Swami Nirmalananda Saraswati
CSYT, RYT 500, E-RYT 500
Formerly known as Rama Berch, Nirmalananda created Svaroopa® yoga and founded Master Yoga Foundation to be its home. She began by exploring psychology, yoga, meditation, healing, massage, and Eastern traditions in the 1960’s. She says, “I found my destiny when I attended a program at a meditation center in 1976. I had no idea what was happening, but I had found my Guru and everything began to fall together after that.”
As a result of her visit to the meditation center, Nirmalananda received a powerful and spontaneous initiation. “I was walking down a hotel hallway at the end of a psychology conference, and an ecstatic energy began to surge up my spine. I entered my room, sat down on the floor for some odd reason. My feet twined themselves into the full lotus position.” Nirmalaji had received maha-shaktipat-diksha from Swami Muktananda (Baba), though he was physically in India at the time. The seed had been planted at the meditation center six weeks earlier, and was now sprouting in a dramatic and ecstatic way. “I didn’t understand what had happened to me but I knew it was important. I knew I wanted to return to that meditation center even though I didn’t yet see the relationship between these two seemingly separate events.”
MahaKundalini initiation shows up differently in every person. In Nirmalananda, it manifested as spontaneous yoga poses that physically moved her throughout her hour-long meditation every morning before her children awoke. She reoriented her life around these early morning adventures, as they became the most important part of her day. Studying Baba’s books, attending weekly meditations, and learning how to play several Indian musical instruments provided a structure that supported the blossoming within her, while life speeded up around her. “In hindsight, I can see that I had to complete certain karmas, but it got really crazy.” She completed her college degree with two years of work packed into one, while she continued to work at her accounting practice, which inexplicably doubled. The morning meditations gave her the energy to handle all of these challenges, while raising her children, baking bread, and studying yoga asanas (poses) in two different styles with two different teachers. The asanas were very important to her because of the spontaneous poses every morning – she wanted to understand what was happening to her.
She taught her first classes in her home in 1976, though “I really knew that I didn’t know what I was doing.” Her experiences of the spontaneous asanas every morning showed her the power of the spine as a conduit of consciousness. “But when we did the poses in class and in the teacher trainings I took, that spinal opening wasn’t happening. There was a lot of efforting, which it was getting in the way for me. The whole idea of ‘posing’ and of perfecting the body was incredibly foreign to me.” It would be 15 years before she would understand what had happened inside her.
New Year’s Day in 1977 offered a pivotal moment when Nirmalananda attended a weekend meditation seminar at Muktananda’s ashram in Oakland CA. The first swamis initiated by Baba had just returned from India to lead the seminar. When Swami Shankarananda stood up in his flaming orange robes, Nirmalaji says, “I felt the inner impulse by which I had always lived my life. It arose powerfully within me and said, ‘I want that.’ I knew I would become a swami one day.”
All of this had been happening without Nirmalananda having met her Guru physically, so she traveled to Ganeshpuri India in October 1977. Though she had never traveled internationally, she says, “I never thought anything that I saw was at all strange, even in such a different world as India was then. When I arrived, I came down the airplane steps and placed my foot on India’s earth – an ecstatic impulse arose inside, shouting ‘Mother!’ I knew that I had come home. In that moment I realized that I had never before felt at home anywhere, but I was home now.”
Nirmalananda asked Baba for permission to move her family into the ashram; he told her he was coming to America and they could join him there. She sold her home and her accounting business, and moved the family into the Los Angeles ashram, where she served as part of the management team under Swami Shankarananda’s direction. She also taught asana classes and served as one of the ashram musicians.
In 1978, Nirmalananda moved into the ashram to study with Muktananda, amassing teaching certifications in many yogic disciplines. One of her most important relationships during that time was with Chakrapani Ullal, a renowned Vedic astrologer who has continued to be a key adviser and supporter ever since. Most importantly, Nirmalaji’s immersion and total focus on Baba’s teachings laid the foundation for her life and work since, especially in India during the extraordinary last year of his life. She says, “Six weeks before he left this world, he sent me back to America to raise my children and to teach.” She was helping to establish the yoga program in the ashram in Spain when Muktananda took mahasamadhi, the final absorption into consciousness. Nirmalananda describes, “Baba came to me as he was leaving, and told me that he had already given me everything. I didn’t know what he meant at that time.”
She returned to southern California in 1983 and started teaching asana classes, while working during the day to support her children. “Slowly, I began to fall apart. For me, Muktananda was everything – and still is. But I didn’t yet know how to live my life without being in his physical presence.” She traveled to Ganeshpuri in 1985 for the anniversary of Muktananda’s mahasamadhi, but it didn’t help her integrate her yogic knowledge into her life. In pain from neck and back spasms and suffering from deep despair, she describes that she was rescued by a message from Gurumayi Chidvilasananda, whom Nirmalananda had known from her years with Baba. “I went to her and cried at her feet for over an hour. She invited me to move into the ashram.” With her children now in college, Nirmalaji lived and studied with Gurumayi for four years, gradually learning how to live in the world as a yogi.
Just before moving into the ashram, Nirmalananda was injured in a serious traffic accident, which left her in pain and mostly bedridden for two years. “The ashram community took care of me, bringing me food and treatments in every healing modality under the sun. Everything helped a little but nothing made a significant difference. As I lay in bed, day after day, I wondered, why me?” She now cites this time period as the beginning of her true understanding of the human body. She was unable to practice asana or the vigorous pranayamas, so she discovered the healing power of Ujjayi Pranayama by working with it gradually and slowly. She says that she is now grateful for this experience because, “I know pain. I am not afraid of it. I am not afraid of my pain; I am not afraid of your pain. This gives me great freedom, and makes me able to see past the problem to the cause. Then the solution is easy.”
In 1987, Nirmalananda returned from the Ganeshpuri ashram to settle in San Diego and begin teaching. Her classes were in the classical hatha yoga tradition, coming from her in-depth training during her years in the India. Even though her classes grew and she had a successful yoga studio, Nirmalaji could see that her students were not getting the radical physical changes that she had enjoyed in her early years. She began to create variations on the classical poses, based on her internal knowledge of anatomy. Students were amazed and delighted with the immediate results. The student body doubled in size, and then doubled again in just a few weeks.
Over the next year, Nirmalananda’s knowledge and understanding of the body blossomed more fully every time she taught. Her ability to explain the process expanded every time a student asked a question as well as with every pain that a yoga therapy client brought in to her. She describes her unique and powerful way of teaching as “a cosmic download, given to me by my Guru. He gave it to me in one instant, whole and complete, but it took me 15 years to figure out what I got. I certainly am a slow learner!” She was urged to name it, so she accepted the help of a student in establishing the copyright and trademark protection for Svaroopa® yoga, protecting both the name and the body of teachings in order to preserve their integrity. Yoga Journal listed Svaroopa® yoga as a style in 1996, providing national recognition of its growth and effectiveness. Master Yoga Foundation was created as a not-for-profit organization to be the home for Svaroopa® yoga.
In 1996, Nirmalananda attended a meeting about national standards for yoga teachers and teacher training programs. She continued to participate in the thrice-yearly meetings, ultimately serving as the founding president of Yoga Alliance, which entailed years of full time work for the fledgling organization, while she was teaching for Master Yoga and Dr. Chopra. Nirmalaji also worked with local yoga teachers to found the San Diego teacher association, Y.E.S. (Yoga Education Society), serving as the founding president and creating a big yoga event, Yoga San Diego.
Nirmalananda began her studies of ayurvedic medicine when she created and directed the yoga program for Dr. Deepak Chopra. For five years, the guests consistently gave the highest evaluation of their various retreat experiences to their Svaroopa® yoga classes. “During these years, I met and taught many celebrities. The one that touched me most deeply was Dr. Benjamin Spock. I had the honor of leading a team of yoga teachers and therapists that cared for him in the last years of his life.” After Dr. Chopra moved his center to a new location in 2001, Nirmalaji continued her ayurveda studies in seminars with Dr. Vasant Lad and Swamini Mayatitananda (Mother Maya). She explains that her ayurvedic studies have deepened her yogic lifestyle, especially the annual panchakarma treatments she undertakes in India.
She met with Swami Satchidananda several times due to his support for Yoga Alliance. These meetings laid the Foundations for Master Yoga’s hosting him in a public program in San Diego. Master Yoga also hosted Shree Ma several times, enabling Nirmalananda to enjoy a meaningful relationship with this important teacher. Nirmalaji thanks Shree Ma for “giving me a course correction when I needed it, and always showering me with blessings and love, which I still didn’t know how to find on my own.”
After meeting Jean Klein, Nirmalananda experienced the state he described, which made her see that the different meditative traditions provide different inner experiences, with the ultimate attainment in each system actually being different from one another. This deepened her dedication to her own Guru and renewed her commitment to fulfill the promise of yoga as he described it. “Every great teacher I have met has helped me clarify and understand what I had already been given by Baba. Yet I needed their help to see it clearly and to stay on the path.” Nirmalaji continued to travel to study with Gurumayi several times a year, as well as meeting several other important gurus when they were visiting America, including Amma (Mata Amritanandamayima) and Sri Sri Ravi Shankar.
In her own meditations, Nirmalananda had several powerful visions and experiences of Bhagavan Nityananda of Ganeshpuri. He gave her a subtle initiation several times, three days in a row. “I didn’t understand what was happening, but afterward I could see that my students were getting something new from my teaching.” While there had always been a few students who got spontaneous shaktipat, the number now increased dramatically. Nirmalaji’s presence clearly affected them in a new way, and many began talking about her appearing in their dreams. In accordance with her lineage, she continued to direct their attention past her, to the current head of the Siddha Yoga lineage, Gurumayi.
Svaroopa® yoga teachers began inviting her to teach in their cities, so she added weekend workshops to her schedule, holding the first one in Calgary Canada. That led to her teaching at many yoga conferences and yoga retreat centers, including Kripalu Center, Mt. Madonna, Feathered Pipe Ranch, Hollyhock, Omega Institute and others. Nirmalananda also traveled to offer many workshops in Australia, England, South Korea, and Mexico as well as yoga studios throughout the USA.
In 2001, Nirmalananda announced that she had not been to India for 14 years because she had given that time to creating Master Yoga Foundation. Now she was taking time off for a yatra, spiritual pilgrimage, to the most important sites that Baba had named. She returned from an arduous trip through 28 cities in 35 days, knowing that something had changed inside her. “I felt an inner independence. What I mean is that I felt like I didn’t need to depend on anyone outside of me in order to anchor my inner state any more. It was so new that I didn’t know how to trust it, so I continued visiting my gurus for their support and guidance for another seven years.”
By now, Nirmalananda was traveling to teach so much that she could not serve the local students in Master Yoga’s San Diego studio. The many yogis dispersed to the large community of teachers she had trained and Nirmalaji intensified her support of the worldwide Svaroopa® yoga community. By 2003, she was teaching more than half of the year on the East Coast, so she accepted a student’s offer to open a teaching facility in Rehoboth Beach DE. She established a home on each coast and began to commute by plane several times a month.
Nirmalananda continued traveling to India for biannual personal retreats, returning each time with her state obviously deepened. Her ability to teach and lead others to their own inner experience expanded simultaneously. She describes her 2005 retreat in Pondicherry as a key experience. She arrived for one early morning meditation, surprised to find hundreds of people in the usually empty courtyard. Soon, they all stood and formed lines, which she joined. After an hour in line, she was amazed to be able to walk through Shree Aurobindo’s private quarters. This was an annual event that commemorates his unveiling; his meditations had made such radical changes in his body that his very dark skin had turned pure white and a formal unveiling was held to celebrate it.
Nirmalaji says, “I understood so much more about what Baba had already given me. While the physical tools of Svaroopa® yoga are very powerful, ultimately the body won’t really change until the inner experience of consciousness opens up. My body opened up because Baba gave me that inner gift.” Her meditations the next morning were profoundly different, as she stepped into a new level of something that had been there from the beginning. When she returned home, she began to emphasize the importance of meditation as well as Ujjayi as a bridge to healing, transformation and the inner experience of Self.
Yoga International published an article on the Magic Four in 2005, asking Nirmalananda to write the article and do a photo shoot for the poses. When Nirmalaji went to the Himalayan Institute for the photo shoot, she had a personal meeting with Pandit Rajmani Tigunait. He invited her to visit the most important tantric sites in northern India. “This yatra shifted my attention from the formless to the form, and I found myself craving land and trees. I needed land, so I could plant the shakti that was growing in me.”
She asked the Board to establish a home base that would allow her to establish a permanent home. After traveling extensively to teach for 14 years, she felt the need to have time and space to deepen her inner experience. Master Yoga’s Board saw the need for the whole community to have a more central location as well as to support Nirmalananda’s needs as their Master Teacher, and moved to the Philadelphia area in 2006.
After one year, an overnight fire destroyed the building and everything in it. Nirmalananda’s response was, “Instead of worrying, send blessings.” The Board created a fundraising campaign, which energized the world-wide Svaroopa® yoga community and began shifting Master Yoga to the next level of leadership and service. The growth of the Board and their new clarity freed Nirmalaji to begin looking more deeply at herself.
In 2008 Nirmalananda continued to travel to spend time with both Panditji and Mother Maya, always learning from their teachings as well as basking in their grace-filled presence. In early 2008, each of them urged her to take the next step – to become a swami and to open an ashram. This was external confirmation of her inner knowing, which is spanda, the divine vibration. A leading Svaroopa® yoga teacher in Australia, Janet Murray, had already reconnected Nirmalaji with an old friend, Swami Shankarananda of Melbourne Australia, after a 25 year gap. They had a sweet reunion, during which Swamiji offered her sannyasa initiation. She completed that initiation in Ganeshpuri in February 2009.
Nirmalananda says, “My first guru was my mother; she taught me to love God. My second guru was my father; he taught me unconditional love by giving it to me. I live in undying gratitude to Muktananda, who opened the door to my own divinity. Yet I didn’t know how to step across the threshold, and needed the nurturance and support of so many gurus along the way. My heart fills with gratitude for their love and support. Yet my life is Muktananda – there is nothing but Muktananda.”
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