Yoga Beyond Belief: Insights to Awaken and Deepen Your Practice

yoga circles, the White Lotus Foundation and its beautifully rustic hillside retreat is a premier institute for yoga and teacher training in the U.S.
    Students and colleagues have long appreciated Ganga as an inspiring and insightful instructor. He’s able to communicate yoga’s complex teachings and intricate dynamics, relating to others through his use of anecdotal experience, his down-to-earth way with language, and a wonderful sense of humor. Though Ganga has been bestowed—from Swami Venkatesananda—with the rare, honorific title
Yogiraj
and has a Sanskrit name, he is an iconoclast in the truest sense, a critical and free thinker who always questions traditional and ritualized beliefs, dogmatic systems, and authority of all kinds. His revolutionary teaching empowers the individual while retaining the essential truths of yoga.
    A chalked sidewalk epiphany is a rare beginning for a world-renowned career, but within that young boy’s need to know was a pattern of intellectual and experiential curiosity that has formed Ganga White and his unique perspective on life and the physical and spiritual discipline that is yoga.
    —Evelyn de Buhr
8/15/2006

With Swami Vishnudevananda at the opening of Ganga’s first yoga center. Los Angeles, 1967.

    Firewalking ceremony with village priests from India. Val Morin, Canada, 1970.

    Leading the U.S.’s first yoga teacher training. Los Angeles, 1969.

    King Cobra Pose. Grass Valley, California, 1971.

    Diamond Pose. Mendocino, California, 1977.

    Teaching on tour with Peter Sellers and the Peter Max Peace Plane. Ireland, 1971.

    Swami Venkatesananda. Grass Valley, California, 1972.

    CBS special series on Eastern religion. 4977.

    Private demonstration for Mohammed Ali (Full Bow Pose). Miami, 1970.

    Filming
Aliens on Planet Earth
with musician Donovan. Malibu, California, 1976.

    Touring with J. Krishnamurti. Rishi Valley, India, 1980.

    India jungle tour. Mudumulai, India, 1980.

    Sitting meditation. Mendocino, California, 1977.

    Flying Insect Pose. White Lotus retreat, Santa Barbara, California, 1990.

    Cover photo of Ganga and Tracey for
Healing Lifestyles and Spas Magazine
(Stacked Lotus Pose). 2000.

    Amazon jungle shamanic journey (Arm Locked Extended Warrior). 4993.

    Tracey and Ganga assist Sting teaching his first yoga class. Los Angeles, 2003.

    Double Lunge Pose With Tracey. White Lotus retreat, Santa Barbara, California, 2000.

    Leg Head Tiptoe Balance Pose. Kennebunkport, Maine, 1987.

    Lotus Forearm Balance Pose. Los Angeles, 2004.

Notes
    1. There are thousands of translations of this important text, and Swami Venkates wrote one of his own: Swami Venkatesananda,
Enlightened Living: A New Interpretive Translation of The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali
, Sebastopol, Calif., Anahata Press, 1975.
    2. J. Krishnamurti,
Freedom from the Known
, San Francisco, Harper, 1969, p. 15.
    3. Pose? Posture? The words are interchangeable. Pose is more common, perhaps, but they mean the same thing.
    4. Arthur Avalon,
The Serpent Power
, Madras, India, Ganesh and Co., 1924, and reprinted in 1974 by Dover Publications; also by Avalon,
Sakti and Sakta
, Madras, India, Ganesh and Co., 1918, reprinted in 2001 by Nesma Books India.
    5. David Gordon White,
The Alchemical Body
, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1996; also by White,
The Kiss of the Yogini
, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 2003.
    6.
Siddhartha
, reprinted in 1981 by Bantam Classics.
    7. Swami Venkatesananda,
The Concise Yoga Vasistha
, New York, State University of New York, 1984, a translation of the ancient text.

For more information about Ganga White, his workshops, books, videos, and DVDS, visit:
    The White Lotus Foundation
Santa Barbara, California
(805) 964-1944
www.whitelotus.org

[email protected]