Welcome to our 8th Annual Yoga Special Issue!
Sep 01, 2025 06:00AM ● By Paul Chen
We did not plan for this issue to be yoga-dominant. Our staff wrote two articles: Atlanta Enriched as Yoga Teachers Travel and The “One Human” Experience. Historically, Corporate offers us one yoga-related article in September—and we only rarely run it.
This year, however, Corporate provided two yoga-related articles, and both speak to its effects on health: periodontal and gut! Since we’re primarily about holistic health, we always publish the Healing Ways article, and the periodontal article was the Healing Ways piece.
Our lead yoga article is about the impact of yoga travel on teachers and their students. I’ve met a number of yoga teachers over the years who travel to India to deepen their study, and who inevitably bring back something to share with their students. When the idea for his article first appeared, the first teacher I thought to interview was Tracy Jennings-Hill, founder of LiveURYoga. Since I’ve known her, she’s traveled to India frequently. Yoga editor Patty Schmidt contacted her, and we thought an interview was lined up, but it fell through. Tracy closed LiveURYoga within the last year and has now resurfaced as a program manager at Sattva Yoga Academy… in India! Clearly, her travels have impacted her greatly.
Giorgi (“Sava”) Savaneli also came to mind since we featured him in September 2022. As a teacher of Ashtanga, he trained in India under the guidance of Sharath Jois. And, like the three teachers we feature in this issue, he and Tracy see the benefits of yoga extending far past the physical into the spiritual.
Which is the point of our lead article. For those who are open to it, asana practice is a gateway to deeper spiritual learning. It is, after all, one of the eight limbs of yoga, which is one of the six philosophies of Hinduism. Indeed, our yoga department exists for the purpose of shining a light on the spiritual aspects of what we in the West call “yoga”; our intent has always been to help readers maximize their experience of yoga.
We’ve previously noted that spiritual practice and health are foundational to physical health, so these four articles, together, serve to reinforce that point like never before. So let’s dig a little deeper.
“Health is a state of complete harmony of the body, mind and spirit. When one is free from physical disabilities and mental distractions, the gates of the soul open.” – B.K.S. Iyengar
Iyengar, an Indian yoga teacher who founded Iyengar Yoga, best known for its alignment approach to the practice, clearly says here that the spiritual dimension is one-third of the aspects of good health.
Vasant Dattatray Lad, the Indian-born Ayurvedic physician, author and educator who founded the Ayurvedic Institute in Albuquerque, New Mexico, takes this one step further:
“Ayurveda defines life as the conjunction of body, mind and spirit, found in Cosmic Consciousness, and embracing all of Creation.”
To me, this line seems to scream of non-dualism; all exists within Cosmic Consciousness, including whatever “us” is.
Bottom line, taking care of one’s spiritual needs also takes care of one’s physical needs.
Two of our featured yoga teachers travel to India to be reminded, refreshed and reinforced by “the source” of yoga. So let me end at the beginning of the source, the first words of Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras:
And now the teaching of yoga begins.
Yoga is the settling of the mind into silence.
When the mind has settled, we are established in our essential nature, which is unbounded consciousness.
Please enjoy this eighth offering of our yoga special section. Good reading! ❧
Publisher of Natural Awakenings Atlanta since 2017, Paul Chen’s professional background includes strategic planning, marketing management and qualitative research. He practices Mahayana Buddhism and kriya yoga. Contact him at [email protected].
