PETER ROOD (PRANAVA)
Sivananda 200 AYT, POLY
LYW: How/why did you come to Yoga? And when did you join the LiveYoga Wellness community.
Peter: I was introduced to yoga by a friend whose wife was a Iyengar teacher, and a fabulous one at that, who traveled frequently to India. I was a pretty enthusiastic newbie and even practiced in those silly yoga shorts that looked like underwear.
Years later, when I was interested in opening a studio at Holy Nativity, Teri walked into my office, and what began as an idea has become a partnership that has become an important and integral wellness center and community in Westchester.
LYW: How has yoga changed your life?
Peter: For me yoga has been a journey from outside to inside. In the beginning, yoga was almost exclusively a exterior practice, balancing, bending, stretching and growing in bodily strength and agility. Later on in my life, and after my ordination to the priesthood, I sensed something missing from my spiritual life, my interior life. Ten years ago, I met Swami Omkarananda, director of the local Sivananda Yoga Vedanta Center in Marina del Rey. Through her guidance, the guidance of the yogis that made up the community, and the wisdom and teachings of Swami Sivananda and Swami Vishnu Devananda, I discovered that yoga offers a pathway to the integration of the exterior and the interior as a spiritual practice through proper exercise (asanas), proper breathing, proper relaxation, proper diet, and positive thinking and meditation. These five points and living among people guided by these five points changed my life.
Peter: For me yoga has been a journey from outside to inside. In the beginning, yoga was almost exclusively a exterior practice, balancing, bending, stretching and growing in bodily strength and agility. Later on in my life, and after my ordination to the priesthood, I sensed something missing from my spiritual life, my interior life. Ten years ago, I met Swami Omkarananda, director of the local Sivananda Yoga Vedanta Center in Marina del Rey. Through her guidance, the guidance of the yogis that made up the community, and the wisdom and teachings of Swami Sivananda and Swami Vishnu Devananda, I discovered that yoga offers a pathway to the integration of the exterior and the interior as a spiritual practice through proper exercise (asanas), proper breathing, proper relaxation, proper diet, and positive thinking and meditation. These five points and living among people guided by these five points changed my life.
LYW: Why do you love teaching yoga?
Peter: I love sharing what I love and guiding people to deeper levels of understanding and peace.
Peter: I love sharing what I love and guiding people to deeper levels of understanding and peace.
LYW: How do you take your yoga into the world?
Peter: By drawing from the deep peace within me and within all things and making it tangible whenever possible.
LYW: What is your current practice or a recommendation and why?
Peter: Practice meditation regularly. Meditation leads to eternal bliss. Therefore meditate, meditate. Swami Sivananda.
