Om Som Yoga + Ayurveda Podcast

PRACTICE WITH US

✦ Practice Online
Sadhana Sangha: 5 practices per month, asana workshops, subtle body techniques & Yoga Sūtra translation
https://practice.omsom.yoga/365-sadhana-sandha/join
✦ OmSom App (free)
Yoga philosophy, Sanskrit study & our online community
Search OmSom in the App Store
✦ 100 Hr Yoga Teacher Training
Already 200 Hr trained? This is our Asana Sadhana Dharma bridging course
https://practice.omsom.yoga/asana-sadhana-dharma-oto
✦ 200 Hr Yoga Teacher Training
Sri Lanka Immersion 2027
https://omsom.yoga/200-hour-yoga-teacher-training-sri-lanka
✦ 300 Hr Yoga Teacher Training
Online & India Immersion 2026/2027
https://omsom.yoga/300-hour-advanced-hatha-yoga-training
✦ 50 Hr Online Yin Yoga Teacher Training
Online
https://practice.omsom.yoga/yin-yoga-and-prana-vayus-oto
✦ Practice in Person
Classes, workshops & community events in Berwick, Victoria
https://omsom.yoga/book-a-class

IN THIS EPISODE
Week two of the four paths of yoga is JÑĀNA YOGA, the path of knowledge: not a philosophy to learn, but one long question asked with total honesty - who is the one watching? We open with Maitreyī, offered half a fortune, who asked the greatest question in the Upaniṣads instead: would it make me immortal?

WHAT YOU'LL LEARN
✦ Yājñavalkya & Maitreyī: everything you've ever loved, you loved because the Self was shining through it
✦ The path's three stages: śravaṇa (hearing), manana (reasoning it through), nididhyāsana (meditating until it becomes your resting state)
✦ Neti neti - "not this, not this": whatever can be observed is not the observer
✦ Why the breath is the path's perfect laboratory - intimate enough to feel, observable enough to prove you are not it
✦ Jñāna śakti vs jñāna yoga: August gave us the capacity for knowing; this is the discipline that clears what obscures it
✦ The qualifications: discernment, non-grasping, steadiness, and burning desire for freedom - not brilliance
✦ Paige's doṣa medicine for inquirers: staying-power for vāta, the bow for pitta, the fresh question for kapha

TEXTUAL REFERENCES
✦ Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad 2.4.5: "the Self is to be seen - heard of, reflected on, meditated upon" - the founding instruction of the path
✦ Bhagavad Gītā 4.38: "nothing in this world purifies like knowledge"
✦ Bhagavad Gītā 4.34: know this by prostration, inquiry, and service — the head bowed, not inflated
✦ Dṛg-Dṛśya-Viveka v.1: the form is seen, the eye its seer; the eye is seen, the mind its seer - but the witness is seen by none
✦ Kena Upaniṣad 1.2: by whom is the breath sent forth? - the breath-inquiry in its oldest form

TRY THIS IN YOUR PRACTICE
✦ After each round of prāṇāyāma, rest in the question: the breath was watched - who watched it?
✦ Neti neti in śavāsana: release identification layer by layer - body, breath, thought - and rest as what remains
✦ Weekly rhythm: hear a teaching, journal it through, then sit with it in silence
✦ Catch "I am exhausted" and amend it: there is exhaustion, and I am the one aware of it
✦ Read fewer things, more deeply - one verse walked beats one hundred scrolled
✦ Leave us a comment: watch one breath tonight, turn around, and tell us - who was watching?

SHARE & CONNECT

Website: https://omsomyoga.com
OmSom App (free): search OmSom in the App Store
Instagram: @omsomyoga

If this episode landed, the best way to support the show is to share it with one person who might need it.

We run a yoga studio in Berwick, Victoria, offering classes, workshops, and Yoga Teacher Training programs. Wherever you are on your journey, we’d love to connect with you.

HARI OM

PRACTICE WITH US

✦ Practice Online
Sadhana Sangha: 5 practices per month, asana workshops, subtle body techniques & Yoga Sūtra translation
https://practice.omsom.yoga/365-sadhana-sandha/join
✦ OmSom App (free)
Yoga philosophy, Sanskrit study & our online community
Search OmSom in the App Store
✦ 100 Hr Yoga Teacher Training
Already 200 Hr trained? This is our Asana Sadhana Dharma bridging course
https://practice.omsom.yoga/asana-sadhana-dharma-oto
✦ 200 Hr Yoga Teacher Training
Sri Lanka Immersion 2027
https://omsom.yoga/200-hour-yoga-teacher-training-sri-lanka
✦ 300 Hr Yoga Teacher Training
Online & India Immersion 2026/2027
https://omsom.yoga/300-hour-advanced-hatha-yoga-training
✦ 50 Hr Online Yin Yoga Teacher Training
Online
https://practice.omsom.yoga/yin-yoga-and-prana-vayus-oto
✦ Practice in Person
Classes, workshops & community events in Berwick, Victoria
https://omsom.yoga/book-a-class

IN THIS EPISODE
In July we learned that action doesn't bind us - attachment to the outcome does. But the tradition doesn't stop there: it builds an entire path out of it. This month we begin the four paths of yoga - karma, jñāna, bhakti, rāja - opening with KARMA YOGA: a life of offering up our actions, where the cooking, the teaching, the sweeping becomes the practice itself.

WHAT YOU'LL LEARN
✦ The Vyādha Gītā: why the renunciate was out-yogied by a housewife and a butcher - "it's not the work that binds or frees us, it's only the one performing it"
✦ What karma yoga is: any mundane action used to connect us to the universal
✦ The Gītā's three movements: niṣkāma karma (action without craving the result), yajña bhāva (action as offering), īśvara arpaṇa (dedicating every act and its fruit to the divine)
✦ Why the cave fantasy fails: removing the crows doesn't remove the anger - your life is the best environment for practice
✦ Aaron on the monk with the cigarette, the Coke backlash, and why purity culture is the commodification of yoga, not yoga
✦ Paige's medicine for action by doṣa: commitment and consistency for vāta, anonymous seva for pitta, fresh new action for kapha
✦ Eating as karma yoga: plating up whatever you eat and offering it to the digestive fire
✦ Idaṁ na mama - "this is not mine" - offering up the fruits of your practice

TEXTUAL REFERENCES
✦ Vyādha Gītā, Mahābhārata: the monk, the housewife, and the butcher of Mithilā
✦ Bhagavad Gītā 3.9: action performed as sacrifice does not bind - all other action binds us to this world
✦ Bhagavad Gītā 3.20: "it was by action alone that Janaka and the others reached perfection" - even a king reached liberation this way
✦ Bhagavad Gītā 5.10: one who acts placing all actions in Brahman, abandoning attachment, is untouched by fault as a lotus leaf is untouched by water

TRY THIS IN YOUR PRACTICE
✦ Pick one daily action - dishes, walking, mowing - and do it with no distraction: no phone, no podcast, just presence
✦ Go to work this week to make your workplace better for everyone in it - the same job, performed as offering
✦ Plate up whatever you eat (yes, even the chocolate), sit down, and offer it to your digestive fire
✦ End your practice with hands together: idaṁ na mama - whatever I've gained, it is not mine; I offer it up
✦ Leave us a comment: what's the one daily action you're turning into practice this week?

SHARE & CONNECT

Website: https://omsomyoga.com
OmSom App (free): search OmSom in the App Store
Instagram: @omsomyoga

If this episode landed, the best way to support the show is to share it with one person who might need it.

We run a yoga studio in Berwick, Victoria, offering classes, workshops, and Yoga Teacher Training programs. Wherever you are on your journey, we’d love to connect with you.

HARI OM

PRACTICE WITH US
✦ Practice Online - Sadhana Sangha: 5 practices per month, asana workshops, subtle body techniques & Yoga Sūtra translation https://practice.omsom.yoga/365-sadhana-sandha/join
✦ OmSom App (free) - Yoga philosophy, Sanskrit study & our online community. Search OmSom in the App Store
✦ 100 Hr Yoga Teacher Training - Asana Sadhana Dharma bridging course https://practice.omsom.yoga/asana-sadhana-dharma-oto
✦ 200 Hr YTT - Sri Lanka Immersion 2027 https://omsom.yoga/200-hour-yoga-teacher-training-sri-lanka
✦ 300 Hr YTT - Online & India Immersion 2026/2027 https://omsom.yoga/300-hour-advanced-hatha-yoga-training
✦ 50 Hr Yin YTT - Online https://practice.omsom.yoga/yin-yoga-and-prana-vayus-oto
✦ Practice in Person - Classes, workshops & community in Berwick, Victoria https://omsom.yoga/book-a-class

Something different this week: a bonus episode, and a gift.
This is a complete 40-minute lunar haṭha class from inside Sadhana Sangha, our online practice community - free, in full, as a preview of how we practise together every month.
The bhav (the feeling-state the whole class is built around) is BINDU - the point, the drop - the same teaching we explored all September.
In haṭha yoga the moon is said to rest at the bindu, dripping the nectar of vitality; a lunar practice is how we slow down enough to stop spilling it. So this class is the month made physical: everything we spoke about, now felt in the body. Roll out your mat, press play, and practice with Aaron.

ABOUT SADHANA SANGHA
This class is one of five practices we release every month inside Sadhana Sangha - each month built around a single bhav, with asana classes, an asana workshop, a subtle body technique, and a few lines of the Yoga Sūtra translated together. It's the home of our practice community inside the free OmSom app.
If this class lands for you, this is what every month feels like: ⁠⁠https://practice.omsom.yoga/365-sadhana-sandha/join⁠.⁠

SHARE & CONNECT
Website: https://omsom.yoga
OmSom App (free): search OmSom in the App Store
Instagram: @omsomyoga
If this practice landed, the best way to support the show is to share it with one person who might need it.
We run a yoga studio in Berwick, Victoria, offering classes, workshops, and Yoga Teacher Training programs.
Wherever you are on your journey, we'd love to connect with you.
HARI OM

PRACTICE WITH US
✦ Practice Online — Sadhana Sangha: 5 practices per month, asana workshops, subtle body techniques & Yoga Sūtra translation https://practice.omsom.yoga/365-sadhana-sandha/join
✦ OmSom App (free) — Yoga philosophy, Sanskrit study & our online community. Search OmSom in the App Store
✦ 100 Hr Yoga Teacher Training — Asana Sadhana Dharma bridging course https://practice.omsom.yoga/asana-sadhana-dharma-oto
✦ 200 Hr YTT — Sri Lanka Immersion 2027 https://omsom.yoga/200-hour-yoga-teacher-training-sri-lanka
✦ 300 Hr YTT — Online & India Immersion 2026/2027 https://omsom.yoga/300-hour-advanced-hatha-yoga-training
✦ 50 Hr Yin YTT — Online https://practice.omsom.yoga/yin-yoga-and-prana-vayus-oto
✦ Practice in Person — Classes, workshops & community in Berwick, Victoria https://omsom.yoga/book-a-class

IN THIS EPISODE
Every yantra we've looked at this month ends at the same place: the centre. The dot.
The tradition says that dot is not decoration - it's the source. The entire universe, before it becomes anything, condensed to a single point.
We close our tantra month with BINDU: the point, the drop, the source of all things - and the claim that awareness can do the same thing, moving from scattered to one point, the gateway that leads us to yoga.
We open with Śvetaketu and the banyan seed: break it open, find nothing - and from that nothing, the vast tree stands. Tat tvam asi. That, you are.

WHAT YOU'LL LEARN
✦ What bindu is: "drop, point, dot" - the dot above Aum, the centre of every yantra, the bindī at the brow
✦ The source of all things: nāda (vibration) → bindu (point) → form
✦ Bindu's two registers: the cosmic point of origin, and the haṭha yogi's vital drop that holds soma
✦ Awareness condensed to a single point: dhāraṇā as bindu-making, ekāgratā as attention gathered back to a seed
✦ The tantric completion: when awareness fully condenses, the point opens - what remains is the witness. Bindu is the door; Śiva walks through
✦ The month arrives home: mantra ends in the dot, yantra radiates from it, bindu is the centre all three were pointing to

TEXTUAL REFERENCES
✦ Chāndogya Upaniṣad 6.12–6.13: the banyan seed - the invisible essence from which the vast tree stands, closing in "tat tvam asi"
✦ Yoga Sūtra 3.1–3: dhāraṇā, dhyāna, samādhi - one point, one stream, then the point alone
✦ Nāda Bindu Upaniṣad: bindu as the first station of sound's inward journey after the M of Aum
✦ Haṭha Yoga Pradīpikā ch. 3: the vital drop - gather what is scattered, and raise it
✦ Caraka Saṁhitā, Sūtrasthāna 17: ojas - Āyurveda's own drop, the refined essence of all seven tissues

TRY THIS IN YOUR PRACTICE
✦ A bindu meditation to close the month: gaze at the centre of a yantra, close the eyes, rest in the after-image until even that dissolves - notice what remains watching
✦ Chant Aum and follow the M into the nasal resonance - ride the sound all the way to the dot
✦ In asana, collect to one point: breath at the nostrils, weight in the heels - one posture, one point, one mind
✦ Guard your ojas like a full cup - it leaks through screens, speech, stimulation, late nights
✦ Do one thing at a time as spiritual discipline
✦ Leave us a comment: if your scattered awareness were gathered to a single point tonight, what would be left watching?

SHARE & CONNECT
Website: https://omsom.yoga
OmSom App (free): search OmSom in the App Store
Instagram: @omsomyoga
If this episode landed, the best way to support the show is to share it with one person who might need it.
We run a yoga studio in Berwick, Victoria, offering classes, workshops, and Yoga Teacher Training programs.
Wherever you are on your journey, we'd love to connect with you.
HARI OM

PRACTICE WITH US✦ Practice Online — Sadhana Sangha: 5 practices per month, asana workshops, subtle body techniques & Yoga Sūtra translation https://practice.omsom.yoga/365-sadhana-sandha/join✦ OmSom App (free) — Yoga philosophy, Sanskrit study & our online community. Search OmSom in the App Store✦ 100 Hr Yoga Teacher Training — Asana Sadhana Dharma bridging course https://practice.omsom.yoga/asana-sadhana-dharma-oto✦ 200 Hr YTT — Sri Lanka Immersion 2027 https://omsom.yoga/200-hour-yoga-teacher-training-sri-lanka✦ 300 Hr YTT — Online & India Immersion 2026/2027 https://omsom.yoga/300-hour-advanced-hatha-yoga-training✦ 50 Hr Yin YTT — Online https://practice.omsom.yoga/yin-yoga-and-prana-vayus-oto✦ Practice in Person — Classes, workshops & community in Berwick, Victoria https://omsom.yoga/book-a-class
IN THIS EPISODEWhere do you go to worship? Tantra's answer is the most radical in the tradition: nowhere — you're already inside. Week three of our tantra month brings mantra (sound) and yantra (geometry) home to the MAṆḌALA: the sacred circle, tantra's principal temple of worship, and the claim that the true maṇḍala is the body itself. We begin under the floor — with the vāstu-puruṣa, the cosmic being pinned beneath every temple in India. If every temple is secretly a body, every body is secretly a temple: keeping it healthy is keeping the temple clean, and no institution holds the keys.
WHAT YOU'LL LEARN✦ What a maṇḍala is: maṇḍa (essence) + la (container) — the container of essence; a yantra is gazed at, a maṇḍala is entered
✦ Maṇḍala as the form of the body: gates for senses, walls for skin, the garbha-gṛha (womb-chamber) at the heart
✦ The cakras as a column of maṇḍalas — each circle with its bīja (week one) and geometry (week two)
✦ Tantra's main temple of worship — and nyāsa, installing the deities limb by limb in the body
✦ The vāstu-puruṣa grid: 64 or 81 padas, the open Brahmasthan at the centre
✦ Keeping the body healthy as keeping the temple clean: śauca, and daily life as pūjā
✦ The travelling temple: every place the body sits becomes consecrated ground
✦ Autonomy back in spirituality: no membership, no gatekeeper — teachers as gardeners, not landlords

TEXTUAL REFERENCES✦ "Taṁ jāḍyāt tārayet yastu saḥ tantraḥ parikīrtitaḥ" — tantra is that which liberates from the bondage of staticity
✦ Kulārṇava Tantra ch. 9: "deho devālayo devi jīvo devaḥ sadāśivaḥ" — the body is the temple of God; the indwelling life is God, the eternal Śiva
✦ Bṛhat Saṁhitā ch. 53 & Matsya Purāṇa: the vāstu-puruṣa-maṇḍala — every sacred building drawn on the diagram of a body
✦ Yoga Sūtra 2.40–41: from purity, fitness for the vision of the Self
✦ Aṣṭāṅga Hṛdayam, Sūtrasthāna 2: dinacaryā

TRY THIS IN YOUR PRACTICE✦ Open practice by drawing the circle: a breath, a bell, a line of mantra before you enter
✦ Simple nyāsa: touch attention to crown, brow, throat, heart, navel, base — room by room
✦ Treat one daily act — tongue-scraping, oiling, bathing — as consecration, not a chore
✦ Guard the gates: what enters through eyes and ears is also food
✦ Close practice deliberately — dissolve the maṇḍala rather than letting it leak into the scroll
✦ Leave us a comment: if your body were the inner sanctum, what would you stop bringing through its gates?

SHARE & CONNECTWebsite: https://omsom.yogaOmSom App (free): search OmSom in the App StoreInstagram: @omsomyogaIf this episode landed, the best way to support the show is to share it with one person who might need it. We run a yoga studio in Berwick, Victoria, offering classes, workshops, and Yoga Teacher Training programs. Wherever you are on your journey, we'd love to connect with you.
HARI OM