Linda Joyce Kramer (Sudevi), is a Transformational Life Coach and Yoga Teacher who writes about “Living yoga off the matt.” As Sri Aurobindo said, “All Life is Yoga.” Sudevi applies the Yoga Sutra’s of Patanjali’s to everyday life. Sudevi is inspired by the touchstone of peace her beloved Guru (teacher), Sri Swami Satchidananda invited his students to use as a barometer in making decisions: “Will this person, situation, thing, add to my peace ultimately, or rob it.”
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Sudevi Linda Kramer has a master’s degree in creative writing from the University of Missouri where she also danced at the conservatory. Before she even knew what yoga was someone was always asking her to teach yoga. She had never been to a yoga class or read about it. One day in her modern class she was asked to substitute for a yoga teacher who felt Sudevi was yoga. In a moment of fear she cancelled and did not show up. She knew how to dance from her soul yet she did not know the union she breathed from was yoga. Years later after a devastating car accident she began to rehab her body using the floor work from Martha Graham’s work and combining it with yogic breath and high intention. She was not conscious of what yogic breath was nor was she trained in it. Then at the urging of friends she went to a yoga class. She was immediately at home with the first Om. As fate would have it, her Jivamukti Yoga teacher, went back to New York and asked her to substitute almost immediately. She panicked, did not yet know the chants or the names of the poses – it had only been a few weeks. She took a deep breath and did not want to disappoint her teacher for whom her entire world revolved around – her teacher held the keys to the magic kingdom and she never wanted to be in exile or “separate” again, so feeling very unprepared she answered destiny’s second knock at her door.
In the years to come she completed one year of Iyengar teacher training with Lila Schwartz in Ashville, N.C. Next she studied and was certified to teach Integral Yoga at the Satchidananda Ashram (www.yogaville.org) and met her diksha guru, Swami Satchidananda, who gave her mantra initiation and continues to guide and direct her life. She then was fortunate to study with the creator’s of Jivamukti Yoga (www.Jivamuktiyoga.com), Yoga Master’s David Life and Sharon Gannon and was personally trained by Life and Gannon and certified to teach Jivamukti Yoga. She is grateful for Life’s and Gannon’s support and encouragement to be one of the “wild” ones who endeavor to leave the world different than they found it. Life and Gannon introduced her to Ananda Ashram (www.anandaashram.org) and their Guru Ashram Founder Shri Brahmananda Sarasvati, also known as Ramamurti S. Mishra, M.D., or Guruji as he was affectionaly called. Guruji (a psychiatrist and neurosurgeon) counseled his patient’s at Bellview Hospital in New York with Patanjai’s yoga sutras and the principle of IAM. When travel permitted she found herself at Ananda ashram or reading his words and studying his work. Sarasvati also used energy and crystals in his healing work as Sudevi had began to years before. It was another gift of fate to learn that her Guru was actualy friends with Sri Brahmananda Sarasvati and lived in residence at the small ashram and ran it for a time.
With the foundation of Bija seed mantra and chakra work she acquired through studies with Life and Gannon, the psychological elements of the yoga poses began to reveal themselves and she began tailoring sequences with students individually to work on a particular state or stuckness which freed them to move upwards. Along the way she mastered pranic healing, reiki, and vedic thai yoga massage body work (www.vedicconservatory.com), as part of the body-mind process.
Sudevi began to add concentrated breath work she learning through pranayams (yogic breath control), and mantra (sacred word) to her clients discovering it provided emotional release and repatterning. Before long she was giving popular restorative workshops where students would breathe through blocks and obstacles in their bodies and lives. Then in a Thai class she was first introduced to rebirthing, a technology she had already been unknowingly working with. She was then blessed with the good fortune to be trained in Rebirthing and the word of “Sacred Renewal Breathwork,” by Sondra Ray (www.SondraRay.com) who uses the breath to repattern the mind/life. Sudevi is committed to studying and sharing breath as a vehicle of change and transformation.
Students soon became clients who booked sessions with her to work on various aspects of their life and practices through yogic body/mind therapies. And as the alpha and omega of life wheel’s turned, she was asked to write a regular column on mind/body therapies and is currently writing about her passionate love of yoga as a tool of transformaton. It is her high intention to draw on yoga to help people be the change they want to see in the world. She is walking in the footprints of all of her teacher’s in applying Patanjalli’s yoga sutras with the intention to take yoga off the matt into the real word–she invokes their presence in her life and work and is eternally grateful for their continued presence.
It is her wish that everyone, everywhere is happy and free and becomes liberated from all the internal and external bondages that keep the world in a state of suffering.
Lokah Samasta Sukinoh Bhavantu. May all beings everywhere be free and happy. May the thoughts, words and actions of our own lives contribute in someway to the happiness and freedom for all. May we leave the world better than we found it. May we do the least amount of harm. Namaste.’
livingyoga
January 19, 2008 at 10:42 pm