Padmanjali Yoga was founded right after I emerged from a deeply isolated, silent Tantric retreat of just under three years. This website shares and offers some of what I did to kill time.

 

There is a Sanskrit word - kaladanda - a combination of kala which means time or death (or you could say time, therefore death) and danda, which means a stick or a club.  The connotation is killing time and death - literally, clubbing time to death.

 

My passion is passing on to others the yogic science and Tantric lineages I received from my precious teachers - countless sacred beings. Through long periods in silence and isolation these sacred ones perfected their minds, balanced their emotions, honed their physical and subtle bodies and learned the process of harnessing the pranic energies  – “the yoga of the sun and moon” – Hatha Yoga.  They understood that the ultimate goal of yoga is love - ultimate consummation,  balance and harmony, the union of opposites: sun and moon, male and female, night and day . . . 

 

"These and other mighty beings born into power by the yoga [yoking or union] of the sun [ha] and the moon [tha], roam the universe . . . mingling among crowds of men, for they have killed time [kaladanda] itself."

from Hatha Yoga Pradipika

Translation by Geshe Michael Roach

 

“These and other mighty beings” are the lineage gurus – parampara in Sanskrit - of the Hatha Yoga Pradipika and include our immediate heart teachers. They experienced the intended result of all yoga practice – deathlessness, timelessness, enlightenment - simply the only way to show others the path to love.

 

Our Teachers mingle among us in any form necessary to teach us that time and space are concepts which have no fixed basis other than in a reality where we might be karmically forced to perceive them as governing our births, lives and therefore, our deaths. 

 

I have been granted more than 2500 hours of training in yogic and Tantric practice over the last 17 years including yoga teacher trainings and studies in yogic philosophy from Baba Hari Dass' Salt Spring Centre of Yoga (sister centre to Mt. Madonna Center in California), the Yoga Studies Institute, the Asian Classics Institute's 54 courses in foundational and advanced Tibetan Buddhism, the advanced meditation practices of Mahayana and Vajrayana and yogic and Tantric practices.  This training served and sustained me well during extended retreat - it was my refuge and solace when things got rough.

 

At the request of a core group of amazing beings who have become students, I have passed on these lineage traditions to them, and they in turn will transmit the teachings to those who request them.  It has been my honour to serve on the faculties of the Yoga Teacher Training programs of Langara College (where I taught anatomy and physiology for yoga instructors and yoga teaching methodology for four years)  and the Yoga Studies Institute ( for whom I taught and still teach Tibetan Heart Yoga Teacher Trainings, Series 1 through 8 = 300 hours total; Yoga Sutras Chapters 1 through 4 = 4 x 20 hour courses; Hatha Yoga Pradipika Chapters 1 throgh 4 = 4 x 20 hour courses)

 

These offerings of courses, workshops and retreats are all designed to "kill time" and are ardent testimonies to the joyful and loving benefits of the yogic practices - yama, niyama, shatkarma, asana, pranayama, mudra, bandha and meditation techniques - refined in a retreat setting as taught in the yogic and Tantric texts. My hope and intent is to bring you the depth and passion of my retreat experience in all these offerings.

 

- Padma Yvonne