About Sahaja Online

A computer, tablet or smart phone with a good Internet connection. Or even just a regular cell phone or landline in case you don’t have access to these.You do not need to learn specific postures or sit in a particular place wearing specific clothing. Select a clean room where you can freely focus your attention on the online meditation sessions without too much noise or distraction.

1. Once you’re ready to start attending our online meditation sessions, the first step is to registeryour profile with Sahaja Online by providing a few bits of information about yourself.
2. Once you’ve registered, you can check our Meditation Calendar  page for Introductory programs and Ongoing meditation sessions. You’re welcome to attend multiple Introductory sessions if you feel you need them, although most people don’t need more than one Introductory program.
3. If you begin to benefit from our meditation sessions and at some point would like to attend our Intermediate sessions with an Instructor, please visit our Contact page  and submit your request to do so. Or drop a note to one of our coaches if you’re already interacting them.You’ll be asked some questions that help our instructors determine if you’re ready, and will be able to benefit from our Intermediate level sessions. You can typically expect a response within 2-3 days.
4. Once you’re confirmed for our Intermediate sessions, you’ll receive email notifications along with a link and time to join these sessions. These sessions are not displayed on our Meditation Calendar page and are by email invitation only.

   You may continue our Intermediate-level sessions for many months or even years. Upgrading to our Advanced    Sessions can be handled in a few different ways…

5. We may periodically send you intimation regarding potential In-Person Sahaja Online Contact Sessions in your area, provided there are other meditators within driving distance who are interested.
6. If you really want to attend an Advanced Session soon, you can contact your instructor and we’ll try to route you to the closest upcoming session nearby, provided you can arrange your own travel. There are many possibilities for attending these sessions, including large Sahaja events or seminars for advanced practitioners.

All our sessions typically range from 30 to 60 mins. We try to have 3-4 Ongoing sessions and at least one Introductory session every week. Instructors may vary across these sessions depending on their availability. We also offer a variety of different sessions and a particular type of session, such as a energy balancing session or a collective foot soak session, may not be repeated each week. A lot of our scheduling is also based on audience preferences and feedback, so please feel free to indicate your preference through our online polls when conducted in our sessions or through the Contact page.

No prior preparation is required. Just start attending and we’ll guide you. For Introductory sessions, you may find that doing some steps listed in our Quick Start Guide is very helpful to help you get going. You will need to find a quiet and clean space, however to benefit from the meditation session.

We have signed up with zoom.us as the platform for offering our online meditation sessions. This is a proven platform for large audiences with facility to join the session over a PC or Mac, any handheld device or over telephone. You will require necessary internet bandwidth for streaming video, so you should be mindful of this especially if you have a limited internet bandwidth plan or a limited data plan. You can always dial in over telephone into our sessions in such cases. For PC or Mac, a simple one time automatic installation of the zoom application happens for the first time you try to join an online session. For handheld devices such as tablets and smartphones, you need to install the zoom us app. You can use either the link provided or the Meeting ID to join our online sessions on any PC or Mac or Device. Joining via telephone requires you to dial the number and enter the meeting ID. Some of our Intermediate Level Sessions may also be two-way interactive video sessions. For these, you will need a good quality broadband, but typically these sessions are not very frequent.

Absolutely. Keep in mind however that you will need at least one registration on SOL to know when our sessions are scheduled and we also change our meeting information every once in a while. You cannot get this information without at least one person logging in. Besides there are other benefits to registering with Sahaja Online, which you can read here.

No. At Sahaja Online, each person is his / her own master. We do track the overall statistics on the number of attendees and may sometimes do an analysis of the number of people joining from various locations, but there is no individual level tracking. Also, if you’re expecting that our coaches are doing this in order to motivate and mentor you for your progress in Sahaja, they do not. The onus is on you to establish regularity in attending the meditation sessions.

Normally, you shouldn’t face any issues as zoom is a proven platform being used by large corporations and audiences. If you are facing issues, then it’s likely something to do with your computer or device. At present we do not have technical support or help available from zoom or Sahaja online. You can always drop us a note or let us know over our Contact page about issues you are facing. We understand that this may not help you immediately in joining a session, but there are always future sessions you can look forward to. You can refer to the zoom.us website for troubleshooting tips.

We’ll throw our hands up in glee and rejoice if this is the case because this means that our audience is overflowing beyond the limit we’ve planned can attend. That’s a great problem for us to have – more people wanting to attend our sessions. Anyways, on a serious note, it’s unlikely that you’ll face this situation as we constantly upgrade our capacity available to accommodate the expected audience. This means that there is no limit at this present time on the number of attendees. In future, if we hit this maximum limit in our sessions, we plan to introduce the RSVP feature for every session. For now, it’s not required.

It’s an inner-energy-based meditation technique that allows you to explore the depths of your inner self. Learn more…

Sahaja Online provides complete internet-based access to live and do-it-yourself (D.I.Y.) Sahaja meditation. It is also the largest free online resource related to Sahaja meditation, including free meditation coaches, scientific research,free meditation videos, downloadable guides and more.

Our founder, Shri Mataji Nirmala Devi created Sahaja meditation to be completely free to the public because she felt something as precious as an individual’s spiritual ascent can never be equated to money. Our mission is to propagate peace and positivity throughout the world by helping people change within themselves.

You can practice live or D.I.Y. Sahaja meditation from home, work or while traveling. The difference is that live sessions require an internet connection and D.I.Y. sessions can be done ‘offline’ by yourself.

Yes. Learn more…

Sahaja meditation is for regular people just like you - not just mystics and monks. Without yoga mats, stretching, or spa music, Sahaja is much more than your average relaxation technique. Practiced by people of all ages and walks of life, Sahaja is a deep, self-improvement journey that can also take you to the depths of spirituality, if you're seeking higher purpose in life. Beyond concentration techniques and mental exercises, Sahaja taps into an innate subtle energy inside you, granting you the state of meditation at an elevated level of consciousness of thoughtless awareness. Sahaja isn't new. Backed by credible scientific research, Sahaja has been practiced in over 90 countries for nearly 5 decades. Sahaja can provide relief for a number of problems including stress, anxiety, depression, ADHD and insomnia. At the same time, it distills the teachings of ancient saints and spiritual scriptures into a practice that helps you actualize them to improve your life and personality in a practical manner. Though Sahaja's origins are from the East, it's knowledge, philosophy and techniques are universal in nature. We have instructors and practitioners of various backgrounds and ethnicity. Sahaja is unique in its ability to offer meditation, self-improvement and spirituality completely free of charge to the public.

An inner-energy-based meditation technique that allows you to explore the depths of your inner self. Sahaja offers all the typical benefits of meditation, but can also extend well beyond typical forms of meditation, as the inner energy system is grounded in spirituality. Sahaja can be a long-term, individual and personally controlled journey of spirituality. Founded in 1970, the Sahaja practice has been tested and proven for well over four decades and is practiced by thousands in many countries across the globe.

Sahaja is a not-for-profit organization that operates entirely through volunteer donations. There is no “membership” for this organization. Everyone is welcome and donations are voluntary. Shri Mataji Nirmala Devi (1923 – 2011) is the founder of the Sahaja organization and originally founded the practice as Sahaja Yoga. In 2008, the offering “Sahaja meditation” was launched in America to avoid confusion since Sahaja Yoga does not involve any techniques commonly thought of today as “yoga” (e.g., stretching and breathing exercises).

Sahaja meditation acts on your inner, spiritual energy (known as Kundalini) and an intricate system of energy channels (nadis) and energy centers (chakras). The state of thoughtless awareness is unique to Sahaja meditation as it is established on a higher plane of consciousness made possible by the Kundalini energy rising and connecting with the all-pervading cosmic energy or the collective unconscious. Sahaja meditation is not merely a stress relief course. Most other forms of meditation achieve thought reduction or elimination with cognitive focus or mind control at the regular level of consciousness. Sahaja is designed to be integrated into your lifestyle and through long-term practice, come the greatest benefits in all facets of human life — personality and character improvement, health improvements and spiritual advancement. Sahaja meditation differs from other forms of Kundalini yoga in that it can be easily taught en masse to many people and the Kundalini energy is taken up through the central energy channel. The opening of the Sahasrara chakra, as the Kundalini pass through it to connect to the all-pervading energy of the cosmos, is totally unique and possible only through Sahaja meditation. You can also expect to achieve mindfulness — and in fact, greater benefits beyond mindfulness  — by developing vibratory awareness that give you constant feedback and the ability to diagnose the state of your energy centers. Finally, unlike many forms of meditation, Sahaja is always offered completely free of charge.

Your inner energy is awakened and your subtle energy system becomes active. Our instructional videos describe the techniques and what exactly happens during Sahaja meditation.

In the short term, you’ll feel peaceful and relaxed with a few sessions of Sahaja meditation. Thereafter, it may take anywhere between a few weeks to a few months to maintain a sustainable experience of the flow of vibrations — everyone’s experience is different. During this period, you’re likely to see positive changes in yourself such as becoming more patient, feeling less stressed, happier, better balanced, more emotionally stable and less fatigued. Between a few months to a few years, the complete benefits of Sahaja meditation begin to manifest. Typically, people begin to see significant changes in their character and personality and many have also reported improvements in their health over time. Beyond all these benefits, Sahaja can offer you the ultimate spiritual pursuit into your inner self, something that’s impossible to achieve through the typical meditation course. These timelines and the journey itself can vary from person to person, depending on the state of your energy centers, and your own efforts, focus and perseverance.

Yes, absolutely. To date, there are no reports of any side effects or harmful consequences of anyone practicing Sahaja. At Sahaja Online, you awaken your Kundalini energy with guidance by an instructor online and can continue to practice meditation as you wish, with total control over your own practice, whether you’re practicing Sahaja online or alone at home.

No, you can continue to practice whatever you’re doing right now and try Sahaja meditation in parallel. However, if you are practicing some other form of Kundalini yoga, you are advised to either continue practicing that or switch to Sahaja meditation. Mixing and matching two forms of Kundalini-energy-based yoga/meditation is not advised.

Morning meditation, evening foot soak and meditation and at least once a week collective meditation. See a practitioner’s typical experience of a daily meditation routine.

Sahaja is not meant to be a cure for any disorder, or to replace any medical treatment you are currently undergoing. You should continue to follow your doctor’s advice relating to medication or other treatments. Sahaja meditation’s primary goal is to help people adopt meditation as a long-term holistic improvement measure in their lives — physically, cognitively, emotionally and spiritually. Its core purpose is not to act as a healing or cure for any disorder, although it is definitely possible to realize significant health improvements over time with the practice of Sahaja and the scientific literature is reflecting more and more evidence to support that.

Sahaja was designed by our Founder, Shri Mataji Nirmala Devi to be completely free to the public. This is because Sahaja uses your own inner energy and your spiritual ascent is entirely yours. Secondly, she felt that something as precious as an individual’s spiritual ascent can never be equated to money. Thirdly, the powerful underlying mission of Sahaja is to slowly but surely propagate peace and positivity in this world by helping people change within themselves. When more people begin practicing Sahaja, we keep moving toward this goal, and our experiences of collective meditation are stronger with larger groups of people. If there’s one thing you can contribute to Sahaja, it is by talking about Sahaja and Sahaja Online to your family, friends and colleagues. Spread the word around and help others change their lives and the lives of others. By encouraging more people to practice Sahaja, you’re also helping us bring a more powerful experience to people joining our meditation sessions.

There are a few challenges that all Sahaja practitioners typically face:

1. Establishing thoughtless awareness – You’ll find that thoughtless awareness is never consistent. It ranges from a few moments or seconds to a few minutes and is also intermittent and inconsistent. Some ways of tackling this problem are to humble down and surrender yourself to your own inner energy. Cooling your liver down with ice packs can also help stabilize your attention and enhance thoughtless awareness.

2. Establishing your vibratory awareness – Depending on the state of your energy centers, it may take a while for you to begin feeling vibrations. Regular foot soaking and daily meditation, along with clearing techniques explained on this website under the instructional videos can really help in establishing your vibrations sooner.

3. Regularizing your meditation schedule – Many people new to meditation struggle with this. We recommend that you set your alarm clock 15 minutes earlier each day and do your meditation the first thing in the morning. And make a conscious attempt to spend 15 minutes meditating before you go to bed. Once you do this every day for several weeks, you’ll eventually reach a point where not meditating doesn’t seem like the way to live your life, and meditation just becomes an integral part of your lifestyle.

This website features plenty of videos and information that can help you conquer these and other challenges.

Sahaja Online provides complete internet-based access to Sahaja meditation. By registering on this platform, you can attend introductory programs and ongoing intermediate meditation classes, as well as advanced classes. You can also learn all about meditation and spirituality without registering. All content is freely available for anyone to access. There are plenty of articles on meditation and associated scientific research, spirituality, and Sahaja practitioner experience videos.

Sahaja Online is run by a group of passionate Sahaja practitioners, keen on helping people transform their lives through spiritual meditation. As with all Sahaja meditation classes, everything on Sahaja Online is offered free of charge. You can explore the perspectives and experiences of the Sahaja practitioners who run Sahaja Online through their in-depth videos.

Absolutely. Please let us know the size of the audience and we’ll be glad to have our instructors come over to do an introductory Sahaja programat a convenient time. There is no charge for the Sahaja program itself, but if the venue requires extensive travel or lodging costs for our instructors or other administrative or logistical costs, we may ask you to arrange for those. In most cases, we try to cover those as well, as much as we can, particularly for larger audiences.

We collect your name, email address, zip code and some information around your age group, your expectations of Sahaja when you sign up, as well as whether you’ve practiced other types of meditation before. We do not sell or distribute any information we gather during the registration process. We use your email address only to keep you informed about upcoming sessions and events and for our coaches to communicate with you. We use your zip code to assess how many people are practicing Sahaja online in different regions, with the goal of possibly organizing in-person advanced sessions in the future at locations where there’s a sizable number of interested Sahaja practitioners. We use all other information to tailor the content of our online programs so we can make them more useful to each audience and maximize the benefits and impact of the sessions.

Of course, you may delete your account at any time. We hope that you’ll take a minute to provide feedback as to why you chose to delete your account so that we may better serve our audience.

Absolutely. Our practitioners are always willing to help and answer any questions. You can use our Contact Page and specifyif your request or query is addressed to a specific instructor. Do keep in mind however, that all our instructors are volunteer practitioners and it may not always be feasible for them to provide an immediate response. But we’re always ready to help you in every way we can and we’ll try our best!

No. And there’s no need for “certification.” The practice of Sahaja and growth of an individual using Sahaja meditation is a living, dynamic and evolutionary process. It operates on an inner energy that grows naturally like a tree. Such a living process that also works at the subtlest levels does not lend itself to establishing standards, “minimum requirements,” or qualifications of any sort. Hence, certification of Sahaja instructors is not only impossible, but also meaningless. It would be like giving a baby a certificate at every developmental stage, walking, talking, etc.. That said, all our instructors have been Sahaja practitioners for many years and have verified many different experiences through their own experiments (and the experiences of those they’ve worked with) all along the way. Most of them have also had an opportunity to be directly associated with our Founder Shri Mataji and practice Sahaja under her guidance. Shri Mataji was acknowledged as an expert spiritual guru across the world, especially in the realm of Kundalini yoga and meditation.

Sahaja Online does not accept donations.

Yes, of course, but with some caveats. We recommend that you reach an advanced level of practice of Sahaja and have completely stabilized your vibratory awareness in order to do this. We want to encourage more people to start practicing Sahaja meditation and become instructors in their own communities, schools and workplaces. It’s very hard for someone to be a credible Sahaja instructor for long without having knowledge of advanced concepts and strong vibratory awareness. But please understand that you are not allowed to charge any money for Sahaja at any time.

Sahaja meditation is an evolutionary process and you continuously evolve to higher stages of maturity and strength of your inner self and subtle energy centers. The first best way to benefit is to allocate time to practice your meditation at home daily. If you’re using our ongoing meditation sessions only to meditate without your independent daily practice of meditation, that’s okay for a while, especially during the initial stages. But typically, the greatest benefits of Sahaja can only be maximized through daily meditation at home. We highly recommend that you watch our instructional videos and use those to guide your daily meditation, as well as foot soaking on a daily basis. Next, the aspect of gaining knowledge versus growing in your experience is one of the most important considerations in the practice of Sahaja. Conventional wisdom would say that the more knowledgeable you are, and the faster you accumulate that knowledge, the more benefit you would get. With Sahaja, it works very differently. Your experience of vibrations and vibratory awareness, along with achieving the state of thoughtless awareness, are much more important than absorbing knowledge through all the information presented on this website. In fact, we’ll go one step further and state that even if you do not read a single page on our website, but are able to experience deep thoughtless awareness and strong vibrations, you’re significantly ahead in your practice of Sahaja and spiritual progress. For centuries, human beings have made the assumption that more knowledge and information equates to better states of existence. Well, not always. At the subtler level of existence, knowledge absorbed mentally is given second preference. Becoming a spiritual personality and exhibiting related characteristics and personality are much more important than amassing spiritual knowledge. Sure, if you’re able to do both, that’s ideal. However, our present human civilization is still taking baby steps in its subtle awareness, so unless you’re one of those truly exceptional souls, you’re better off focusing on the experience more than the knowledge. This is especially important in the Western world where analytical, logical and comprehension skills are given maximum importance. You may not become a guru in Sahaja by knowing a lot of spiritual concepts, but you most certainly qualify for becoming one if your vibrations are near perfect. So spend most of your time on your meditation, rather than on reading information on the website. You might think that’s strange advice coming from the folks who have developed tons of material on this website up for reading and learning, but hey, we’ve developed that information so more and different types of people can be drawn to our website in the first place! Thirdly, your inner urge to continuously progress to higher levels of maturity will help you maximize benefits from Sahaja. On the other hand, if you’re satisfied with attending the ongoing meditation sessions a couple of times a week to de-stress yourself, you’re probably missing out on many deeper experiences that Sahaja has to offer. That in no way takes away the importance of those de-stressing opportunities. We all can use that in today’s world. But the point is, there’s much more to gain than de-stressing, and you’re better off giving some time and priority to these deeper aspects of your life if you want to really take advantage of everything that Sahaja has to offer. Yet, the wonderful paradox in Sahaja is that, by doing this, you will be exploring your own inner depths further and getting a unique type of enjoyment you’ve never experienced before in your life.

No, all of Sahaja’s body of knowledge and all its services are now — and will always be — completely free. We are mandated by our Founder’s philosophy that true spiritual meditation cannot be paid for. There are no premium services only available for an extra charge, and there is never anything to purchase on this site. However, due to the limitations of internet bandwidth or the number of concurrent meditators and the instructors’ ability to manage groups of practitioners, you may be wait-listed before being able to join the advanced classes. In some cases, our instructors may also recommend that you continue attending the basic meditation sessions for a while before migrating to advanced classes because it will be more beneficial for you.

Try it and let us know if you were successful, but honestly, the chances are very low. This is because your inner energy awakening generally needs to be initiated by a trigger, such as the instructor leading the session. Further collectivity and collective meditation is central to progress in Sahaja meditation. You are less likely to make long-term progress just meditating on your own at home. Since we don’t charge you for our services or attempt to sell anything on this website, you can be sure that we’re saying this entirely for your own good. So try and maximize the attendance on our online meditation sessions.