Svadhyaya — The Niyama That Asks You to Look Inward

Svadhyaya — The Niyama That Asks You to Look Inward

What does a crisis reveal about who you really are? This week, Daniela reflects on Svadhyaya — the fourth niyama and the yoga practice of honest self-observation — from a deeply personal place. Days after two major earthquakes struck Venezuela, she sits with the grief, the impotence, and the question that surfaces for so many people carrying a country inside them: why us, why again? Svadhyaya isn't comfortable. It doesn't promise peaceful discoveries. But it offers something more valuable: the capacity to witness yourself clearly in the middle of chaos — without judgment, without collapsing. In this episode you'll learn what Svadhyaya means in Kundalini Yoga, how the concept of Sakshi (witness consciousness) works as a practical tool under pressure, and a specific Kundalini Yoga meditation for stress and sudden shock that you can try today. For anyone sitting with something hard right now — this one is for you. The Imagine Podcast is produced by Imagine Yoga Academy, offering Kundalini Yoga Teacher Training 200h online and in-person in Zürich, Geneva and Lugano. :::::: About Imagine Yoga Academy We are Pedro and Daniela, co-founders of Imagine Yoga Academy. Since 2012, we've trained over 900 Kundalini Yoga teachers across Switzerland (Geneva, Zurich, Lugano), Spain (Madrid, Málaga), India, and online, always free of dogma, taught as a method of self-knowledge rather than a system of rules. 🌿 Our 200h Kundalini Yoga Teacher Training in Zürich, Geneva and Lugano from October 2026 to July 2027 Nine months. Fifteen people. One way through. For people asking what comes next. 👉 https://www.imagineyogaacademy.com/200h-kundalini-yoga-training-geneva-lugano-zurich/ [https://www.imagineyogaacademy.com/200h-kundalini-yoga-training-geneva-lugano-zurich/] 🌀 Imagine Sangat [https://www.imagineyogaacademy.com/sangat-kundalini-yoga-online-practice/] — our online membership in English A community where your practice can live, even in the busy seasons. Your first step into the Imagine path. 👉 https://www.imagineyogaacademy.com/sangat-kundalini-yoga-online-practice/ [https://www.imagineyogaacademy.com/sangat-kundalini-yoga-online-practice/] 🎁 Free gift — Come Back to Yourself: [https://imagine-academy.kit.com/e761702a5b] Three guided audios. 5 minutes each. 👉 Find us: Web: www.imagineyogaacademy.com [http://www.imagineyogaacademy.com/] Instagram: @imagineyogaacademy.eng YouTube: Imagine Yoga Academy LinkedIn: Imagine Yoga Academy Love & strength, Daniela and Pedro

Tapas — The Third Niyama: Fire, Discipline, and the Will to Live Fully

Tapas is the third Niyama in Patanjali's Eight Limbs of Yoga. It is commonly translated as discipline. But the teachers left us something deeper than that. In this episode, Pedro Misle explores Tapas as the inner fire that makes you want to be here. Not motivated in the productivity sense. Not disciplined in the punishing sense. Alive in the fullest sense. Engaged with the journey. Curious about what's possible. Unwilling to let the days pass without really being in them. What you'll explore in this episode: • Why Tapas may be the epicenter of the entire Eight Limbs path, and what falls apart without it • The difference between happiness, gratitude, and genuine engagement with your own life • Why the absence of excitement, not sadness or burnout, is the real warning sign • Three honest, practical ways to tend your inner fire starting today • How the Niyamas build on each other: from Saucha and Santosha to Tapas This episode is part of an ongoing series on the Eight Limbs of Yoga, exploring how Patanjali's ancient framework applies to modern life — attention fragmentation, compulsive productivity, emotional avoidance, and the quiet human need to feel genuinely alive.Tapas in Kundalini Yoga is not about intensity for its own sake. It is about the willingness to show up for your own life, repeatedly, honestly, and with full presence. One question runs through this entire episode: Are you excited to be alive? Not happy. Not grateful in a performative sense. Engaged. Curious about how deep the rabbit hole goes. Press play and sit with that question. :::::: About Imagine Yoga Academy Imagine Yoga Academy is a Kundalini Yoga school founded by Daniela Troconis and Pedro Misle, training teachers internationally since 2012. The Level I 200h Kundalini Yoga Teacher Training runs in Zürich, Geneva, and Lugano. Yoga Alliance certified. Taught in English. The hybrid format combines monthly in-person weekend seminars with weekly live online sessions, lifetime access to the full online curriculum, and a four-day closing retreat in the Swiss Alps. We teach Kundalini Yoga as a method of self-knowledge, free of dogma, with no affiliation to 3HO. Since 2012, over 900 practitioners have trained with us across Switzerland (Geneva, Zürich, Lugano), Spain (Madrid, Málaga), India, and online. 🌿 Our 200h Kundalini Yoga Teacher Training in Zürich, Geneva and Lugano from October 2026 to July 2027 Nine months. Fifteen people. One way through. For people asking what comes next. 👉 ⁠https://www.imagineyogaacademy.com/200h-kundalini-yoga-training-geneva-lugano-zurich/⁠ [https://www.imagineyogaacademy.com/200h-kundalini-yoga-training-geneva-lugano-zurich/] 🌀 ⁠Imagine Sangat⁠ [https://www.imagineyogaacademy.com/sangat-kundalini-yoga-online-practice/] — our online membership in English A community where your practice can live, even in the busy seasons. Your first step into the Imagine path. 👉 ⁠https://www.imagineyogaacademy.com/sangat-kundalini-yoga-online-practice/⁠ [https://www.imagineyogaacademy.com/sangat-kundalini-yoga-online-practice/] 🎁 ⁠Free gift — Come Back to Yourself:⁠ [https://imagine-academy.kit.com/e761702a5b] Three guided audios. 5 minutes each. 👉 Find us: Web: ⁠www.imagineyogaacademy.com⁠ [http://www.imagineyogaacademy.com/] Instagram: @imagineyogaacademy.eng YouTube: Imagine Yoga Academy LinkedIn: Imagine Yoga Academy Love & strength, Daniela and Pedro

What is Santosha? The Yoga of Inner Contentment and Lasting Peace

We spend a lot of time waiting for the right conditions before allowing ourselves to feel at peace. I'll relax when. I'll be happy when. I'll feel complete when. But the finish line keeps moving. And before we know it, our peace becomes entirely dependent on circumstances we can't control. In this episode, we explore Santosha — the second of the five Niyamas in Patanjali's Eight Limbs of Yoga — often translated as contentment. Not complacency. Not passivity. But the practice of returning to the part of you that remains whole regardless of what life brings. We also look at what Santosha is not: it doesn't ask us to approve of suffering, ignore loss, or stop acting in the face of injustice. It simply points us back to something beneath all of that. Something that cannot be touched by success or failure, by praise or criticism, by what we gain or what we lose. Santoṣād anuttamaḥ sukha-lābhaḥ — through Santosha comes unsurpassed happiness. Not because life becomes perfect. But because we stop searching for lasting peace in what is constantly changing. This episode is part of our ongoing series on the Eight Limbs of Yoga — a practical exploration of Patanjali's Yoga Sutras through the lens of Kundalini Yoga and modern life. In this episode: * What Santosha really means — and what it doesn't * Why contentment is not the same as resignation * How the mantras Sat Nam and Sa Ta Na Ma connect to this teaching * The difference between circumstantial peace and inner stability * How Kundalini Yoga practice supports the cultivation of Santosha :::::: About Imagine Yoga Academy We are Pedro and Daniela, co-founders of Imagine Yoga Academy. Since 2012, we've trained over 900 Kundalini Yoga teachers across Switzerland (Geneva, Zurich, Lugano), Spain (Madrid, Málaga), India, and online, always free of dogma, taught as a method of self-knowledge rather than a system of rules. 🌿 Our 200h Kundalini Yoga Teacher Training in Zürich, Geneva and Lugano from October 2026 to July 2027 Nine months. Fifteen people. One way through. For people asking what comes next. 👉 ⁠https://www.imagineyogaacademy.com/200h-kundalini-yoga-training-geneva-lugano-zurich/⁠ [https://www.imagineyogaacademy.com/200h-kundalini-yoga-training-geneva-lugano-zurich/] 🌀 ⁠Imagine Sangat⁠ [https://www.imagineyogaacademy.com/sangat-kundalini-yoga-online-practice/] — our online membership in English A community where your practice can live, even in the busy seasons. Your first step into the Imagine path. 👉 ⁠https://www.imagineyogaacademy.com/sangat-kundalini-yoga-online-practice/⁠ [https://www.imagineyogaacademy.com/sangat-kundalini-yoga-online-practice/] 🎁 ⁠Free gift — Come Back to Yourself:⁠ [https://imagine-academy.kit.com/e761702a5b] Three guided audios. 5 minutes each. 👉 Find us: Web: ⁠www.imagineyogaacademy.com⁠ [http://www.imagineyogaacademy.com/] Instagram: @imagineyogaacademy.eng YouTube: Imagine Yoga Academy LinkedIn: Imagine Yoga Academy Love & strength, Daniela and Pedro

Saucha: Why Purity in Yoga Isn't About Being Good (The First Niyama

Every morning you clean your body. You tidy the house. You wipe the phone screen on your sleeve without thinking. What almost no one realizes is that these small acts already belong to one of yoga's oldest practices. Saucha — the first of the five Niyamas — means purity. Not in any moral sense, but as plain cleanliness: the body, the space around you, the words that come out of your mouth, and the mind itself. In this episode, Pedro traces that path from the outside in, including a personal practice that started with something as simple as dropping the swearing. The episode also explores digital noise as the modern form of inner clutter, and offers three concrete ways to practice Saucha this week. If you're drawn to the depth of these teachings, our Level I 200h Kundalini Yoga Teacher Training [https://www.imagineyogaacademy.com/200h-kundalini-yoga-training-geneva-lugano-zurich/] runs in Zürich, Geneva, and Lugano — open to anyone ready to deepen this path. :::::: About Imagine Yoga Academy We are Pedro and Daniela, co-founders of Imagine Yoga Academy. Since 2012, we've trained over 900 Kundalini Yoga teachers across Switzerland (Geneva, Zurich, Lugano), Spain (Madrid, Málaga), India, and online, always free of dogma, taught as a method of self-knowledge rather than a system of rules. 🌿 Our 200h Kundalini Yoga Teacher Training in Zürich, Geneva and Lugano from October 2026 to July 2027 Nine months. Fifteen people. One way through. For people asking what comes next. 👉 https://www.imagineyogaacademy.com/200h-kundalini-yoga-training-geneva-lugano-zurich/ [https://www.imagineyogaacademy.com/200h-kundalini-yoga-training-geneva-lugano-zurich/] 🌀 Imagine Sangat [https://www.imagineyogaacademy.com/sangat-kundalini-yoga-online-practice/] — our online membership in English A community where your practice can live, even in the busy seasons. Your first step into the Imagine path. 👉 https://www.imagineyogaacademy.com/sangat-kundalini-yoga-online-practice/ [https://www.imagineyogaacademy.com/sangat-kundalini-yoga-online-practice/] 🎁 Free gift — Come Back to Yourself: [https://imagine-academy.kit.com/e761702a5b] Three guided audios. 5 minutes each. 👉 Find us: Web: www.imagineyogaacademy.com [http://www.imagineyogaacademy.com/] Instagram: @imagineyogaacademy.eng YouTube: Imagine Yoga Academy LinkedIn: Imagine Yoga Academy Love & strength, Daniela and Pedro

Aparigraha and the hidden cost of everything you own

Aparigraha is the last of the Yamas, the ethical foundations of yoga, and it's interesting that minimalism points in the same direction, the hidden cost of the things you own. Aparigraha translates as "not taking more than you need," but it runs much deeper than what's in your cupboards. In this episode, Daniela explores it as a practice of trust: trusting that you're already complete, that nothing external is going to deliver the wholeness you feel is missing, because there is no missing piece. She looks at how the same grasping shows up everywhere, in the things we buy, in the need for the perfect pose on the mat, and in the old stories and beliefs we keep long after they've finished their cycle. She closes with a simple practice to try this week, and an honest reminder that this is an ongoing path, not a finish line, the way Kundalini Yoga teaches consistency over perfection. She gets into the idea of the "hidden tax" every possession charges you, why the joy of buying never lasts, and how aparigraha is really about trust, trusting you're already complete, with no missing piece to buy. There's a simple practice at the end: one drawer, one honest question. If you've been feeling weighed down by your own stuff, this one might land. :::::: About Imagine Yoga Academy We are Pedro and Daniela, co-founders of Imagine Yoga Academy. Since 2012, we've trained over 900 Kundalini Yoga teachers across Switzerland (Geneva, Zurich, Lugano), Spain (Madrid, Málaga), India, and online, always free of dogma, taught as a method of self-knowledge rather than a system of rules. 🌿 Our 200h Kundalini Yoga Teacher Training in Zürich, Geneva and Lugano from October 2026 to July 2027 Nine months. Fifteen people. One way through. For people asking what comes next. 👉 https://www.imagineyogaacademy.com/kundalini-yoga-training-2026/ [https://www.imagineyogaacademy.com/kundalini-yoga-training-2026/] 🌀 Imagine Sangat — our online membership in English A community where your practice can live, even in the busy seasons. Your first step into the Imagine path. 👉 https://www.imagineyogaacademy.com/sangat-kundalini-yoga-online-practice/ [https://www.imagineyogaacademy.com/sangat-kundalini-yoga-online-practice/] 🎁 Free gift — Come Back to Yourself: Three guided audios. 5 minutes each. 👉https://imagine-academy.kit.com/e761702a5b Find us: Web: www.imagineyogaacademy.com [http://www.imagineyogaacademy.com/] Instagram: @imagineyogaacademy.eng YouTube: Imagine Yoga Academy LinkedIn: Imagine Yoga Academy Love & strength, Daniela and Pedro