Ananda Dhara Yoga Village: Helping People Attain Bliss, Part 2 of 3

In today’s program, he will discuss how children and teens enjoy healthier lifestyles by learning meditation and yoga. But first, we will briefly cover the yoga practices that Sri P.R. Sarkar’s spiritual organization Ananda Marga, meaning the “Path of Bliss” propagates. Ananda Marga’s techniques of self-realization include yoga postures, Kiirtan, Kaoshikii, and meditation. In the Western world, people tend to equate yoga solely with yoga postures. However, this only accounts for a small but essential part of the entire system and serves as preparation for meditation. Tamminga feels that all can benefit from practicing the holistic yogic lifestyle. “Now yoga, it brings you in touch with your inner self, so this connects with everybody.” This experienced yoga teacher believes it is important for children to have exposure to meditation and yoga at a young age. He explains. “I learned yoga when I was 15. Actually, I first got into yoga philosophy when I was 12. I went with my mom to learn meditation when I was 15. I never stopped, every morning and every evening for all this time. And now I am 60. So for 45 years, I've been doing meditation every day. It's my life. So we like to train children from a young age to sit down and be quiet with themselves to learn their body and find peace. And we don’t need to do it for a long time. So when they become teenagers, they don’t have such a conflicted mind, and they know a path to find their own peace because they learned it from when they were small. For many kids nowadays, we see that they have some behavioral imbalances, maybe hyperactive, maybe slow speech development, or maybe they cannot concentrate; these kinds of problems. Kids yoga can be beneficial. So actually, the practice can be used for different ages. And what really inspired me is, of course, there are so many great teachers. And without great teachers, you don’t learn. So there are people who have done things before us, and from them we learn, and then we start to practice with our children and different ages. And I think we have to be very thankful to this lineage, this yoga family where we all grow together to develop as better human beings.”