Conscious Paths
33 episodes - English - Latest episode: about 2 months ago -For lovers of arts, traditions, culture inspired in the ancient wise India presented thru its different colors and manifestations. Music, Meditation, Yogis and Yoga (the true one), Mantras, Wisdom, tools for growth. Inspirations and contributions from all over the world that nurture the different paths that can be explored by any seeker of truth.
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Episodes
Mantra Listening Meditation
March 10, 2024 13:00 - 19 minutes - 13.5 MBThe tradition of Mantra is Mantra-Chanting, what is known as Mantra Japa, and Manish explains how to use it in "listening-meditation," which can be a very powerful technique to soothe the mind, remain attentive and integrate the energy within. Mostly, as we know, we live on the level of 'body and mind' and most of the energy goes into dealing with issues on these fields. So if Mantra is used in the right way, it has the capacity to take us beyond the physicality and the mental planes, to co...
Sufi Music, The Pulse of Love
January 18, 2024 19:00 - 20 minutes - 13.9 MBSufi music provides a space to experience closeness with divinity and love, and Sufis have always been inclined towards the musical expressions of their poetries. A warmhearted talk, where Manish describes his latest album, Salaam E Sufi, explaining how the Sufi path has inspired the seven tracks on his new CD along many years on his musical journey as composer: "Sufi songs have this flavor of Love, Ishq Haqiqi: the love affair with the Truth." Sufism is a path of love, devotion and surren...
What Every Yoga Teacher Should Aim For
June 04, 2023 18:00 - 19 minutes - 13.4 MB“The highest goal of a Yoga practitioner should be to come to a level where one is maintaining one’s balance perfectly all the time. Ups and downs are part of life, situations are never in our hands, but how to deal with them is in our hands.” These are the words of Dr. Hansaji Yogendra, director of the Yoga Institute in Mumbai. She’s a mentor and role model to millions of lives and has conducted more than fifty thousand powerful sessions on yog, wellness and mental health. We were fortuna...
Creating alchemy: rising from darkness and ignorance to peace, light and inner wisdom
December 03, 2022 12:00 - 1 hour - 57.8 MBA conversation with a being who lifts and illuminates others around him. Bruno Wildhaber was born in Interlaken, Switzerland and studied and lived many years in the US. He’s a doctor, writer, teacher, public talker, life coach… and, as he says, a “lifelong learner.” Bruno’s vision, direction, work and dream is to create a healthy community where everyone is ok and in balance within the first circle: “just oneself,” uncontaminated from outer inputs and acquired conditionings – then, that in...
Importance of a Real Guru in the Journey of Indian Music
July 02, 2022 17:00 - 44 minutes - 30.3 MBA very inspiring, honest, touching and mature talk with the outstanding Bansuri player from India, Milind Date, that surely will spark any student or lover of Indian music, connecting them to India and its magical music and learning paths. Some of the main subjects covered in this interview conducted by Manish Vyas: The relationship with the music Guru and the blessing of such invaluable guidance in the path of a student. “At some point, I was thinking, what can I give to my Guru in retur...
A Profound Insight into the World of Indian Music: a talk with Palash Dholakia
June 10, 2022 19:00 - 37 minutes - 25.4 MBAn enriching conversation for anyone interested in Indian music, for enjoyment, for personal learning or simply for cultural interest or curiosity about the endless world of Indian music, which highly differs from western music, even in the most subtle aspects. Palash Dholakia is a sincere student and professional musician of Indian vocal. He studied bachelor and masters in music at Saurashtra University and is disciple of Pandit Ajoy Chakrabarty (a classical vocalist, composer, lyricist a...
World Yoga Festival: A Yoga Feast in UK, with the Heart and Soul in India
February 25, 2022 12:00 - 40 minutes - 27.7 MBRam and Sonali Banerjee are originally from India living in England and since the last seven years they have been organising the World Yoga Festival in the outskirts of London, which has been getting more and more local and international response, having become a referent in the true world of Yoga in the west. Initially they started the project just knowing that Europe needed an authentic Yoga Festival presentation, and that's how the first festival happened in the summer of 2016 and subseq...
A Message for all Students and Potential Students of Music from India
January 09, 2022 12:00 - 28 minutes - 19.9 MBMusic from India is a path of eternal learning. In this path the concept of "continuously learning" is one of the key aspects to understand from the beginning, before undertaking this magic journey. This is so because in Indian music we always remain a student, we never stop learning. Manish talks about the journey of learning music from India, including singing, instruments, its language, Mantra singing, and many other important dimensions: - the cultural input where the student will also...
Adiyogi: Presentation of the Upcoming Shiva Album, by Manish Vyas
September 24, 2021 21:00 - 21 minutes - 14.5 MBFor every person in India, Shiva means a lot — and Manish is not an exception. That is why he has worked on a very special album exclusively for Lord Shiva, which will be his 2021 yearly release. Powerful yet meditative vibrations: ADIYOGI, publishing worldwide on December 11, 2021. A ten track CD of almost seventy minutes. The album in the praise of Shiva features beautiful texts, verses and poetries praising His presence, His raw beauty, His wisdom, His amazing being. “As far as Sanatan D...
Dhrupad and the Importance of Sanskrit Language
August 25, 2021 09:00 - 22 minutes - 15.6 MBIn the third and final episode of this series of dialogues with the great Gundecha Brothers, they have shared their insights about the magic and power of Sanskrit language and how it can become a medium to a cosmic experience, whether by speaking it or by listening to it. As far as Sanskrit, Mantra, Indian music or any ancient tradition is concerned, they also talked about the importance of learning them from an authentic source, so that one can go deeper into the vast world and wisdom of t...
Dhrupad, the Oldest Surviving Classical Style of North Indian Vocal Music
July 16, 2021 19:00 - 23 minutes - 16.4 MBFollowing the previous interview with Gundecha Brothers, who dedicated their lives to continuing this style of music, we present the part II of the talk, where among other interesting insights, the main topics covered are: The importance of Sanskrit and the connection between Dhrupad and this language, the three notes used in the Vedic chanting style, and the difference between mantra chanting and mantra singing. Dhrupad claims the distinction of being the oldest form of Indian Classical m...
Dhrupad, a Major Ancient Heritage in the Music from India
July 03, 2021 14:00 - 23 minutes - 16.4 MBIn the series of the three podcasts from a meeting with one of the most well-known Dhrupad singers from India namely GUNDECHA BROTHERS, the first part covers the insights about the connection between Dhrupad and Naad Yoga or Yoga of Sound, as well as Dhrupad’s approach towards the concept of BHAVA or expression and RASA or flavor. In India we say, “If it’s not touching your soul, it’s not music,” and this music has this intrinsic power. This very statement describes the potential of this mu...
Yoga, as a Path for an Earnest Practitioner
June 20, 2021 22:00 - 35 minutes - 24.4 MBAt the beginning, Yoga was not written down anywhere, the teachings were passed by the Guru to a disciple personally. The first books where Yoga is mentioned were the ancient Tantras and later the Vedas, then the Upanishads expanded deeper about it. Based on all this, much later Patanjali wrote the Yoga Sutras (in Sanskrit) as an eight-fold path: yama, niyama, asana, pranayama, pratyahara, dharana, dhyana, samadhi. Therefore, the meaning of yoga and the path of yoga is not what frequently m...
Not All Devotional Music from India is Kirtan or Mantra
June 15, 2021 18:00 - 32 minutes - 22.5 MBManish takes us through the beautiful journey of sacred music from India with interesting explanations and a variety of songs to help us understand the vast spectrum of music from India: "We have traditions that beyond being learnt, they are carried in the blood since many, many generations, by families and musicians who have grown in that atmosphere of devotion and music, besides a deep connection and love for these traditions. Specially the most ancient the tradition, the deeper roots it h...
Indian Music Requires that One Becomes Available Like a Hollow Bambu
May 15, 2021 08:00 - 1 hour - 44.8 MBAmano Manish, a gifted Mohan Veena (slide guitar) player from India disciple of Brij Bushan Kabra, interviews Manish Vyas. They talk about the journey of learning, composing and presenting music from India. A very interesting conversation for those fascinated by the world of Indian arts and the different genres of Indian music: classical, spiritual, Sufi and other. In this pleasant conversation, they talk about their beginnings in music, arts, expressing and composing music, the skills requ...
The Path of Sufism in India and its Music
May 01, 2021 02:00 - 29 minutes - 20.4 MBThe whole meditative life of the Sufis is built upon the mystery of the world. The word Sufi is connected with sophia, which means wisdom -- not cleverness, because cleverness cannot be wisdom; but the wisdom learned from within. The path of a Sufi is a path of devotion, a path of Bhakti, a path of surrender and complete trust. Sufi traditions and music have been very close to India since hundreds of years, being the path of Sufism a beautiful and poetic approach to spirituality, in which ...
From Gross to Subtle in the World of Yoga and Mantra
April 10, 2021 18:00 - 1 hour - 60.7 MBThe focus in India has always been to find inner richness, inner fulfillment. For this, different tools and paths have been used since millennia. These traditions have been practiced and followed in a certain way... which ultimate point is the attainment of liberation, the highest vibrational level in human plane. Yoga is a path of spiritual growth deeply rooted in an ancient heritage -- not exercise. Mantra is a deep spiritual sacred practice based on the science of sound -- not a music sh...
Understanding Gayatri Mantra
March 27, 2021 16:00 - 37 minutes - 25.9 MBWith roots along the ancient path of Sanatan Dharma, many different roads have been used amid thousands of years to arrive to the same ultimate destination, realize the God within. One of these paths is mantra, the science of sound, by which one can invoke a particular energy through the use of certain sounds. One of the most famous texts has been known as Gayatri Mantra, which is in Sanskrit and comes from the Rig Veda. In the occasion of his recent 8-minute Gayatri Mantra release and his ...
True World of Mantra and Sacred Music from India : an interview to Bapu
March 07, 2021 14:00 - 48 minutes - 33.3 MBI personally have always considered it as a blessing for me to have been born in such a culture like Bhārat (India) with its ancient roots and its vast, bottomless, fascinating world around mystical wisdom and spiritual legacy, reflected also in all of our forms of arts expression, like music, dance and so many others. This podcast features a very interesting interview to Bapu Padmanabha, a musician from South India, who besides being a wonderful Bansuri player disciple of Hariprasad Chaura...
A Musical path: Discovering the Potential and Significance of Music used for Higher Purposes
February 24, 2021 14:00 - 29 minutes - 20.1 MBAlthough my musical path was firstly built since an early age by being next to music Maestros while growing in India, there was a total different training that came later since my early-twenties, when I worked close to some spiritual masters. The first experience was next to Osho, when he was still in the body, who very strongly introduced the significance and importance of incorporating music in the genre of meditation already back in the 1970s. So working around him was an active and frui...
The Miracle of a Guru in One's Life
February 07, 2021 16:00 - 30 minutes - 21.3 MBWhat is the character of a Guru? Do we need a Guru? The One who brings us out of the darkness into the light is called a Guru, a wise, eyes-opening guide in one's life. In a journey of a seeker of truth, the figure of a Guru is extremely important because he/she has already crossed that path in which we find ourselves at the moment. A Guru is not a theoretical concept, but a reality, part of 'practical' and not 'philosophy-oriented' spirituality. In the East, this reality has been part of o...
Harmonium has also been Subjected to Cultural Appropriation
January 22, 2021 08:00 - 29 minutes - 20.1 MBIf you go to any musical gathering in India, you will see that the playing of Harmonium sounds completely different from what most people have been exposed to in the west. Naturally, to learn anything from a foreign culture takes more effort, more dedication, more time - but one should commit to that process if one would like to learn any art or instrument. Commitment and lots of patience has always been the number one element when learning music from India, and Harmonium, just as any other ...
Distinguishing Between a Meditation Retreat and a Chill-out Get Away
January 10, 2021 14:00 - 37 minutes - 26.1 MBMany times it is believed that meditation is just about relaxing the body and the mind. Although this may be a consequence, it is not the purpose of meditation. Meditation is inquiring about the true nature of the self, dropping ideas and acquired beliefs and ideologies. And an earnest retreat for this purpose should provide the space, energy and content necessary for this to manifest. In the same way, the participant should step into a retreat with the right attitude. When we go to a retr...
Making Meditation a Way of Life
December 28, 2020 16:00 - 19 minutes - 13.4 MBMeditation is not about 'doing something.' Yes, we can work on meditation techniques in order to arrive to a more meditative state. The technique will help the cleansing of the mind, the cleansing of the psyche. But at some point the technique has to be dropped, and the real meditation has to manifest. That is, in real life. So even when someone tells me, "i practice a lot of meditation," one can immediately see by the person's reflection if it remains just in the meditation technique, or i...
Interview with Mantra FM Radio : English / Spanish
December 23, 2020 14:00 - 43 minutes - 29.8 MBInterview / Entrevista with Mantra FM 91.9, during the transmission of EL PORTAL. Where we talked about the science of mantra, how to use it, what is the best approach to mantra practice, what is the reality of mantra music, and other information that is very useful to any people who are not from India and would like to learn more about the true science and practice of Mantra. With Spanish translation / con traducción al español.
India and the Attitude of Learning
December 20, 2020 18:00 - 15 minutes - 10.6 MBLearning music, and many other forms of arts in India is quite a different experience and requires a whole different approach and mindset than in the western learning path. I used to travel from Pune to Mumbai for hours in the slow and crowded trains to take my music lessons regularly, just because i knew the value of my teacher. And I would just get the direct attention of the teacher for about ten minutes each class... and I was very happy with that ! In six years, maybe the teacher told m...
Interview about the album "Mantra"
December 06, 2020 10:00 - 23 minutes - 16.1 MB"The right music can smoothen the journey of a seeker without too much effort. If the person is available, if the person is not resisting, if the person is in a flow with an open heart, the right music can take the listener to a completely different dimension, effortlessly." Listen to this truly interesting conversation between Martin Frischknecht, chief editor of Spuren Switzerland and Manish Vyas about Manish's ongoing work, his new album and the earnest approach to the public presentatio...
The False Identity of "being a Yogi"
November 29, 2020 09:00 - 20 minutes - 14.2 MBMost yoga-practitioners and asana teachers in the west use the word Yogi, as if a yogi would be an asana (exercise) practitioner with great flexibility and contortion skills. It is the nature of the ego to acquire more and more identities — and spiritual identities are just one more kind of them, "that i am a meditator, that i am a great yogi, that i am spiritual, that i am holy. . ." probably the spiritual being the worse kind of identity to bust the ego with, because many enter the game of...
Spirituality and India
November 22, 2020 15:00 - 28 minutes - 19.4 MBIndia is probably one of the richest sources of spirituality as well as a source of inspiration for spiritual growth in the path of any seeker. The core of spirituality from India is to be able to find the natural state, the true state of being, free from all acquired knowledge and outer conditionings. That is why the masters call it practical spirituality, as opposed to static philosophies and religions, which remain in the circumference but maybe don't reach the true knowledge through self...
Conscious Approach to Meditation
November 01, 2020 11:00 - 13 minutes - 9.33 MBOne cannot "do" yoga or meditation, one can "be" in a state of yoga or meditation. If meditation is not bringing awareness into our day-to-day life, then there is no point to it. Meditation does not ‘end’ after that hour and then we can go back to our unconscious pattern in our life. Meditation is not an activity - it is a journey of growing into awareness, it is a journey of raising our consciousness, which needs to be applied in our day to day life. This podcast if from an online course...
Explanation of a Sanskrit Mantra : Shivswarupoham
October 25, 2020 09:00 - 5 minutes - 3.89 MBSanskrit has the capacity to express the inexpressible and that's how they came up with the word "Advait." Based on one of the mantras he composed, Shivswarupoham, Manish explains the meaning of the mantra and how it is deeply rooted to the ancient wisdom from India and all its manifestations. Shivoham, Shivoham, Shivswarupoham is an expression of the nature of consciousness in the best way it can be expressed in words, using the language of Sanskrit. A quick exploration of this wonderful su...
The Attitude in Mantra Practice Matters
October 11, 2020 16:00 - 7 minutes - 5.35 MBA mantra practitioner should have a clear understanding of how mantra practice works and what to expect, and what not to expect. Actually mantra practice should never have expectation, but instead faith. The right attitude is to do the practice of the mantra with faith and with all the possible devotion, and not expect any outcome. The outcome is up to Existence (or God) —not up to us. That is why the first thing that a mantrin should understand is that the right attitude is that of trust a...
Choosing the right Music for Mantras
September 27, 2020 16:00 - 5 minutes - 3.58 MBMantras don't need music. The actual tradition of mantra chanting in India is not really elaborately musically based. So when one composes a mantra, and tries to put it to the music, it is a very responsible job, because the melody, the composition needs to bring and enhance the essence of a mantra — and that's where the element of Indian music comes in.