had that experience of someone who does meditation regularly, we grow as a human being, then what? How do we show up in society? What is that difference? And many other related questions. I've enjoyed having Ishan on the show. To me, it is such a humbling privilege to be able to have these conversations with teachers who have spent many decades and their entire lifetime steeped in traditions like these. I hope you can have deep learning from this episode. I have shared all that Ishan mentions, right from the Himalayan Institute to Vishoka Meditation, to the book he talks about, as well as some of his teaching appearances, all of those can be found on our website Let's TalkYoga forward slash listen. I don't want to hold you back anymore. I hope you enjoyed this conversation with Ishan Tignuwait about Vishoka meditation. Hi everyone, I'm Arundati, and you've just tuned in to the Let's Talk Yoga Podcast, your ultimate online destination for learning about yoga. Whether you're a seasoned yoga teacher or a curious yoga student, there's something for you here. Let this podcast be your virtual yoga school. We offer insight, inspiration, and loads of dirty exploration of yoga along to it. But first, who am I? I'm an Indian immigrant yoga teacher living in America for the past decade. I have my own yoga school here in the app. I'm also a Bollywood choreographer, and I've nurtured a diving yoga community at my studio, as well as a global yoga audience to my courses at this podcast. Through this podcast, I intend to create a space for you, the yoga student and yoga teacher, to learn about yoga. Think of this as your online yoga school free teacher training coming to you every week. So grab your cup of chai and let's jump in. Hi, Ishan. Welcome to the Let's Talk Yoga podcast.

SPEAKER_01 5:11

Thank you, Aru. It's wonderful to be here.

SPEAKER_00 5:13

I was telling you just a moment ago before we started recording that I have this wish list of guests that I've wanted on the show. And your name has been sitting on that list for so many years at this point. That's right. So I am really glad that you are here and we're having this conversation.

SPEAKER_01 5:31

I'm very happy to be here. It was lovely to meet you in person in Sedona and to help the connection get moving in this direction.

SPEAKER_00 5:39

So, to get this conversation started, we're going to be talking specifically about Vishoka meditation. But before that, can you talk to us a little bit about the Himalayan tradition and what this tradition is all about?

SPEAKER_01 5:55

It's a wonderful question. And I'm glad we're starting from this starting point because going to the roots and understanding the nature of source wisdom and our connection to tradition, it is very important to me personally as a teacher and also to our organization, the Himalayan Institute. So this phrase, the Himalayan tradition, is it's a big concept, a big idea, but it ultimately boils down to a very simple reality that there is a primordial pool of living wisdom that underpins who we are as a community of practitioners, as an organization that's dedicated to stewarding this wisdom and passing it on to the modern world. So, in that regard, the Himalayan tradition is very simply an unbroken lineage where the wisdom has been passed on from teacher to student across successive generations over thousands of years. And it roots itself in an ancient tradition, which, for seek of really our modern convenience, we're calling the Himalayan tradition since so many of these great sages and masters are associated with the Himalayas, have lived there, have come from there. But it's a body of knowledge and a lineage of teachers that are rooted very much in ancient Vedic wisdom and that have their roots not only in Vedic knowledge, but also, of course, very much in the knowledge of classical yoga and tantra as well. And this living lineage is where our source resides. And our founder, Swami Rama, of course, is linked back to that tradition through his teacher and the teachers before him. And it draws upon the teachings of many, many different great masters whose teachings are documented in source texts like the Utnishats as well as Vedic mantras as well.

SPEAKER_00 7:44

Thank you for that. For me, that unbroken thread of knowledge and wisdom is something that has always been important. I also think there is a cultural significance to it. So I'm glad we're starting there. Now, can we talk about consciousness? Because that word gets thrown around a little bit, and sometimes awareness is often misunderstood as consciousness. So when we talk about consciousness, what are we referring to?

SPEAKER_01 8:16

Wow, big question right off the bat. So, so that it doesn't turn into an hour-long answer only to this question. I'll keep it brief and we'll go in there. But my somewhat humorous remark is really also reflecting a truth that the subject of consciousness isn't a small one. It really is the underpinning for the exploration for the entire body of yoga vidya, the living wisdom of yogic knowledge. One thing I think it's important to recognize as we answer this question is that consciousness cannot be intellectually known, let alone defined, but rather has to be experienced. One very important thing here to recognize is that everything we're familiar with as a human being is an object of our understanding, something we can directly perceive. But what the word consciousness is referring to in the body of yogic wisdom is a recognition that while there's an object of our understanding and a process for understanding it, for experiencing it, those two elements are distinct from the one who is the perceiver, the experiencer. Or to use a more yogically profound and charged term, the seer. Consciousness is the seer within, the one who experiences itself in relation to the world all around us. But perhaps to answer your question more directly, consciousness has the ability to be aware of itself independent from any external reality. It doesn't need to see itself as a reflection, which is what all of our sensory perceptions are, but rather can be aware of itself, which is why it's so enigmatic. We're not accustomed to experiencing anything directly. We're only really able to experience things outside ourselves through our senses. And the path of yoga systematically helps us to work with our the process of experience and turn that process inward as we become aware of the mind and the senses. And then, and only then really can you know what the meaning of the word consciousness is. That principle which allows us to be self-aware, which allows us to know ourselves not only in relation to the world outside us, but to know ourselves as an independent reality, which is capable of being whatever it is. And that's why it's called pure consciousness.

SPEAKER_00 10:50

That process that you were talking about, before we started recording, I was just sitting down and scribbling just a few notes for myself to circle back to. And one of the things I wrote down, like the first thing I wrote down on my notes today, was technique versus experience. And and trying to draw that distinction between the two. And you mentioned that that state of experience. So maybe it's something we'll get into later. But oftentimes I feel like we, and I maybe I'm speaking for myself, is we get so stuck in technique so much that we think the technique is the experience and and to draw the distinction between that. So so thank you for that. So kicking this off to into the direction of Vishoka meditation, what is Vishoka meditation?

SPEAKER_01 11:43

The question that you just framed and exactly what you shared is a perfect segue. Because when we talk about Vishoka meditation and really the overall body of meditation across many, many spiritual traditions, it all aims to help us answer the question: what is consciousness? What is self-awareness for ourself? And there needs to be a method, a practice, a technique, as you shared, because we need to know what it is that allows us to find that experience. Vishoka meditation is simultaneously a practice or a set of techniques that reveals an inner experience of self. That state of inner experience is known as vishoka, a state which is intrinsically free from any stain of sorrow, grief, or pain, which is expressive of our innate being, which is joyful, which is a profoundly clear and radiantly luminous awareness. This is what the experience of Vishoka meditation is, and the practice that we follow to reach there, and to reach there layer by layer, glimpses which then can eventually blossom into something which is much more full, is what the practice is. And it's important, as you commented, to see the distinction because we need to know what to do, but we really need to be inspired about what our potential is, and that's the state of experience which Vishoka literally calls out the most definitive quality of our inner being is that we're free. We are free to be whatever we are. It's a state which is not joyful because it is devoid of pain and sorrow, but rather it's independently joyful. And that is our central being.

SPEAKER_00 13:38

I often joke that we enjoy suffering. Like in yoga, we celebrate suffering because it's such a teacher, but but without context, that can be completely misunderstood. And this premise of removing this suffering, right? Removing that stain of sorrow and pain and moving to that experience where you are independent, that separation, it takes a long time to get to that stage. So, how would someone who knows this state, this experience is available? But how would they smooth this journey out? My question to you is when we bump into all these different obstacles, and we will bump into so many different obstacles every day, how do we navigate? And how do we keep ourselves on the path to this promised land?

SPEAKER_01 14:37

Yeah, it's very simple. We must begin from wherever we are and start with as much of a positive, vibrant engagement, attitude, worldview as we can. Start with whatever ounce of strength, and hopefully it's more than an ounce, whatever amount of shakti, capacity, enthusiasm we have. Which is where I'll say that rather than exploring how yoga emerges from pain, I'll use a different term, an acknowledgement. An acknowledgement of our limitation today, and an acknowledgement of our desire to be more than that. Rather than drowning in that, we use it as a reminder, we use it as a spark of motivation. And once we begin to feel the desire to be more than whatever we are today, we begin. So starting from our present physical capacity, emotional maturity, intellectual comprehension, whatever is real to us today is very important. So, in some cases, it's a very felt sense of pain. But in many cases, it's not pain in a literal sense. It's rather a feeling of I wish to be more. And there are certain parts of myself which are supportive of that. And there are other parts of myself or my life which are not supportive. And I wish to move in a different direction and find that. So the spark of motivation, anything which motivates us and which inspires us to begin working with that is how we start. And from there, using the technique and the power of technique to see certain qualities of awareness, body, breath, and the mind makes it very tangible. And building from something which is real today, which is probably an experience of ourself in relation to our body, which is physical and real in the literal sense. And using that as an entry point to move towards something which is increasingly subtle, which is why in Vishoka meditation, we quickly transition from body awareness into breath awareness and work with that in increasingly subtle and sophisticated ways to actually begin revealing the discerning quality of the mind itself, that energetic potential for self-awareness, which in yoga is known as prana, the energetic face of breath. And by working with that, very quickly we move away from working with physical pain or restriction, and we start to work with something which is far more of our aspirational identity. And that way we don't need to keep convincing ourselves of goodness. We begin to feel goodness in our body, in our breath, and beyond early on, and that becomes our guiding teacher.

SPEAKER_00 17:29

You mentioned body, then prana, and then the mind, and moving to that viveka, that discernment in layers. So when I did this with you at Sedona recently, you kept going back to the space. And I forget now was it below the navel or around the navel, but you mentioned holding our awareness around the navel region more often, at least more than once. Can you talk to us about the significance of that? Because my understanding, my naive understanding, is that's below the navel is where you burn your samskaras. Now, that could be a leap and I could be wrong, but somewhere I've heard that you burn your karmas in that pit. Now, is that why we are going to the naval center? And I also know Nadis and one of the bigger points of where the Nadi hub is. But why that constant reference, and maybe constant is not the word, but why that reference to the space around the naval?

SPEAKER_01 18:38

The emphasis. We must begin from whatever is real to us today. If we're to have any chance of finding a real experience of ourself within, the shoka meditation isn't about visualization or imagination. It's not about taking a quantum leap to something esoteric and spiritual. It's about having a real experience that our mind, our nervous system, our body can find right now. So, in that regard, it's very important to start with our body and breath and not jump to things like samskaras and karma ideas which are subtle. So the way that we've been taught in this tradition is to recognize that, and this is a very famous quote by Swami Rama, the founder of the institute, that we are not body alone nor mind alone, but rather an extraordinary combination of the two. And for now, we are very much identified as our body. In order to find self-awareness, begin with that capacity, which is the interface between body and mind, and that is breath. And cultivating a healthy breath and the feeling of breath in the navel region is the entry point. So working to cultivate a diaphragmatic breath that has the quality of being natural and relaxed is how we begin all of our work in Vishoka meditation. So there's a number of breath training techniques which are very much associated with the abdominal navel region. And as we do that, when we invite our mind, our self-awareness to rest in that space, as we do those physical practices, the body and mind begin to mesh and we feel something and it feels good, it feels real and it stabilizes awareness, it pulls awareness and holds it. So this is meditation before we even talk about meditation. Breath training, asana, yoga. But in fact, we're working with the mind by virtue of working with the breath, and that allows it to be not only real, but to create a self-sustaining cycle that as we begin, as you remember from the class, we had a lot of emphasis on asana and then breath training and naval awareness. But then we moved that to other points in the body, which allowed us to grow more and more subtle and inward, where we eventually reached with awareness towards the center of the forehead at the end of the class when it was a more true, guided seated meditation. But that progression from body to breath to a more subtle breath awareness, which is the mind, is the key to allowing meditation to be very accessible, highly effective. And from day one, you get a taste of that sweetness, that madhu, that chronic honey, that elixir of nourishment, which is what it takes to not just start, but to continue a practice and reach the goal.

SPEAKER_00 21:44

Thank you for that clarity. And there I was in that workshop thinking I was burning some karmas and some skaras. Um maybe we are, and that's a side effect.

SPEAKER_01 21:52

But for now, we're simply being grounded in our awareness and nourished.

SPEAKER_00 21:57

Uh-huh. Uh-huh. I like that thread. From gross to subtle. And and and having experienced that just once, it makes sense to me, moving from the exterior to more of an internal state. You mentioned in your response a healthy breath. Okay. And what do you qualify as a healthy breath?

SPEAKER_01 22:23

Yeah. So let's say a healthy breath in relation to the practice of meditation, a breath which can be supportive of the goal of moving inward and revealing subtle awareness. So in that regard, a healthy yogic breath is one which is as relaxed and natural as when we were born, as when nature herself was breathing for us in our earliest stages of life. It's a breath that is largely propelled by a smooth rhythmic movement of our diaphragmatic muscle, which is the primary muscle of the physiology of breathing, and to help to soften and refine out any stress patterning, any neurological, physiological, neurological patterning of that diaphragmatic movement, which is no, which interrupts its smooth, rhythmic, natural engagement. When we do that, our breath grows more smooth, it grows more full or deep, it grows more even, silent, and free from pauses. So qualities which allow it to be very, very natural, effortless, and highly calming so that the mind is able to actually let go of its very strong desire to be outwardly oriented and soften and begin to happily, willingly turn inward. And that's the immediate effect that a smooth, natural diaphragmatic breath has on our neurology. It's like a hardware switch where it tells our neurology you're safe, you're nourished, and you can let go of the need to really grip physiologically as well as psychologically. And then with that baseline, you can introduce the humble and loving request to the mind. Now I wish to turn inward and use the technique as that thread I can hold on to, and that can guide me to deeper and deeper states of self-awareness.

SPEAKER_00 24:22

To me, one of the things I clearly remember from that workshop was you talking about the qualities of the breath. And because to me, that is such a significant part in my own experience of that bridge between the body and the mind has been this breath and the layers, the qualities of the breath. So when we talk about the qualities of the breath, we're not referring to techniques of pranayama, correct?

SPEAKER_01 24:53

Correct. We're referring to fundamental principles of meditative breathing, which might be applied. They'll certainly be applicable to meditative pranayamas, where our breath is completely relaxed and natural, but they might not be applicable to more vigorous pranayamas that are applied for more Hatyoga-oriented techniques. And yet there's always a relevance in that the fundamental principles of effortless breathing are always brought back in any pranayama at the conclusion. What we call the resting breaths are these completely effortless, relaxed breaths where the mind can coalesce and be stabilized in a unique energetic vortex, often known as chakras. And that is why some of the other pranayamas are often introduced. But to find the gift, the goal, the whatever pranayama is designed to help us find, we need to know what a completely effortless breath feels like so that that kind of quality can hold whatever the pranayama brings forward. And that's why healthy breathing underpins not only pranayama, but asana, pranayama, and all of the limbs beyond pratihara, dharna, jhana, samadhi, all rely on cultivating healthy breathing, which is why in our tradition, this is intrinsic to asana, that we work with this and then grow from there. And healthy breathing can aid us in a number of different practices, both that are more meditative as well as others that are more of an asana pranayama for other purposes that might be more physically or energetically engaged.

SPEAKER_00 26:35

The tradition, right? When you when you keep talking about tradition, I think of it as lineage. There sits a teacher and then there's the student, right? And that just gets passed on. So what is the role or significance of the teacher when it comes to meditation?

SPEAKER_01 26:58

One of the ways I like to also translate tradition or the Sanskrit word parampara, often guru parampara, is a shared human experience, a flow of experiential knowledge that itself is living and that sustains those who are connected to it. So the human experience of self is actually what tradition is. And that is the connecting thread between what we're seeing in ourselves as a student and teacher. In that regard, then, what is the role of a teacher and what is the role of a student? Sharing our direct experience, which has been profoundly meaningful, which where we found depth and a quality of experience which we know to be true, which we know to be representative of not just me and my personal experience, but part of a much more collective human experience, which is why I term tradition as that, that this is not just me. I'm rediscovering something which has come before me, param para. Something which is the spirit of humanity. And it feels profoundly good, inspiring, and so special that I must share it. It's so important, it's so meaningful that I want to pass it on. That love, respect, mutual understanding is the basis for a healthy student-teacher relationship. That integrity is what tradition is. So in this regard, when those qualities of humanity and that depth of personal experience is embodied in a human being as a teacher, then it can be shared by a student who also recognizes the potential. There's an aspirational identity, which is what we call student, a desire to know, a sense of mutual respect, a sense of understanding, which is what holds two human beings together, and opens a dialogue. It opens, it's more than in the West, what we might call a friendship. Typically, a student-teacher relationship has a sense of sanctity, a sense of love and respect, a sense of yearning that I wish to grow and I wish to be the beneficiary of something which you've received through your direct experience and a recognition that you've received as a loving gift from humanity before you, from your teachers before you. And that is what, to me, the role of teacher is. So there's something poetic and beautiful about it. There's something ancient and a bit enigmatic, perhaps, in what I'm saying, and yet very human, very real. And it is passed on from culture to culture, from time to time, in different ways. The modern teacher-student relationship, for some might look a little different than what I just described. My own life is a little bit unique in that I receive things in a much more traditional fashion. But I also recognize that all the qualities I just share can certainly find a home in the modern world, in the Western world, in a very different kind of teacher-student relationship over Zoom, through a book, through a course where it's not a student traveling through the jungles and to a cave somewhere far away, but signing up for a course. And yet those qualities of shared human experience, of mutual respect and understanding underpin what it means to be a teacher. And that's, I think, where the magic really is. And when you receive in that light, knowledge comes to life as wisdom. Otherwise, knowledge can often be more of a fossilized form of information, which doesn't work as well in my experience. When it's alive and human, it takes root in our life and it helps us blossom in a much bigger way.

SPEAKER_00 30:55

Beautiful. There were so many, there are a few questions I want to get to from what you shared, but I'll start with a story. When I moved from India to America about 13 years ago, one of the hardest things for me was to shift from a very formal teacher-student relationship to these friendships where people were hi-fiing and hugging their teachers in class. And I remember think, you know, going early to these classes just to understand that. And I would, I often joke with my students that the hardest part for me in while teaching a class was not the class, it was the 10, 15 minutes before. Because I was used to the teacher walking in, all of a silence, you start. And now suddenly I had to hold the room and I would go to other classes and be like, what are they talking about? Oh, in Seattle, everybody talks about the weather. So I'm like, talk about the weather. To me, that was that switch from just having more of these traditional teachers who were very humble and very giving and very kind and very loving in many ways, but it was very formal. And to have that culture switch, now it's effortless 13 years later. But if you ask me what stressed me out the most, it was that back in the day. I was like, once the yoga starts, that's easier. But the interaction, yeah, I would just be like a deer in headlights. I'm like, what do I talk to these strangers about? But coming back to, I love how you said it's a shared human experience. What would you call, if you had to list some characteristics of a student, what would be the main ones?

unknown 32:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 32:39

Number of very important characteristics. A desire to know ourselves, a genuine, sincere desire to grow, to grow in the form of our healing, our empowerment, our awakening, and not only a willingness, but a passion to invest of ourself, to commit ourselves to discipline, to wanting to learn, and even more importantly, to practice what we learn. These are the qualities of being a sincere student. There's humility, there's discipline, there's a sincere desire, and there's a recognition that we are seeking something which is intrinsic to ourselves, but which we need to reveal, which we need to work for. Our priorities and what we do with our time, where we put our intention makes a big difference. Having that alignment of our desire all the way through our thought, speech, and action, what we do is what allows us to really blossom as a student, to make progress as a student.

SPEAKER_00 33:45

That's wonderful. I was, I always ask myself, like, what are the qualities of the teacher? What are the qualities of the student and where that gap exists or where they meet. Now, when we talk about meditation, is there a difference when you do it by yourself in your own four walls? And is there, does that shift when we sit with a group?

SPEAKER_01 34:10

I'm glad you asked this question because group practice and specifically group meditation is very dear to my heart and it's an amazing subject. For the most part, meditation is a personal practice, and it's what we're very familiar with that we find a way to be comfortable with ourselves, and simply in the presence of our body, breath, and mind, we feel a fullness. And that fullness grows as we turn in and grow more and more aware of ourself, our personal practice. And yet, something amazing does happen when we begin to practice in a group context. We are social beings. And one of the unique things about the human being is our sensitivity to the state of experience of all those around us, human beings and any other form of sentient life and the natural world. We recognize that we're part of a greater whole. And even when we don't consciously recognize it, we're unconsciously aware of it. But really remembering I am part of humanity. There are people around me who sustain me and who I sustain. And I wish for the goodness, that unique quality of nourishment, awareness that I find in my personal practice in myself. I wish that to be shared. And I wish it to be amplified. I wish to draw from that collective consciousness. And I wish to serve and replenish that collective consciousness. When we recognize that we grow, we're no longer just an individual, we're part of a much greater whole. And to me, that is what it means to grow as a human being, to remember that we're part of a greater whole. Meditation is not designed to help us become more and more self-centered and isolated, but rather to be established in ourself so that we can truly be part of a greater whole, serve a greater whole, and find our oneness with that greater whole. When we practice first and find a competency in our personal awareness, our personal practice, we gain the capacity to practice together. And when we do that, there is an amazing experience of collective consciousness that I've personally experienced many times in group meditations, both in a physical sense where we're all in the same physical space, but even subtle practices where we're separated by space and yet an underlying intention of doing it as a group practice to support each other and to serve the much greater whole of collective consciousness. It changes how you feel about your practice, it changes your experience, and it gives it greater meaning. It means something to us as human beings to share and serve, to be part of others' lives. And that's what group meditation can profoundly help us do.

SPEAKER_00 37:13

Being in that community, in that Sangha, it also makes it more effortless to come back. And you feel more supported. It feels more supported in this journey. As you were speaking, you said this at the very end. You we serve, right? So when someone has reached some consistent meditation habits, wouldn't say that's date of experience because it takes time to get there. But is the end goal to turn around and be members of community who show up and serve? What is, I'm not sure I'm I'm asking this in the most refined sense, but once we've gathered all this consciousness, this awareness, this experience, then what?

SPEAKER_01 38:02

Yeah. Then what is a very important question. We practice not to leave this world, but we practice so that we can be more fully, more meaningfully, and more capably in this world. Whatever glimpse. So, as you said, we're all at various stages in our own experience, our own growth. Even familiarity with that inner goodness, let alone a profound proficiency or establishment in it, even a glimpse, it allows us to then open our eyes, literally get up and move forward into our life with greater capacity to be a force for positive change, to contribute something. We grow as that happens. We grow happier, we grow more successful, we grow more healthy and prosperous and able to find a peaceful and meaningful place in society. So, yes, by default, it should really be by default, by our innate state of being, whatever goodness we find as we go within in our practice of yoga and meditation is brought to the world, we immediately begin investing in. We become a better person. What does that mean? We're more, the humanity in us matures. We are more aware of our needs in relation to others and others' needs in relation to ourselves. We're able to be at peace with ourselves and therefore at peace with others and find ways to make this world a more beautiful, more peaceful, more prosperous place. That is what it means to serve creation, simply being the best, most awakened expression of ourself so that others can also find that.

SPEAKER_00 39:49

I like how you said expression of ourselves, because in my head I was like version, but I think expression is is more apt. I sometimes like to casually refer to these as the three C's. Like if you if your yoga is working for you, your clarity should go up, your compassion should go up, and your contentment should go up.

SPEAKER_01 40:08

At least three great C's. I love that.

SPEAKER_00 40:11

In the most basic, like if you say you've done some some practices of yoga for years and you haven't gone up in any of those three measures, then something's off, at least in my naive understanding of it. So the end goal is to show up as the most, the fullest expression of yourself and to uplift something in this world. That's how I see it, whether it's someone around you or someone beyond your immediate circle. But to tie this all together, if there was one thing that you would recommend that the listeners taught him to become these more conscious performing members in community, what would that one thing be? And I'm I'm saying one, you could expand that to more than one.

SPEAKER_01 41:05

Yeah, I think that the very heart of our conversation today about learning to meditate would really be that. That learning to meditate is the best gift we can give to ourselves. There's another famous quote that just echoes in my mind and heart from Swami Rama and a number of teachers in this lineage that meditation gives us that which nothing else can. It introduces us to ourselves. We don't know ourselves as well as we think we do. And because we don't know ourselves well, we often stumble and bumble our way through life. It's painful, it's not very efficient, and it's not fulfilling. The clarity, the compassion, and contentment don't flow through life because we don't know ourselves well enough to know what to ask out of life, let alone what to give. So learning to sit in a stable, comfortable manner, learning to breathe in an effortless manner, and inviting the body and breath to hold each other and invite the mind and senses to turn in, which is the practice of Bishoka meditation in a nutshell, it is profoundly uplifting. Profound degree of clarity, inner nourishment, inner strength, and self-awareness. Even small doses of that take us a far ways. I would say learning this and seeing how a small dose of daily meditative awareness, being still, silent, in a very relaxed manner, yet very vibrantly aware inward. It's like giving yourself permission. It's the only time in our day that we're giving ourselves permission to not be engaged with the world outside us, to trust that our world won't collapse for five or ten minutes, to mentally and not throw something away out of frustration or fatigue or disgust, to lovingly place the world aside for a moment, like Atlas holding the weight of the world on his shoulders, to step out from the weight of the world and use a practice, a technique fully supported by your own aspiration and experience so that you can be calm and inwardly oriented. And that is like a supercharger, a Tesla supercharger. Five or 10 minutes of that will allow not only the nervous system and body, but the mind, whatever that word means to us, to be profoundly nourished and to remember what it feels like to be human. And from that place, a new and more vibrant, more peaceful expression of ourself comes forward. And it is whatever we wish it to be, whatever the world needs us to be. And it helps us to co create our future, our. Reality. That co-creation is what we all want. We want to be most likely in charge, I think is the honest answer, but we want to be supported. We want life to help support us as we work through it. And that support, in my experience, comes from within. And meditation gives us that.

SPEAKER_00 44:20

Beautiful. Beautiful. So for anyone listening who is inspired and wants to take this journey, is it possible for them to learn Vishoka meditation online? Because we've got listeners all over the globe. Can they log in and where can they learn this meditation?

SPEAKER_01 44:39

I'm so glad you asked me that. Yes, absolutely. You can learn it online. And we also, of course, love to have in-person opportunities. But if you go to the institute's website, HimalayanInstitute.org, there's a beautiful set of resources on our HI Online platform that are introductory. But if you really want to dive right in, there's a wonderful book called Vishoka Meditation by Pandit Rajmanitiganayat, our spiritual head, my father. A wonderful digital course that I've taught along with a number of our other senior faculty members. And that course is a six-week online course that guides you through all of the wisdom and practices systematically. And it opens a much bigger world. There's many, many more levels to this where you can keep going deeper and deeper into the more subtle aspects, but lots of great resources. And there's an audio book as well for the physical print version. So lots of resources to start with.

SPEAKER_00 45:30

Thank you so much. I will make sure to link all of that because so many times we have listeners who say, who ask me, who do I learn meditation from? I just say, hey, not me. And now I can direct them to the Himalayan Institute. Isham, thank you for being here. It was wonderful to have you. And I hope the first of many conversations that we'll have in the years ahead. Thank you so much. Likewise.

SPEAKER_01 45:54

Yeah, you're most welcome. I really enjoyed being here. And I hope to see you again soon.

SPEAKER_00 45:58

Yes, thank you. Thank you so much for listening. Once again, everything about Bishoka Meditation, Himalayan Institute, and Ishan Tignuai can be found at letstalk.yoga forward slash listen. If you enjoyed this episode, please consider leaving us a review, a rating, and share it with one friend who has been waiting to start some meditation. I'll see you next week with another episode, another conversation. Until then, take care. Bye bye.