Growing our team ❤️

We are excited to welcome Poornima, Silke and Marina to our little Veda Studies family. We have much to celebrate! It is our one year Gāyatrī anniversary – for the last year, a group of us have been meeting each week to practice our Gāyatrī upāsana – a meditative practice that includes making a Saṅkalpa (a determination), prāṇāyāma using the Gāyatrī mantra for count, Gāyatrī japa and contemplation in a seated posture (āsana).

In the Hindu tradition, having a consistent gāyatrī japa practice has always been a basic pre-requisite to learning and chanting Veda. While most of us in our community do not have access to the initiation ceremony (upanayana) or the ability to take on the serious commitment followed by such an initiation, we have the option to practice the core part of that same practice, as taught by my teacher, as a universal practice for non-initiates. This practice also requires some training (a 2 hour workshop only!) and we have been offering twice a week led practice LIVE on Zoom for those who have taken this workshop.

Thanks to growing our team, we will now be able to offer the LIVE led practice all five days of the week at different hours now. We hope to grow this serious community of practitioners who wish to maximise the number of Gāyatrī japa repetitions performed in this lifetime. This is our Saṅkalpa. You can simply sign up to the self-paced workshop teaching the practice, and join us for this weekly practice – you can join one or all the led practices, as convenient for you!

Meet new members of our team!

Poornima Mysore

Poornima is a Yoga teacher working to bring the wisdom of Yoga into everyday living for herself and her students. A big part of her Yoga education has been from various teachers at The Yoga Institute in Mumbai. Her Yoga journey started as a teenager and she continues to study and learn while she teaches. She is also teaching Vedic chanting, having completed the INDICA – Veda Studies chanting teacher training program with Shantala. She has been assisting Shantala in her classes, contributing through her writing and providing private practice classes to students on request. She leads the weekly Gāyatri Upāsana practice on Fridays. Based in Mumbai, she can be contacted for private chanting classes on [email protected]

Silke Stamp

Marina Muktidhara

Marina has already been teaching Vedic chanting for several years now. She was inspired by Vedas and the sound system of the Sanskrit language during her studies of Indology in  Zagreb and Berlin. She studied Classical and Vedic Sanskrit, Indian Philosophy, Literature and Religion as a part of her formal education at the University, parallel to studies of German linguistics and language. She has recently completed the INDICA – Veda studies chanting teacher training program, but has been assisting Shantala in her classes already for the last year. Based in Slovenia, Marina leads the Gāyatri Upāsana weekly online practice on Thursdays and is available to teach Sanskrit and a wide range of chanting texts in private classes. If interested, she can be contacted on [email protected]

Click above course to sign up to the self-paced course (2 to 3 hours time), learn the Gāyatrī upāsana practice and join Shantala, Marina, Silke & Poornima for LIVE practice led five days a week. The led practice takes 20 minutes only.

* With special thanks to Eddie Stern for co-teaching the Gāyatrī Upāsana workshop with me and for helping us grow this community!