About Guru Mai Ram
Guru Mai Ram carries on the tradition of the great Indian masters of yoga and belongs to the old lineage of the natha yogis. She was born on 15 January 1969 in Vilnius. She studied chemistry and psychology. This knowledge helped her understand the human body and mind more deeply and enriched her work as a yoga teacher.
The body as a sanctuary
The asana practice of Mai Ram Yoga is a system of yogic techniques created by Guru Mai Ram, called krama vinyasa: a repeated sequence of positions of the body.
The Guru’s story
1969 – 1998
Mai Ram was born in Vilnius in 1969. Before she found yoga she studied chemistry in Vilnius and psychology in Moscow.
2001
To deepen her knowledge of yoga, Mai Ram went to Varanasi in India, where she met her Teacher, Guru Avadhut Anil Dev Ram. After many years of practice and asceticism, he and Guru Bhut Bhavan Narendra Dev Ram initiated her into the teaching lineage of the great masters of yoga, the mahasiddha kapalin nathas.
2010
For a western woman to carry on the teaching of the most ascetic tradition of Indian yoga masters is unusual and rare. Despite the difficulty of reconciling the path of a yoga master with duties to family and society, Mai Ram raised two daughters and always stayed faithful to her calling, yoga. In 2010 she founded the Mai Ram Yoga ashram in Vilnius, where she began to spread the classical teaching of yoga. Her knowledge of chemistry and psychology allowed her to adapt the complex teaching of classical yoga to western people, and so the Mai Ram Yoga system came into being. This integrated practice, joining body, mind and spirit, is meant to help a person of today develop self-knowledge and awareness, and master both body and mind.
2010 – 2019
The teaching of Mai Ram Yoga grows not only in Lithuania but abroad too: a school was founded in Banská Bystrica in Slovakia, a retreat centre in Valencia in Spain, and in 2019 an ashram in Varanasi in India.
2012
Mai Ram is also the founder of the Mai Ram International Yoga Association in Lithuania and of the Mai Ram Yoga International Institute in India. These organisations develop the classical integrated Mai Ram Yoga system, run training at various levels, studies, seminars and conferences, and work with related organisations around the world.
What sets Guru Mai Ram apart is her ability to join the ancient Indian traditions of yoga with the needs of a person of today. Her personal experience, deep knowledge and devotion let her pass on authentic yoga teaching adapted to people of different cultures and ways of life. The organisations and ashrams she founded support spiritual growth, self-knowledge and awareness, and the classical yogic scriptures she has translated and published carry this knowledge to a wider audience.
The tradition: the natha mahasiddhas
The natha tradition
The natha tradition (Sanskrit nātha, Lord, Master) is a deep spiritual school of ancient India, an authentic one, which guards the original teaching of tantra and yoga. It is a philosophical and practical system of its own whose aim is liberation through the transformation of body and consciousness. The founder of this teaching lineage is Adi Nath Shiva. The nathas brought tantric ideas into practice through the system of yoga and drew a detailed map of how tantric cosmology is realised in the human body.
The mahasiddhas
The mahasiddhas are exceptional spiritual masters who reached the highest level of yogic and tantric practice. The term mahāsiddha means in Sanskrit "the great one who has reached perfection". The mahasiddhas are masters and practitioners of yoga and tantra who, through deep devotion to spiritual practice, have gained supernatural powers (siddhis) and perfection. They guard the secrets of these powers, yet the powers are not their aim: they appear as a side effect of deep spiritual practice. The mahasiddhas stress that true wisdom comes from personal experience, not from books or theoretical knowledge. Their life is given to intense practice and meditation, which let them experience the highest state of consciousness. To this day the mahasiddhas pass on their knowledge directly, and only to prepared students, through initiations and secret teachings. Their wisdom rests on deep practice and inner realisation. They guard the methods of yoga, tantra and alchemy.
A true Guru comes through a line of teachers
Guru parampara is like a living river flowing from the first source of wisdom to this day. The yogic tradition holds that a true Guru must come through a line of teachers. They must be initiated through the tantric ritual transmission, shaktipata. Shaktipata is the direct descent of Divine energy, and so a true Guru is not only a Teacher, a personality or a spiritual authority. They are a vessel of consciousness through which the Divine power touches a person.
When the teaching is passed on through the Guru, it is not only theory or philosophy: it is living experience that has already been practised, proven and rooted over millennia. A teacher who is part of this line carries within not a personal opinion but the continuity of eternal wisdom.
Guru parampara, the living line of Teachers, is a sacred chain joining the student with the highest source. The tradition does not recognise teachings outside a Guru parampara line and stresses that without a Guru even knowledge of the scriptures bears no fruit. The Teacher passes on a living state of experienced consciousness, not only learning in the scriptures. Without such transmission the teaching remains intellectual, lifeless, incomplete.
What a spiritual name is and how it is given
The Guru gives a spiritual name to their students. In the yogic tradition a spiritual name is a transmission of the power of Shakti, a setting of direction and the birth of a new identity, that is, the beginning of the transformation of the ego. This is why initiation into a spiritual name is considered a second birth. The name is passed on through initiation (diksha), the giving of a mantra and the bond with the line of Teachers. A spiritual name is a sign of the teaching lineage, a spiritual power, a protection and the sadhaka's commitment to walk the spiritual path of that lineage. It helps the sadhaka step beyond old projections of themselves, sets direction and steadiness, keeps reminding them of the goal and strengthens inner discipline. So the sadhaka's life must match their spiritual name: actions its energy, speech its meaning and the heart its vibration. In the natha sampradaya the spiritual name Ram is a sign of belonging to the lineage, like the signature of a living fire.
Initiations given by Guru Mai Ram
Following the instructions of the tradition and its ritual transmission, Guru Mai Ram gives these initiations (dikshas):
- nama diksha: initiation into a spiritual name;
- mantra diksha: transmission of a mantra;
- shaktipata diksha: awakening of kundalini, the spiritual energy;
- devi diksha: consecration into a particular tantric sadhana of the Goddess, with initiation into the yantra and the ritual;
- navaratri diksha: consecration into the worship of the Goddess through the Navaratri cycle;
- the higher initiation into the secret Shri Vidya Kaula diksha with vows (vrata), a commitment to practise consciously the full circle of Shakti, worshipping her different aspects;
- diksha into an individual yoga sadhana;
- diksha into the kriya meditation sadhana;
- diksha into the sadhana of a yoga teacher.
