My path to yoga
With the Nath Tradition I I met in 2005, quite by accident. Although, as you know, there are no accidents. Then I lived in my hometown, Bryansk, and I was just starting to practice yoga. With great interest I immersed myself in the practice, studied the classical sources that were available at that time: Patanjali's Yoga Sutras, Swatmarama's Hatha Yoga Pradipika, Gheranda Samhita and some others. Our teacher yogi said he has teacher (living in India), and then one day he came to our city, with a seminar on Sukshma-Vyayama. To my surprise, he turned out to be Russian, besides, he was from Bryansk, but at that time he really lived in India for many years. This is how I met Guru Yogi Matsyendranath from Tradiya Nath, his first Teacher.
I will not say that I immediately asked to be his student, then I still knew very little about traditional discipleship and who the Guru is. But I was not left with a deep feeling that I knew this person from somewhere, that, thinking about him, I touch something Eternal, and those simple but wise things that he shared in communication immediately penetrated right into my heart. ... Then, a few months later I met him again and clearly understood that this was a chance. A chance to become a disciple of a true Guru, to receive spiritual guidance on a difficult path of development. So I came to Tradition, becoming which continues to this day.
Passed since then for a long time, my life has changed quite a lot, and events in it developed very intensively. I studied yoga and tantra in India with different teachers of the Natha and Sri Vidya Traditions, got acquainted with other systems of spiritual development, traveled a lot across the countries of the East. I saw that the Nath Tradition in India is very extensive, as well as yoga knowledge and mystical the experience enclosed in it. From a simple hobby, yoga has turned into a path, a way of life, into life itself. Seva (service) to the Guru and Tradition began to occupy an important place in yoga sadhana, based on great gratitude to the Teachers of this perfect system of human development, as well as on the desire to make it available to all people, and not only to those who were born and live in India. So I began to help Guruji Matsyendranath in the development of Traditions here in Russia and neighboring countries. With Guruji's blessing in 2008, I established magazine about the traditional yoga "Adesh", which is still being published. We founded the "International Natha Yoga Center", which organizes and coordinates the activities of Natha centers in Russia and European countries, together with the Gurubhai (other pupils my Guru), we opened the Natha Yoga School, within the framework of which we began to teach those who wish.
In 2011, when it became clear to me that I would not deviate from the chosen path, that it was totally mine, I decided to completely devote myself to the Tradition and become a sannyasi forever. It was not easy, but I felt that the decision was completely correct. Then, as is customary in our Tradition, I went on a small pilgrimage in order to find a Guru from whom I could take sannyas. The difficulty was that it had to be a woman, a yogini (in our Tradition of initiation of this level, only a woman can transmit to women), and this is rare. Fortunately, by the grace of Gorakshanath, I managed to meet her, infinitely detached and kind, living in the jungle. Summer 2011 Guruji Ajabnath Maharaj gave me chira-diksha (highest initiation in the Nath Tradition) and the right to be accepted as students. After tapasya in the jungle, communicating with Guruji, I returned to Russia as a different person - it is not for nothing that yogis who received chira-diksha are called naya-naths, that is, "new naths", as if you are being reborn ...
That, perhaps, is all that was worth telling about my path to yoga. Of course, I did not mention a lot - in order to express in words all my experience and tell about all the successes and failures, I would have to write a book, because so much has happened and is still happening that each lived month can be equated to several years of an ordinary life.
