What does it mean to be on a Yogic Path? I discuss the difference between Yoga and Ayurveda, the 7 chakras and the deities described in my new deck A Yogic Path.

Begin Your Yogic Path with A Yogic Path Deck by Sahara Rose : www.ayogicpath.com

Join the waitlist for Rose Gold Goddesses, my Sacred Sisterhood Collective at rosegoldgoddesses.com

Discover Your Dosha (Mind-Body Type) with my free quiz: iamsahararose.com

Connect with me for daily Ayurvedic and modern spiritual wisdom at Instagram: @iamsahararose Facebook.com/iamsahararose Twitter.com/iamsahararose

Order Eat Feel Fresh: A Contemporary Plant-Based Ayurvedic Cookbook and receive my Essential Oils for Your Doshas E-book FREE here: eatfeelfresh.com/book

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Episode 224 – Taking A Yogic Path with Sahara Rose

By Sahara Rose

Namaste. It’s Sahara Rose and welcome back to the “Highest Self” podcast, a place where we discuss what makes you your soul’s highest evolvement. I am so excited to share with you today’s episode because it is all about my new deck, A Yogic Path, which is available in Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and wherever cards are sold. This is a 54-card deck with 108 meanings, 108 being a very auspicious number in the Vedic spiritual world, and it will bring you to bridge your intuition with your cognitive knowing. It essentially allows you to tap into your intuition and enhance your meditation practice with this mystical tool.

You see, a lot of us we do meditations, we you know, try to just sit and think about nothing, and it’s really hard, and doesn’t work out, and then we get stressed out, we overthink, et cetera. But I love working with a deck because it’s a more feminine way of connecting. You’re interacting with the deck, you’re asking questions, you’re pulling cards, you’re getting the answers. And to me this allows me to connect to my intuition in a deeper way. Because I’m receiving feedback straight from source, I’m asking questions like, “Who’s guiding me at this time?” And then I pull a card and it’s telling me. Or what should I focus on? What method should my guides have for me? What can I focus on to fulfill my dharma? How can I be guided more towards my highest path? What do I need to focus on this week? And I pull the cards, and they offer me insight, which I can then use my intuition to decide how that’s going to show up.

So if you’re someone who’s on a spiritual path and you’ve never worked with a deck before, I highly recommend getting one, whether it’s A Yogic Path, or another deck that calls to you. You have to love the deck, and in this episode I’m going to be sharing with you all about what the meanings of the cards are in A Yogic Path so you can see does this speak to me? Am I all about A Yogic Path, or maybe I’m not, and that’s cool too.

But working with a deck is so transformational, and working with an oracle card deck is quite different than a tarot deck. Because a tarot deck is actually a specific style of decks, it’s always the same, they always have the same cards, the same meanings, the same messages. People have their own art, their own interpretation, but the tarot is one universal concept. Whereas oracle cards are anyone can channel their own version. So it’s not just one, there’s no to oracle cards that are the same, so there’s no other deck like A Yogic Path.

And I actually channeled the entire deck while in India writing “Eat Feel Fresh” and taking the photography for it. I received the message that I needed to create a deck bringing Ayurveda chakras, koshas, deities, Vedic spirituality to life, and that not everyone’s going to read a book, not everyone’s going to sit down and study. People want something interactive, people want to learn in a more fun and playful way, and what better way than enhancing your intuition with these cards using these cards as guidance to bring you closer to your own truth.

So I explain in this episode, and also in the guidebook that comes with the deck, how I work with decks, which is very different than how most people do. To me, I believe the deck works better with you the more connected you are with your intuition. I believe that they are tools to help you come across your own answers. I don’t believe that the deck is an end-all and be-all, but rather it provides you the guidance you can think of things in a more clear way.

I also do believe that the divine works through the deck. For example, this past weekend I had my goddess activation event, where I was teaching 100 women how to connect to their inner goddess through dance. And in front of everyone, a totally new deck, I put it out there and I said, “We’re going to pull a card and see who’s guiding us for today’s practice.” And I was actually really hoping it was going to be Lalita Sundari because she’s the goddess of sensuality, and you know, we were going to belly dance, and twerk, so I was kind of hoping she would come out, but I wasn’t attached to it either.

So I spread it, everyone’s watching, I pull the card, and guess who comes out? Lalita Sundari. Like you can’t make this shit up, you really can’t. So the divine works with us through these cards, and the more connected we are to our intuition the better the cards are going to work. Because the universe is always sending us messages, it’s always sending us signals, we just aren’t picking up on them. That signal could be through a headache, it could be through you know, a sign that we just drove by, it could be through a feeling in our body it could be through a color that we saw. There’s so many ways that our guides provide us with signs and messages, but most of us don’t realize it. We think it’s oh, it’s nothing, it’s just a coincidence or we don’t even cognitively think about it.

But working with cards, you’re literally asking your guides, your intuition, your highest self for answers on these questions that your soul has. So it’s almost like there’s no way to not think about it, you’re totally immersed in the moment. So not only is that a very meditative practice, but also you’re able to be in conversation with your guides. What cooler thing than that than to be like what message do my guides have or me, and to pull the card, and to see it right there.

And if you don’t believe in it, it’s not going to work, but I’ve just seen too much. I’ve seen people pulling the exact cards that they need and I facilitated card readings for so many people, and often it’s like they pull the card that’s all about breaking up, and they just had a break-up, or they pull the card that’s all about concentration and they know they really need to be focusing on their dharma. Or they pull a card that’s all about empowerment they know they need to step up for something they believe in. So it’s amazing that what I’ve seen people pull these cards and how it’s exactly the medicine that they need.

So I recommend, you know, working with a deck, whether it’s A Yogic Path or something else, to just enhance your intuition, and to connect to that more spiritual side of you. Maybe you have tons of decks, maybe it’s your first one, but I really believe it’s a beautiful addition to anyone’s spiritual practice.

So in this episode I’m going to dive into the meanings, we’re going to talk about chakras first, and then we’re going to talk about koshas, the deities, Vedic spirituality, yoga sutras, and of course, the difference between yoga and Ayurveda and what yoga is all about. So without further ado, let’s welcome me, to the “Highest Self” podcast.

I am soul excited to share with you that my deck, A Yogic Path, is now out. I’ve been working on this deck for two years, guys, and it has been really hard for me to keep it a secret because I’ve been pouring my love and my soul into this deck. Into the words that you’re going to read in the guidebook, into the messages it is that come through to you, and I’m so excited for these cards to now be in your hands. So what inspired me to create this deck? Well, I’m going to share all about that and what it means to even walk a yogic path in this episode.

So what is a yogic path? Well, let’s talk first about what the word yoga means. You know, most of us practice yoga, right, we think yoga is downward dog, you know, doing the vinyasas, chaturanga, ana, ana, ana, something that ends with ana. The reason why is in Sanskrit, all of the asanas end with ana, that’s why it’s like bapana, nanana, nanana, nanana. That’s why you keep hearing the ana at the end. But yoga is actually not asana. Even asana—the movements—are not actual what asana means, so let’s just dive into all of this right now.

So the word yoga means to merge, to yoke, to become one with. So what are we becoming one with? Our sweaty yoga mats? The guy next to us? No. We are becoming one with universal consciousness. So when we practice yoga we are actually yoking with our higher selves, with atman. Atman is your highest self, you in your most grand totality form, that’s atman.

So yoga is a spiritual practice, yoga was never meant to give you Jennifer Aniston from “Friends” abs. That’s why I started by the way, but that’s not why I stayed, and it didn’t work. Don’t have those Jennifer Aniston abs, still. Been a while, I’ve been practicing, but yoga is a spiritual practice, it brought me here chilling on my couch. And it’s to become one with all, it’s to be able to walk through life and not get so thrown off when life throws your curveballs, to be flexible with all things. To able to sit in stillness when shit is hitting the fan. That is what yoga is about.

So when it was created over 5,000 years ago in the ancient Vedic times, channeled by the rishis who were essentially downloading the information that was in the vedas—veda meaning knowledge, the eldest recorded texts that essentially were channeled to us from the divine to help us live our most optimal human experiences. I mean this is like the universe’s gift to mankind, and that’s what Ayurveda comes from, Ayurveda, the knowledge of life, how we can have mental and physical balance. How we can preserve these vessels and deal with these minds.

Well yoga is actually spiritual science. It’s not about the mind, it’s not about the body, that’s Ayurveda. If you’re practicing yoga for mental or physical reasons, you’re practicing Ayurveda, but yoga is the path to spirit. It’s the path of transcendence, it’s the path of meditation, it’s the path of oneness. Yoking, oneness, if there’s no difference between the microcosm and the macrocosm, you are experiencing yoga.

So a yogic path is to live your life wanting to merge with your highest self. So if you’re listening to this podcast, you are on a yogic path already. Maybe you’re just starting it, or maybe you’ve been in it for 20, 30 years. But we’re all on a yogic path here, we’re all here to experience the oneness of who we are, and the interconnectedness of ourselves with all things. Because when we can tap into that, the new no longer feel duality, we no longer feel the pain and the suffering. We’re able to move past it and to connect with the higher reason, the higher consciousness. And that higher consciousness, it’s not above us, it’s right here within us. We call it higher, but it’s not actually up there, it’s right here, and that’s what yoga is about.

So yoga is this beautiful ancient science to allow us to use our physical bodies, use our breath, use different postures to connect with the divine, and then Ayurveda was the sister science to help us heal our mental and physical bodies, our koshas, the layers outside our bodies as well. Both of them can help balance our chakras, our energy centers within our bodies. I won’t go through the chakras again, I’ve gone through them many times, I have an episode, if you Google “Highest Self podcast chakras,” you’ll hear it. I have a whole chapter in “Idiot’s Guide to Ayurveda,” my first book all about the chakras, but we have these energy centers in our bodies that tell us different things.

And I’ll briefly go over them because they’re part of the yogic path, but the chakras are essentially guiding forces to tell us where things are out of balance—mentally and physically—and where they’re actually stored in our bodies. So we have our root chakra, our root chakra is our safety and our security. When it’s out of balance, we feel fear. It’s connected to the color red.

Our sacral chakra is pleasure, creativity, abundance. I call it CAP—creativity, abundance, and pleasure. So it’s a pretty good chakra, right? But it’s actually the chakra many of us have imbalances, and when it’s out of balance we have, you know, relationship issues, sexual issues, et cetera. So I really love balancing it through dance, and connecting to my goni, and you know, tapping back into my sensual energy.

So it’s in charge of connection, and it’s connected to the color orange. Our solar plexus chakra is in our gut, it’s our stomach, and it’s our sense of identity, it’s our willpower. So it’s actually created when we’re about two years old and we’re like, “I want this, I want that, give me that, it’s mine.” We’re actually creating our solar plexus so it’s actually important to honor a child that is going through that because the child is trying to essentially assert who they are and what they want.

So it’s important for us to give that child options in that moment so they realize that your solar plexus is important, you’re able to make decisions, you’re able to decide what it is that you want. But the options that you give them can all be things that you actually want, but it’s important to give them the idea that they’re choosing these for themselves, especially when the solar plexus is being built.

And when that doesn’t happen that’s when we start to get egotistical, authoritarian, overbearing, controlling, this is all an overreaction of the solar plexus chakra. And when it’s depleted we think that we’re not worthy of getting what we want, we’re not worthy of having our own needs. We don’t even know who we are, we’re so connected to the needs of others, so it’s depleted.

So each chakra can be excess and depleted, and it’s connected to the color yellow. Moving into the heart chakra, anahata chakra, that’s connected to love and not sexual love, but love for all things. You know, do you ever wake up sometimes you’re just like, “I feel so in love with just like life. It’s a heartgasm.” Have you ever had a heartgasm before? Well that’s right there in the heart chakra.

So that’s how we’re supposed to feel every single day. We’re supposed to just be like, “Oh, yes, I’m here. I’m doing it. I’m alive. I’m living my dharma. I’m in love with all that is coming my way and so much goodness is awaiting me, and so much goodness is already here, and I’m so grateful for what has happened.” That is the heart chakra right there.

So as a society we’ve really closed down our heart chakras. Most of us close them down when we were very young kids when our first heartbreak were our own parents, our parents letting us down for whatever reason. It could have just been something as small as mom was supposed to pick me up from school and she forgot—I can’t love, I can’t trust. Or it could have been, you know, dad walked out on our family. And then later in life it reoccurs again with our first heartbreak—I can’t be loved, I’m not deserving of love, no one can love me the way that I need, no one will love me as much as I love them—the patterns, the conditionings, limiting beliefs.

And the heart chakra closes, it’s such a sad chakra to close because, oh, when the heart chakra closes, you no longer feel connected to others, you no longer feel connected to yourself. People with closed heart chakras, they tend to sulk, it’s like their bodies are like caving in to protect their hearts. And the way to open it is to literally back bend into expand the heart, that’s why in yoga we do back bends. At the end of each practice there’s always back bend series.

And that’s to open the heart chakra so you can feel love. So if you’re feeling like, “Ugh, my heart’s been broken so many times I can’t love, I can’t trust,” do the back bends. It’s going to blast your heart chakra open. And just to meditate with your heart, my meditations these days are always hands on my heart. That’s what I want to feel connected to, I don’t want to astral project, I don’t want to go visit the aliens, I want to connect to my heart. That’s the mission I’m trying to get to right here because the heart has more and more to feel, and I know personally and I think for most of us, we’re not feeling at 100%.

Most of us are not feeling because we’re afraid to feel. We’re afraid of what’s going to happen if I really let myself feel in this moment. Whether it’s feeling a shadow aspect of sadness, and hurt, and pain, and really feeling that. But if we can’t feel that, we can’t feel the happiness, and the bliss, and the joy. And I’ve caught myself—I don’t know if this ever happened to you—but something good happens and I’m like, “Oh cool,” and it’s almost like I’m not really that happy about it. I’m not really that excited about it. And I’m like wait, “Why am I—I wanted this thing for so long, I’ve worked at it for so hard, and now it’s just here, and I’m like ‘Oh cool.’”

And it’s not that I’m chill AF, I mean it’s that too, but it’s because at some level my heart and all of our heart chakras are closed because our society, you know, as a kid you get so excited about things. And the teacher’s like, “Sit down, calm down, be quiet,” and then you suppress. So the heart chakra is just a really big one that as a society we need to open up our hearts and just allow ourselves to feel.

And most of us, we can tell you exactly what we’re thinking, but we can’t tell you exactly what we’re feeling. You know, I thought I could be like, “I’m anxious with a tinge of excitement, and a little bit angry,” you know, but like feeling it’s like what does that feel like in my body? How can I connect to that? And to just notice that the tinges, the sensations, like I feel like, you know, sometimes I wake up and I’m feeling a little bit off, and then I’m like, “I don’t have time for that, got to start working, got to go to my barre class, whatever it is,” and I kind of like snide it aside instead of like really sitting into like, “Why do I feel like this today?”

And I could be, you know, something happened to me the day before, it could have been my dream last night, it could have been something I’ve been suppressing and not looking at, it could be my menstrual cycle, it could be a lot of things. But to really look at the subtleties of how you’re feeling, this is a very important part of following the yogic path.

Moving into your throat chakras, our chakras of expression, allowing us to share our truth, to say what it is that we want to say without feeling apologetic about it, it is governed by the color blue. If you haven’t noticed, everything I do is blue, “Eat Feel Fresh” color is blue, Yogic Path is all blue, my website, everything is blue. I don’t know why I just love this color, well, I assume it’s because it’s related to the throat chakra that I’m just naturally so drawn to it, and the throat chakra is the chakra—throat and third eye are my two most powerful chakras that I’ve really run in with in this lifetime.

So it’s your idea to take a thought and to express it into communication. And then your third eye, it’s your ability to see the unseen, to use your intuition, to notice the subtleties, and this is really what all of the chakras they’re coming to balance so we can work with the third eye. The third eye can’t open until all other chakras are in a balance, and that is allowing us to see the higher vision, to connect to the atman, to connect to the true deities that exist around us. That only happens when we open our third eye. And then naturally we receive downloads from our crown.

So third eye is governed by the color indigo, and our crown is also indigo, but clear as well. Now your crown chakra is actually right above the top of your head, and it allows the wisdom of the universe to channel through you. So when you’re getting a download, when you’re getting an idea, when you’re just in a flow state, right now, crown chakra’s wide open. I’m receiving this knowledge and I’m just transmuting it, it’s working from my crown, through my throat, into my heart going to you guys embodying it.

So a yogic path is to balance your chakras, it’s to work with your koshas, the layers outside of your body. I’ve done a full podcast episode all about koshas—again, Google “Highest Self podcast koshas” to dive into that. We have our physical bodies, our energetic bodies, our breath bodies, our bliss bodies, and these are all like frequencies outside of us. And when we pick up on someone’s energy we’re actually picking up on their koshas, the layers outside their bodies.

So in A Yogic Path we also dive into the deities. So the deities are the gods and the goddesses. I write about the ones that are specifically from Vedic and Hindu tradition because that is where the vedas came from, but there are gods and goddesses from all around the world, from Roman, to Greek, to African, Brazilian, Egyptian, everything in between.

So in the guide book there’s a chapter for all of this that, you know, gives you the meaning of each card. So in the guidebook there are explanations of what each deity brings you when you pull the card, but I’m going to give you a brief description of who these deities are. So with the goddesses we have several goddesses that we’ve talked about on this podcast that are central to Rose Gold Goddesses by membership community that we embody a new goddess archetype each month. So learn more about that at rosegoldgoddesses.com.

But we have Parvati, the goddess of devotion, love, and yoga. We have Saraswati, the goddess of creativity, intuition, and insight. Kali, the goddess of destruction, dissolution, and ecstasy. We’ve got Lakshmi, goddess of abundance, fortune, and beauty, Radha, goddess of passionate love, and longing. Durga, goddess of inner strength and protection. Bhuvaneshwari, goddess of space and infinite possibilities. Dhumavati, goddess of disappointment in letting go. Chinnamasta, goddess of radical self-transcendence. Lalita Sundari, goddess of erotic spirituality.

And then we have the gods—Ganesha, god of new beginnings and removal of obstacles. I love Ganesha, also known as Ganapati, if you’ve heard of him in many mantras—om ganapataye namah—that’s to Ganesha, son of Shiva and Shakti, Parvati, A.K.A. Krishna, god of compassion and love, Brahma, god of creation, Shiva, god of destruction and rebirth, Hanuman, god of courage.

So we have cards dedicated to each of these deities that you’ll be able to pull and work with. So when you pull from these cards you’ll be able to see whose medicine do I need? What do I need to call upon? Who’s guiding me in this time of my life and these deities will provide you guidance. Each of them has their own nectar, their own medicine, their own wisdom.

So for example, you could ask what message do my spirit guides have for me at this time? And maybe you pull the Durga card, and it’s telling you to go for strength, and use your power, and stand up for what it is that you really want. Or maybe you pulled the Krishna card, and it’s telling you to, you know, move through life with more playfulness, and fun, and you know, movement. That’s why Krishna’s always dancing with his flute.

And I explain, I give meanings for each of these in the guidebook that the deck comes with. So I love it because you’re learning about these things without like sitting and reading a textbook on it, it’s just a really intuitive way for you to learn more about these beautiful deities, chakras, koshas, the yoga sutras, all of these things through the meanings of the cards.

So we also have cards in different Vedic spirituality topics. Like dharma, which is a topic that my next book is about, and I love speaking about, which is your divine purpose, your soul’s reason of incarnation. So if you pulled the dharma card, then you know that your spirit guides are telling you that you need to do your life’s work at this time. The kriya card, that’s when life feels like flow, it’s moving like a river graciously. You’re on the path to your dharma and doors are opening for you.

The karma card, it’s the sum of one’s actions, so sometimes karma can feel a little bit like a setback, but it’s actually protection bringing you towards your dharma, the atman, the infinite aspect of the soul, budhi, the inner wisdom, intellect, budha, the one who is aware. So Buddha, as we know, that was not his actual name, he became a Buddha from practicing meditation and becoming spiritually aware, so he became a Buddha. So all of us have the capability to become a Buddha if we truly connect to the yogic path. That’s some real perseverance on the yogic path there.

So I also have a section dedicated to Ayurveda, so there are cards dedicated to Ayurvedic topics as well as the meanings to them. So we have a card dedicated to vata, which I am the person on that card, pitta, kapha, as well as the gunas, the gunas are the qualities. So sattva, which is purity, clarity, we always want to be sattvic, to just be, you know, crystaly and clear of what it is that we want without the negative energy bogging us down.

[inaudible][25:19] which is more dynamic, aggression, energy, it’s kind of pitta, and tamas, which is dullness, sluggishness, tiredness, inertia, which is not really what we want. And sometimes maybe we want a little bit of hibernation, so if you pull the card upright it has one meaning, if you pull it upside down it has another, so it could mean either. Prana, which is the life force, the subtle life force, the breath. Ojas, which is the subtle essence of well-being, when someone has a glimmer to their skin, and they’re glowing, and they look just so beautiful, that’s ojas.

Tejas, which is intelligence, courage, someone that you know, really thinks, and they’re sharp, and they go after what it is they want, that’s tejas right there. And they have this, you know, bright look in their eyes. You know, that spunky person, they’re coming up with something smart, that’s tejas.

So all of these are cards in the deck that you’ll be able to work with, you’ll be able to ask questions, and these cards can be the answers that you pull, which is really, really special and there’s no deck in the world that’s like this. And we also dive into the yoga sutras, so this is a really good deck if you’re someone, again, who loves yoga. Or maybe you’re doing yoga teacher training or you have a friend who’s doing yoga teacher training and you want to gift this to them, this makes an awesome gift to any yogi in your life, including yourself.

So we have the eight stages of yoga, which are the yamas, the yamas and the niyamas, we have asana, which is one the eight stages, which is actually meaning to sit in stillness. So we talked about how yoga we think of asana as movement, as postures, but actually the word asana means to sit in stillness.

So the reason why we do these movements and postures is because we were actually meant to tire our bodies out so we can finally sit in meditation. I do believe that societies need to kind of change because back in the day they were farmers, and they were moving around a lot, but today we’re not really, we’re more sedentary, so I do think we need more kind of movement and that’s why yoga has shifted to become so much more movement oriented. I don’t think it’s necessarily a bad thing because we need it, because again, we’re sitting around all day. But we can’t let go of what yoga’s really about, which is the meditation, which is the stillness, which you cultivate at the end of your yoga practice.

There’s a card for pranayama, which is the control of breath. I love doing alternate nostril breathings, breathing inhale through one nostril, exhale through the other, inhaling through that same one. I teach you a guided meditation when you purchase the deck and you leave a review. You can just email me the review to [email protected] and I send you the guided meditation that I recorded that you can work with this deck.

So it’s a pranayama and mediation, and then active card-pulling to teach you how to pull the cards, how to work with the deck, what the meanings mean, et cetera. So I love the pranayama practice I teach you in that meditation because it’s the one that I actually practice everyday. So to get that absolutely free, you just leave a review for the deck. You should purchase the deck first and then leave a review for it—if you enjoyed it, of course, whatever it is that your heart feels like saying. And send me a screenshot and email it over to me at [email protected] and I’ll send you back that guided meditation, it’s a 20-minute long meditation.

We have pratyahara, which is control of the senses, so that’s all about in yoga it’s all about overcoming the monkey mind, because the monkey mind wants to do a million things, and go a million places, and be here and do that, and it’s to control the senses. You know, whether it’s you wanting to do things, or eat you know, stimulating things—drink coffee, have this. Or even stimulation in life, you know, the drama, whatever it is, it’s to let go of anything that is taking you back from that total stillness, that total presence. And this is the practice of pratyahara, so if you ever pull that card, that’s what it is telling you at this time.

Then we have derana, which is all about single focused concentration. So to get what it is that you want to fulfill your dharma you need to concentrate. And this doesn’t mean that you won’t be able to live your life, but I think a lot of us we fear that level of concentration that it takes to really take our ideas off the ground. And if you pull upon the derana card it’s reminding you like right now just concentrate, just fully commit, just dive into this. Because if you can dive into it you’re going to reap such incredible rewards, and you’ll fall into the kriya and things will feel so much more effortless and easy.

We have the dhyana, which is the concentration in meditation with the intention to know the truth. So this is the stage that comes after, after you concentrate you actually transcend, it’s not about doing the dharma anymore, it’s more about just knowing the overall truth, and that actually feeds the dharma. So instead of what can I do next? It’s how can I connect the overall truth? And this is the next stage of yoga, the next stage of transcendence. So it’s to become fully immersed with what it is that you are seeking.

And dhyana can also come from concentrating in what you’re doing, but it’s you don’t need to concentrate anymore. It’s about merging, so when the dancer is just in such a dance that they’re not even thinking about—they’re not concentrating, “Aw, I need to keep dancing,” they are the dance, the singer is the song, the writer is the book, there’s almost no difference between the two, this is dhyana.

So total merging that concentration is no longer even needed. And then you experience Samadhi, so Samadhi is when you’re joined in all aspects—your physical, spiritual, mental, emotional bodies—are all connected and you’re experiencing the supreme bliss, the high consciousness, the enlightenment of who you are. Your human consciousness has become one with cosmic consciousness, and your soul has realized that it is far more than a mind and a body. So this is the reunion—soul and spirit—with the universe and it’s such a beautiful card to pull.

I also have a card for kundalini, so kundalini is the serpent-like energy that exists at the base of your spine that rises up your body, that feeds your chakras, and allows you to tap into the innate psychic abilities that we all have. And this is kundalini rising, it’s one of my favorite cards. It’s a friend of mine, Rosie Acosta, you may recognize her from the “Highest Self” podcast, but beautiful card of her sitting in meditation with this snake moving up her chakras, and the chakra’s all lit up, and just such a beautiful reminder to all of us that we can heal ourselves and rebalance our chakras simply be connecting to that kundalini.

I also share another style of yoga, which is bhakti yoga. Bhakti is the path of devotion, it’s the path of love. So when we’re singing, when we’re chanting, you know, the mantra is kirtans, it’s bhakti yoga, And it’s not just about kirtan, but it’s also anything that is devotion. And I think in our society we’re so far from that, and we’re moving back in towards altars, and rituals, and things that allow us to, you know, offer to the divine.

And that’s why I love working with the goddesses, and Rose Gold Goddess. Whether it’s, you know, having my goddess statues up, or lighting candles, or palo santo, having my crystals, et cetera. But just devoting to something that’s greater than me, the selfless path of bhakti is such a beautiful path to walk.

And then I share about tantra yoga, which is another card, which is the path of liberation—tantra, actually means liberation. So it’s to move past the dualistic nature of the mind that sees things as good, bad, right, wrong, black, white, and to just experience totality—masculine, feminine, shiva, Shakti, yin, yang, without good or bad, without judgment. And that can have a sensual practice to it, but tantra is something that’s so much greater than just sex, it’s really the balance of the feminine and masculine energies within all of us and all things.

I also have a card for satya, which is one of the yamas, one of the paths of yoga on truthfulness. There’s a friend of mine, Alyson Charles, who’s the girl on the card. So satya’s all about stepping into your truth, stepping into who you are, being honest, where can I show up more authentically in my life? How can I live my life in my absolute truth? Are my relationships in alignment with who I am at this moment? What masks am I wearing? What can I do to connect further into my truth? So this is such a beautiful card to pull.

So we have some more, I mean I can go into all of them, but when you get the deck you’re going to see them, but we have ahimsa, non-violence, swasthya, self-study, santosha, contentment, tapas, self-discipline, and those are the yogic cards, so we kind of dove into all of the cards that you’re going to see when you get a yogic path. But I teach you how to work with the deck, with the path, with all of it when you get the book, so it’s going to come with 54 cards, has this beautiful box that you’re going to open up, it’s just such sacred illustration, things that I channeled. I actually wrote this entire deck in India so it’s illustrations that came through such as the mudras, the flowers, just the shapes.

Funnily enough, the flowers ended up being very pink, and I actually never even thought about the color of the flowers when we were designing the cards. And then in my wedding I was supposed to get these very pale pink flowers, and when I like was walking down the aisle they were like super bright pink, like a hot pink almost, and I was like, “What the hell?” And then after I got the deck sent to me for the first time, like the published deck, and they were the exact flowers from the deck.

So spirit wanted my wedding to be filled with the flowers that you’re going to see that are on every single card and the box, those are actually the flowers that ended up showing up at my wedding unannounced. So it’s so beautiful how spirit works. But the illustrations are beyond beautiful, they’re illustrated by my dear friend, Danielle Noel of Starchild Tarot, you may recognized her from her deck—Starchild Tarot, Moonchild Tarot. And they are these beautiful collages that really honor the ancient sculptures, the ancient paintings.

You know, for us, we were like, “We don’t want to depict deities, like gods and goddesses that have existed for thousands of years with humans.” It’s almost like not honoring them the way that they were originally intended to because they are other-worldly, they are mystical divine beings as well as humans. So we decided to actually use the original sculptures and paintings from the Vedic times. So when you go through this deck, and you look through this guidebook, those pictures that you’re seeing are the original sculptures and paintings that the rishis in the Vedic times created for us to depict these gods and goddesses.

So it’s so magical to be able to really have the original, you know, source coming through, but then to also merge it with this beautiful collage art that brings it. I mean every single card has such incredible meaning, and I think that when you work with this card and how I do it is when you pull the card, first ask your intuition before even looking at the card, what does this card have to say?

So I recommend the process I do is I spread them out, I sage them, palo santo them, clear their energy, sit in meditation, asked myself what it is that I’m trying to seek an answer from, connect to my intuition, my highest self, my spirit guides, and then I ask the question. And I share with you in the book how to ask the question, what kind of questions to ask, et cetera. And before I look at the card, I ask my intuition what the card has to say. And I share this with you step-by-step, and then from there when I look at the card I don’t immediately go and read the guidebook, but rather I let my intuition tell me.

So I look at the imagery in this deck, because we put a lot of subtle details in there for you, little things that signify the meaning of this card. So this is an intuitive practice for you to really look at the card and look at, okay, what emotion am I getting from this? What do I feel when I look at this card? What are these little, you know, the more you look at the card because it’s such beautiful and intricate collage you’re going to notice another detail, another layer, another dimension. And the more you work with these cards, you’re actually going to find more things later on. So this is why it’s like it kind of builds and it layers on, the fun don’t stop.

So after I’ve really looked at the card, and I’ve noticed, “Okay, what energy am I getting from this card,” then I open up the book and I read what the card has to say, and I wrote upright and reverse. So if you pull the card upright, it has one meaning, in reverse it has another, and this is the light and the shadow aspect. Because sometimes our guides are warning us, and sometimes there are things we need to change too. So I recommend working with both an upright and reverse practice.

So this deck, honestly, even if I did not write it is the most beautiful deck I’ve ever seen in my life. I truly is for the person who loves ancient wisdom, loves yoga, Ayurveda, chakras, deities, connecting to this ancient wisdom that has existed since the beginning of time that is so earth-based, so real, but at the same time so mystical and other-worldly.

So you can find these cards available on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, wherever decks are sold. And if you leave a review for them, and you just send me over an email, a screenshot of it to [email protected], I will send you over the guided meditation that I created for working with this deck, along with spreads that I created so you could work with this deck in new ways asking specific questions, and putting them in specific orders, and just having a more elaborate practice with your deck.

You know, maybe it’s your first time working with the deck and this is very new to you, or maybe you love decks and you want to have some cool new spreads that I’ve channeled for you. All you have to do is just leave a review, email it over to me at [email protected], and I will send you over the meditation to work with the deck, along with the spreads.

I am so excited for these sacred cards to make their way to your hands. I am so excited for the downloads that these cards will bring you to come through. And I’m so excited for the global change that you’re going to create when you have that clear guidance coming from your highest self. Namaste.

Episode 224 – Taking A Yogic Path with Sahara Rose