“Kriya Yoga shows us how to purify the mind and live a wise and compassionate life — a healthy, happy, soul-guided life.”
Kriya Yoga is an intentional, universal approach to Self-realization and spiritual enlightenment: complete awakening to full knowledge of the Infinite. It is an integrated spiritual path that brings together the most effective elements of all systems of yoga. Emphasis in this tradition is placed on healthy, purposeful, conscious living, and superconscious meditation practice. Kriya Yoga practice facilitates the direct experience of our essential nature. This is accomplished when all obstacles are removed and the practitioner’s awareness is restored to wholeness. To realize the truth of our essential nature as spiritual beings and to live in harmony with that truth is the goal of Kriya Yoga. Kriya Yoga honors the mystical roots of all authentic spiritual and religious traditions.
Kriya (Sanskrit verb-root kri, to do) means “action.” Yoga means union and refers to practices and procedures that bring body, mind, and soul into harmony.
The essential practices of Kriya Yoga are:
superconscious meditation;
insightful study of scripture and of the nature of reality;
self-discipline for conscious living;
and surrender of the illusional sense of being separate from the Source of Life.
Paramahansa Yogananda
The teachings of Kriya Yoga are described in the sacred text, The Yoga Sutras of Patajali. These teachings were brought to the west by Paramahansa Yogananda in 1920. They were taught to his direct disciple Roy Eugene Davis and passed on by him to his disciple, Yogacharya Ellen Grace O’Brian.
The divine nature of every person is honored on this path. The purpose of spiritual practice is to remove any obstacle that obscures full realization of one's innate divinity and its expression. As all souls are inherently divine, everyone naturally yearns to awaken to his or her innate potential and to live a fully conscious, joyful life. Kriya Yoga provides the way.