People say that we don’t change until we hit rock bottom. 

For me, rock bottom arrived in the middle of COVID. 

I had been living with lupus (SLE) for years, but during that season of uncertainty and stress, my body started to send louder signals — the kind you can’t ignore. My autoimmune condition began attacking not only my joints and blood, but my kidneys too. What followed was a sequence of events that felt both surreal and terrifying: a kidney biopsy, complications, emergency surgery, and the kind of physical pain that brings you to the edge. 

Why I am stopping Dharma Yoga classes  

As of January 2026, I will stop teaching Dharma Yoga and will be teaching only Gokul Yoga.  

I know plenty of you really like Dharma Yoga, have felt the benefits, and taken to heart Sri Dharma Mittra’s teachings.  I am glad that it has provided many of you with insight, growth, and depth to your yoga practice.   

While Dharma Yoga has been a part of my life for 15 years, my personal practice has been solely Gokul Yoga for the past 5 years, even while teaching Dharma Yoga.  Dharma Yoga’s concepts and teachings have always come easily to me; Gokul Yoga I have had to struggle with (and still do).  

And that is partly why I have chosen to pursue Gokul Yoga. It’s the cliched saying, “All growth starts at the end of your comfort zone.”   

Almost twenty years ago, at the beginning of my yoga practice I would follow instructions from my lovely and wise Argentinian teacher. Her voice will remind me to breathe, to exhale, and my nervous system would relax under the spell of her voice. I soon realised something was having a beneficial impact in several aspects of my life and my twice a week class became a priority. That was an honest gesture of gratitude and commitment. That grew on me as a need or maybe it just woke up from a deep and long sleep of oblivion.

When I first started teaching yoga more than 10 years ago, I never imagined that one day, working with mothers and mothers-to-be would become such a meaningful part of my journey.

Over the years of teaching, I’ve heard this sentence so many times. But what strikes me most isn't the pain they're describing, but how quickly people attribute discomfort to the practice itself, rather than considering everything that came before it - the hours spent sitting and the years of sedentary lifestyle.  While I understand that with any physical practice, there's a possibility of injury and yoga, even as a healing modality, is no exception. But more often than not, the pain that most practitioners are experiencing isn't something yoga created, but it's something that yoga revealed to us. 

Gokul Yoga is a system of yoga practice that is being passed down through an unbroken chain of disciplic succession. Under the vigilant care and protection of Mahayogi Gokulacandra Das, Gokul Yoga is yoga practice in alignment with the unaltered principles of a bona fide yoga tradition. 

What makes the Ashtanga practice so powerful is its unwavering nature. It doesn't bend to our preferences. The sequence remains the same whether we like it or not, offering us daily opportunities to observe our minds spinning stories of likes and dislikes.

In our contemporary world, where self-love and empowerment messages flood our social media feeds, it's easy to mistake these powerful yet distinct paths. Both feel uplifting, both speak of transformation, but they lead to fundamentally different destinations.