Frequently Asked Questions

What is Yoga?

Yoga is a toolbox of techniques used to enhance awareness

Yoga is control of the mind -Patanjali

Consciousness-explorers use yoga to explore and map the possibilities of experience. It developed first in ancient India, but there are yoga-like practices in the west, too

Yoga is not one thing, but a toolbox of mental and physical practice. Here, you can find tools that focus on the body, like modern Hatha-studio yoga. You can find others that focus on the mind, like the illusion yoga of Buddhism and the Vedanta. The ideas of these traditions differ in important ways, but their basic function is the same in every case: all yogas work to help you gain control over the shape of experience by uniting its mental and physical aspects. This is the mysterious “union of the sun and the moon” you’ll hear about so often in yoga discussion.

How does Yoga work?

Concentration of awareness in the present moment is the method and the goal of yoga


Concentration is the primary technique of yogic consciousness-enhancement. It occurs when you are fully aware in the present moment – when you are aware of being aware of being aware, in yourself, right now. There are many ways to induce concentration. Ritual, meditation, philosophy, physical action – all rhythmically repeated – these create states of concentration. These states themselves have a purpose: to help you dissolve negative patterns of programmed experience by centering your attention on the present moment – the only time that really generates experience. At this origin-point, you can consciously replace limited programming with open-ended programming. Here, infinite horizons of experience open to you.

How does Yoga Philosophy work?

Yoga Philosophy bridges daily life and meditation


Many people who meditate or practice some form of yoga report a common experience: the world of daily life, with all its multi-tasking always-on-never-off stresses seems very different from life while in meditation, nature, or concentration of some type. Yoga philosophy bridges the mental and physical aspects of yoga. It brings your practice into daily experience, and daily experience into practice. It connects your meditative experience to thousands of years of experiment. You become part of the story of yoga, and the story of yoga becomes part of you.

What Can I expect to learn in an Active Yoga Philosophy course?

You will gain the ability to confidently explore and teach yoga


        • Master the powerful Sanskrit concepts at the heart of the yoga tradition
        • Deepen your personal yoga practice
        • Enhance the effectiveness of your yoga classes
        • Bring five thousand years of insight to bear on here-and-now action
        • Learn to think like a yogi
        • Earn your Certificate in Yoga Philosophy

What Subjects Will I Learn in the Yoga Philosophy Program?

You will investigate all the phases of yoga philosophy – humanity’s science of illusion


Yoga Philosophy program participants focus their explorations around a book called Yoga: The Sciences of illusion. It is our map and our compass on a journey through yoga’s most powerful insights. It takes you behind words and into the visionary worlds they express. It is an ‘active text,’ for simply by reading it, you’ll be able to watch your perspective shift and your horizons expand.

Your exploration of Yoga Philosophy begins in the silent cities of the Indus Valley, with their emphasis on purification and concentration. Then, our journey unfolds in seven successive phases. Each phases explores the theory and practice of yoga as developed by specific schools.

  • Discover the power of ritual sound in the ancient Vedas
  • Explore the mysteries of the Upanishads and find out how the self and the cosmos are one
  • Learn to distinguish nature and awareness using the tools of the Yoga Sutra
  • Buddhist forms of yoga, emphasizing impermanence and emptiness, dissolve false views
  • Work, thought and attachment are wings, not chains in the Bhagavad Gita’s world yoga
  • Vedanta, the great school of illusion yoga, reveals how this world is just like a dream
  • Hatha and Tantra integrate physical and mental yoga with powerful symbolic complexes

When you’ve finished this course, you’ll be able to bring five thousand years of insight to bear on your here-and-now situation – whether it’s exploration, practice or teaching. In everything you do, you will be able to think like a yogi.

What is Yoga Sciences Institute?

Click here to learn more about Yoga Sciences Institute and its founder, Dr. Jeff Durham.

How May I Register for Yoga Philosophy training?

Click here for more information on Active Yoga Philosophy training.