The Yoga of Love

This program explores the human condition and the inner turmoil of the heart through the lens of key yogic texts, including the Upanishads, Bhagavad Gītā, Bhāgavata Purāṇa, and Patañjali’s Yoga Sūtra.

Sessions will focus on the purification and awakening of the heart, the divine call to transcendence through sacred love, and the role of yoga in sustaining higher consciousness in everyday life. Themes such as the capacity to “move deeply into the space within the heart” (praṇidhāna) and how to enter into the state of “total ecstatic absorption” (samādhi) in which one experiences the “all-embracing divine reality” (kaivalya) will be examined.

Together we will explore how the heart serves as the true seat of inner transformation and spiritual realization. Graham will be drawing from his new book, The Yoga of Love: Krishna and the Rāsa Līlā from the Bhāgavata Purāṇa (Oxford University Press, 2025). Each session will open and close with several minutes of tranquil meditational sounds of the voice and harmonium as well as group connecting and sharing throughout.

All levels of yoga practitioners most welcomed.

Description of each Session:

• The human condition and the troubled heart: What are the things that trouble the heart? In this introductory session, we will explore this theme by drawing from specially illuminating passages in key Upanishads, the Bhagavad Gītā, and the Bhāgavata Purāṇa. It is commonly known that Yoga is about controlling the mind. But we will learn here that the mind is controlled only within the heart, according to the Gītā.
• An awakening and purification of the heart: In this session, we will contemplate specific, very beautiful passages from Bhagavad Gītā and Patañjali’s Yoga Sūtra for illuminating this session’s theme. Here we will explore what Patañjali calls īśvara praṇidhāna, or how “the divine source of all reality is reached by moving deeply into the space within the heart,” and learn about all that is contained therein.
• When divinity calls our souls to dance: In this session, we will read from the Bhāgavata Purāṇa’s five chapters on the “dance of divine love,” in which the example of the supreme female yoginīs is offered. A reading of my translation of one of the most exquisite Sanskrit poetic works of the world reveal the highest meditation of what Patañjali calls kaivalya samādhi will take place in this session.
• Yoga as the return embrace of the divine: In this final session, we will explore how we can return to our everyday lives and all the while also retain a transcendent state of consciousness. From the various sacred texts of Yoga, we will explore ways of sustaining higher consciousness in a very mixed and troubled world while allowing the energy of the heart to flow toward all persons and all beings.

Tentative Schedule