• Table of Contents
  • Gods My only Kin by Swami Veda Bharati
  • 30 Years - Himalayan Institute Germany by Wolfgang Bischoff
  • "Something Swamiji Said" by Lalita Arya
  • Pain-Teacher by Veena Haasl-Blilie
  • Marching Onwards by Dian Singh
  • To Give People a Daily Practice by Giancarlo Colombo
  • Surya Namaskar by Lori Beron
  • Biofeedback and Beyond by Daniel Hertz
  • Untying Emotional Knots on the Way to Joy by Randall Krause
  • Self Awareness – The Core of Yoga by Florentina Hausknotz
  • You Should Teach your Children through Example by Swami Rama
  • Swami Veda Recommends Two Books
  • 2013: Are You Coming?
  • 2011 Events and Beyond
  • Full Moon Meditation Dates
  • Location of our SRSG ashram
• AHYMSIN Newsletter Archive

30 Years - Himalayan Institute Germany

by Wolfgang Bischoff

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The German Himalayan Institute celebrates this year its 30th anniversary. 1981 started a most wonderful process of love and friendship embraced by the love of The Master of The Himalayas His Holiness Shri Swami Rama.

In 1981, my one year intense training time with H.H.Sri Swami Rama in Honesdale was over; I created with the help of my family and a lot of friends the Himalayan Institute of Germany in Ahrensburg near Hamburg.

Sri Swami Rama announced his coming for a seminar and the inauguration of the institute. We invited over 100 guests and journalists and without explanation and information he did not show up.

I was confronted with the necessity to give my first yoga seminar in Germany without direct preparation out of the blue — and it worked. Only 4 people left the room and all the others stayed. It became a success and was the beginning of our work.

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Sri Swami Rama visited us half a year later in 1982. He brought heaven on earth to our institute. Every day was a celebration; he cooked on the flour of the kitchen for all of us, healed my father in the hospital, created a marvelous engagement for my wife Susanne and myself, and asked Pandit Usharbudh Arya (Swami Veda Bharati) to come and marry us half a year later. He blessed my family and all the members of the institute

He initiated a lot of people and then initiated me into the Initiation tradition of the Himalayas. It was the greates gift I received in my life to become an instrument for the Mantra Initiation tradition of the Himalayas.

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Guruji always taught the unexpected way. He taught to pray to the formless form and taught the methodless method. Every minute he was with us was a celebration of life and gave dignity to every life moment.

In 1982 in November, Pandit Usharbudh Arya came to inspire all of us with his wonderful teachings of the yoga sience and philosophy, and he married my wife and myself in an ancient vedic ceremony.

Friends like Dr. Carsten Unger, Katrin Hofman Unger, Eva Hagenmüller and Rainer Scheunemann joined the institut‘s life and helped building teaching curricula for the institute.

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Sri Swami Rama came three times and Dr. Arya (Swami Veda) every year. He layed the foundation for our teachings and explained with patience what Sri Swami Rama has created in us through his blessings.

We developed classes, and in 1987 we started our first yoga teacher training over two years. With the help of Dr. Edith Ulmer, Matthias Deparade and many others, we developed the yoga teacher training to a 4 year course accepted by the German yoga teacher association. Every year  a new class started with up to 30 participants, continuing through today.  Today we start our 25th group with a large group of well educated yoga teachers .

Our main focus in our work was and still is the spiritual training of ourselves and our students, the building of spiritual friendship circles where we learn to sit in circles and respect each other as friends who share equally their life experiences. The words:
“Teach me something and I will forget.  Show me something and I will remember. Let me do something and I will undertstand. ” is an orientation in our work.

Today the Himalayan Institute of Germany has trained more than 800 yoga teachers and is a well kown yoga training institution in Germany with the reputation of a very deep and sincere yoga teacher training.

So we want to celebrate our 30 year anniversary together with the source of the teaching Swami Veda Bharati and his students Dr. Stoma Parker, Swami Nityamuktananda, Ashutosh Sharma and Andrea Sharma. 

An institute such as ours lives through the people and their stories: People who have come out of the teacher trainings and therewith out of the stream of conscious of the Masters of the Himalayas. Thirty years of stories and all of them are interesting to us! It is fascinating to discover, which of the spiritual seeds have started to grow in what unique way and within which spaces within us.

What are we going to expect at this anniversary meeting of spiritual friends?
We will

• meet each other, reunite, celebrate ourselves and life!
• together take a look at the treasures of wisdom of the past and find out where we are at in the present
• in silent meditation sensing the emerging future

How will we meet each other on a soul level?
We want to

• come to stillness and meditate together under the guidance of Swami Veda Bharati
• take a look at our progress in learning and applying the ancient wisdom in our daily lives
• gain ideas, inspirations and insights through workshops for our jobs
• receive an overview of the Yoga Teacher’s Trainings taking place worldwide in exchange with the international guest teachers
• expound on different levels our capacity to listen, using the dialogue methodology
• bring our attention to the phenomenon of learning through soul connections, as well as to the question of how can we transform the learned wisdom into our mundane daily lives

What is the source from which we create our actions?

• We will get in touch with the essence of the Himalayan Tradition, the voice of the inner teacher within, as a contemporary solution for the upcoming challenging questions of our world and planetary society. The importance of meditation and silence will become clear at this point.
• The international community of the Himalayan Tradition: In dialogue with the international guest teachers we will receive an understanding of the International Yoga Teachers Training Program.

We want to celebrate these past 30 years of learning and striving together for realization. This anniversary celebration is meant especially to allow an intense transformation process and learning together through meeting in soul connection. Everyone will become an active participant.

Editor’s Note:

We invite you to visit the website of the Himalaya Institut: http://himalaya-institut.de/.

For more about their teacher training program: http://himalaya-institut.de/yogalehrausbildung

As well as being the Spiritual Director of Himalaya Institut Deutschland, Wolfgang Bischoff is a mantra initiator and is also a member of the AHYMSIN Adhytatma Samiti, or Spiritual Committee, and also the Executive Committee.