Tag: Photos

American yogis touring India

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

As young yogis living at the Poconos Ashram in Pennsylvania, Bhakta and Jay made a pilgrimage to India in December 1973. It was Bhakta’s first trip to the source of the religious tradition and Jay’s second. Unlike many young American and European aspirants who moved to India to study with a guru, they were teaching and practicing on a rundown farm not far from New York City. Their daily encounters in the household they shared resembled much of what I describe in my novel YOGA BOOTCAMP.

I remember our teacher, an American woman, telling of her first experience with a real elephant in India. I think she would have loved having one on our farm.

Standing in our brahmacharies

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 1 Comment

My novel YOGA BOOTCAMP describes the events of being initiated into brahmacharya and being given the two strips of cloth cut from the guru’s robe as our new underwear, supposedly to restrain our male sexual impulses. As a bit of real-life evidence, here we are at the Poconos Ashram in Pennsylvania in mid-1972. The girls found it highly amusing, especially since we were all living under celibacy.

At least I didn’t use the title of an old hymn here, “Blessed Be the Ties that Bind.”