We are opening this year with a conversation that was recorded earlier, yet arrives with precise timing. Some teachings are not meant for the moment they are spoken.
And they meet us when we are ready to receive them.
Sitting beneath the Banyan tree in Bali, and I'm very happy and I have some butterflies in my heart, excited to introduce my dear sister, Tanya Kaps, a person that I met a long time ago..
Tanya and I return to the roots of our spiritual lives. To lineage. To recognition that happens before language. To the body knowing yes before the mind understands why.
This conversation carries the energy of beginnings, not the kind that push us forward, but the kind that draw us inward.
Tanya brings a depth shaped by decades of practice and inquiry. With over 25 years devoted to yoga, Vedanta, and self inquiry, and a background in Integrated Science and Transpersonal Psychology, her presence bridges lived wisdom and grounded understanding. Years of close study with our same Vedanta teacher, Swami Vagishananda, along with her own experience of kundalini awakening and long integration, inform the way she meets students, without urgency, without bypassing, and with deep respect for the human pace of unfolding.
Vedanta shows up here not as theory, but as something lived. Not an idea to understand, but a clarity that continues to unfold through relationships, the body, and everyday life. Seeking softens, yet life does not disappear. If anything, it asks to be met more fully.
The conversation opens into the often misunderstood terrain of kundalini awakening and spiritual emergency. Awakenings that arrive without preparation. Experiences labeled as psychosis. Moments of insight that come before the nervous system has the capacity to hold them. Integration is not treated as a phase, but as an ongoing process that unfolds over years.
Again and again, we return to embodiment. To the understanding that transcendence without embodiment can leave parts of us untouched. That spiritual bypassing, even when subtle, delays healing. That realization matures when we are willing to meet emotion, fatigue, relationship, and ordinary life as sacred ground.
Birth, parenting, exhaustion, tantrums, love, and service reveal Vedanta through flesh and blood. The child as pure prakriti. The body as teacher. Judgment, rather than identity, quietly shaping suffering.
What remains is a grounded reflection on paradox. Being both divine and deeply human. Structure and flow. Ha and Tha. Masculine and feminine principles as partners rather than opposites, and the wider return of feminine wisdom in yoga and spirituality, honoring cycles, birth, menopause, trauma informed embodiment, and relational depth that were long left unspoken.
Long term immersion supports integration in ways peak experiences cannot.
And underneath it all, a quiet reassurance. That nothing on the path was wrong. That every stage served the unfolding. That all is well, has always been well, and will always be well.
If your heart has ever known truth before language, if your awakening asked you to come back into life rather than leave it, this conversation is for you.
Returning to Under the Banyan Tree as a place of lineage and remembranceSacred recognition and the meeting of a true teacherVedanta as lived experience, not philosophyKundalini awakening and spiritual emergencyThe need for context, nervous system capacity, and embodimentTranscendence without embodiment leading to spiritual bypassingSpiritual bypassing and its shadowsMotherhood as embodied non dual initiationThe child as pure prakriti and spiritual teacherJudgment as the true source of suffering, not identityRoles, fluidity, and dharma in daily lifeHa and Tha, structure and flow as nervous system wisdomThe feminine return in yoga and spiritualityParadox as the living heart of realizationLong term immersion vs peak experiencesTeaching as devotion and mutual unfoldingKundalini Tantra as demystificationSpiritual sovereignty lived in ordinary lifeTrust in the intelligence of the unfoldingTanya Kaps has dedicated her life to the path of Yoga and Self inquiry. She is a Yoga Vedanta and Kundalini Tantra teacher with over 25 years of practice, study, teaching. She also has an academic background in Integrated Science and Transpersonal Psychology.
After 10 years of teaching asana (HATHA: Hot, Vinyasa, Restorative, Yin, Power) pranayama and meditation, Tanya met her revered Vedanta Guru Swami Vagishanda. She sat with him for 12 years, during which time he initiated her into teaching Advaita Vedanta (Oneness). Also during this time she experienced a Kundalini awakening which took years to integrate through practical tools and understanding and primarily through loving Surrender. It has become her passion to support sincere students through a natural, gradual spiritual awakening process.
Follow Tanya on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tanyakapsyoga/
Website: https://www.tanyakaps.com/
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