L.A. YOGA: DVD Media Review

February 2007

MAHA SADHANA

THE GREAT PRACTICE

WITH DHARMA MITTRA

Yoga Master Dharma Mittra offers over 50 years of gems from his practice in two beautiful, useful, high quality DVD’s from Pranayama.

Maha Sadhana (meaning the great practice) levels I and II are comprised of asana and Pranayama (breathing) practices, meditation practices and spiritual discourses as the core content. Both are as amazing to watch as they are to practice with, since a man of Dharma Mittra’s age (he was born in the late ‘30s) wouldn’t be expected to the strength, flexibility and muscle tone that he does. Lest we should be distracted by his perfection of postures, however, including such things as ease into full splits and the perfectly smooth flow between postures, Dharma Mittra emphasizes more than once in both DVDs that the postures “are only one of the eight limbs of practice, designed to prepare the body for breathing exercises and meditation.”

While the posture practices alone are without a doubt worth watching and practicing with, another section – the spiritual discourses – caught my attention, too. In one, The Importance of Diet, he talks about vegetarian diet specifically as one of the keys to success in yoga. There is humor in his dry delivery, when he says that if your home has meat in the refrigerator the refrigerator is really a morgue which attracts lower beings into your environment. A vegetarian household will be inhabited by higher beings. Other spiritual discourses on level I discuss The Sacred Chamber of the Heart, Reincarnation, Developing a Home Practice and The Importance of a Teacher. There are seven Level II topics, among them: The Causes of Pain and Suffering, Attachment and Renunciation and Worldly Desires and Spiritual Bliss. All are fairly short and all are worth hearing.

In typical Pranayama fashion, there are additional bonuses. From the special features menu on both DVDs the viewer has the pleasure of seeing stills of a young Dharma Mittra as a body builder change before our eyes into the yogi we’ve just watched practice. Here we learn that he was initiated as a sannyasi (one who renounces the material world in order to realize God) by his guru Sri Swami Kailashananda, in whose ashram he spent eight years. In the 1960s he became one of the first independent yoga teachers in the U.S., founding the Dharma Yoga Center in New York City, where he still teaches daily.

Whether your yoga practice could use a master yoga instructor in-house, a few tried and true meditation practices or spiritual talks to keep you on the path, Maha Sadhana is a unique collection to own and enjoy.

-Julie Deife