Mahāyoga Advanced Training: Bhakti Yoga

October 2025 - June 2026

Our 9 Month Advanced Training Program is the crown jewel of all of our offerings for committed seekers. Harshada has been offering these long-form trainings for many years. Last year, the advanced training was six months. This year, we are returning to the original 9 month format.

"I love our shorter courses and really think they're great, but, truly speaking, spiritual training is not meant to be a short-term engagement. The Advanced Training gives us 9 months to dig in and do the work on ourselves and really learn. And while we're working, we're living a chunk of our lives. Our relationships, our work, our bodies, all of these elements of life are doing their own thing and they're in the mix. This is how real spiritual training happens."

In the training Harshada combines classical teachings with regular practices to initiate you into a way of being as a spiritual seeker. This year, the centerpiece of the training will be the teachings of the Bhagavad Gita.

"These are very complicated times. People are suffering. The "masses" are suffering, but so are the leaders. Honestly the spiritual leaders and teachers are suffering too. There is a kind of collective madness going on. This is a time for healing and wisdom. This is the perfect time to dive into real bhakti yoga. Bhakti yoga in general, and the Gita in particular, is deeply mystical and esoteric and also profoundly practical and life-based. I think this year's training will be very healing and empowering for people who are ready to go deep."

The Goal

A Soul-centered, empowered life in the world. The training will train you to connect deeply with your own inner truth, clearly with the Divine (as you understand it) and get free from whatever is holding you back from being deeply happy, free, and ready to serve your world in the highest way.

Not a Teacher Training

Many of the trainees are teachers or want to be teachers, but it's not a "teacher training" as such. The training sets you up to be a carrier of wisdom and servant of love in any situation.

"When it comes to deep traditions like Mahayoga or the Bhagavad Gita, teacher trainings are kind of crazy. 200, 300, 500 hours. These hours are just drops in a bucket. Yogis spend lifetimes studying this stuff."

Harshada has been working with the classical wisdom teachings from the Indian mystical tradition for more than 30 years and has trained countless practitioners. Trainees in this year's Advanced Training will be carefully selected according to their readiness and willingness to commit to their own development. The other criteria is a vision for how you will share what you learn. It doesn't mean you're going to be a dharma teacher or a healer. Maybe you're a visionary parent or a entrepreneur. Maybe you're in recovery and have a vision for a wisdom-driven life. Only you know.

Harshada will initiate the trainees into various Mahayoga practices including meditation practices, mantra practices, ritual, breathwork, awareness practices, and also share the root teachings where the practices come from.

Anti-oppressionist Spirituality

We strive in our community to stand for freedom and against oppression in all of its forms.

We recognize that, inadvertently, many modern expressions of spirituality support oppression, either by providing a form of escapism for privileged people that helps them to ignore forms of oppression in the collective, or by contributing to systems of systemic racism, homo/transphobia, ableism, or modern day colonialism.

Spiritual practice itself, when misunderstood, can become a form of self-oppression. We are a life-positive, queer-positive, sex-positive, shadow-positive, community. We also stand against religious and spiritual sectarianism. We make a clear distinction between spirituality and relgion, and recognize the tremendous harm that organized religions inflict.

As a leader and teacher in the community, Harshada strives to lead as a fellow-student of the work, assuming the responsibility of service-though-leadership, but he will not be leading this training from a place that is "higher". In our training we will learn about power dynamics within spiritual groups and examine how disempowerment and cult-dynamics can emerge in spiritual communities. We believe that just as "hurt people hurt people", free people free people.

"Traditionally, Bhakti Yoga was the yoga of the people. Bhakti Yoga masters brought the practices into houses and into the streets and empowered people to learn the teachings in their own language in their own context. In a small way, this is what I hope to do."

Mahāyoga

Harshada is a modern representative of a very old spiritual lineage originating in ancient India. He refers to it as the Mahayoga Lineage. That's not an official name, but rather a reference to the Kundalini Mahayoga taught by the masters in his lineage for millennia.

Kundalini Mahayoga is the blend of teachings and practices which weaves together the philosophical streams of non-dual tantra, bhakti, vedanta, Patanjali, hatha yoga, jnana yoga and meditation practices often referred to as raja yoga.

The foundation of Mahayoga is the awakening of the Kundalini Shakti, the indwelling spiritual intelligence that lies within everyone. Truly speaking, Mahayoga is not a yoga like a technique or system. It is the process of supporting the kundalini awakening and expanding. It happens within a person's subtle being and also in their outside life revealing the divine within and without. The teachings and practices of Mahayoga are there to support this process. To learn more click here.

The Gita

The central text for this year's training is the 5000 Year Old Bhagavad Gita. Over the 9 months, Harshada will teach all 18 chapters of the Gita and weave in threads of Tantra, Vedanta, Bhakti, Yoga, as well as contemporary "success mindset" philosophy. We'll make the teachings and practices of the Gita come alive and relevant for us and the people we serve.

Here is one of Harshada's favorite verses:

यस्मान्नोद्विजते लोको लोकान्नोद्विजते च य:।
हर्षामर्षभयोद्वेगैर्मुक्तो य: स च मे प्रिय:॥ १५॥

One from whom the world does not shrink, and who does not shrink from the world;

who is free from delight, intolerance, fear, and agitation — such a one is dear to Me. 12:14

This is the voice of the Divine - personified by Krishna. He is describing the vision of the goal of this year's training. When he says "dear to me", he is saying that one with this kind of cultivation is close to their Divine Beloved.

This is Bhakti Yoga. We uplift the world we live in and are not crushed by it. We cultivate freedom in our minds, hearts, bodies, and lives and radiate that freedom wherever we go.

You will also learn essential teachings from texts such as:

• Jnaneshwar Maharaj's Commentary on the Gita
• Śiva Sutra
• Narada Bhakti Sutra
• Ashtvakra Samhita
• Pantanjali Yoga Sutra
• Sacred Poetic texts: Rumi, Kabir, Mirabai, and others

Most importantly, you will receive 9 months of supervised sadhana.

This will be a year that changes you and potentially changes your life. These are times that are asking us to grow...together.

You don't need to take a break from your life, our training is made for people with busy lives. But you will need to live and examine your life through the lens of the training.

Trainees will learn:

• Meditation Techniques
• Pranayama Practices
• Subtle anatomy
• How to work with Kundalini Shakti
• How to work with sacred texts
• Spiritual self-defense methods

How It Works:

Harshada works closely with a small group of trainees for 9 months of spiritual unfolding, daily practice, and deep personal work. You’ll meet three times per month in online group sessions and have access to office hours three times per month. Depending on your level of enrollment, you can also schedule private healing sessions, consultations, and brief dokusan-style check-ins.

Participants commit to daily practice, assigned readings and exercises, group dialogues, and at least one in-person retreat during the 9 months. Plan to dedicate an average of 30–60 minutes per day to your practice.

Why Commitment Matters:
The power of this training comes from your sustained commitment. There will be weeks off and rest days, but what changes you is showing up, day after day, for yourself and the work. It takes strength to stay the course for 9 months — and that strength will change your life. Traditional yoga students would spend years and years doing hardcore austerities to transform themselves. This isn't that, but we want to give people a way to really lean in and invest in their awakening. This is not a quick-fix program. This is something deeper.

Your Tuition
Acknowledging the current economic climate, we have decided to reduce our tuition rate for this year's training.

This year we have two levels of commitment and two levels of tuition.

Choose the level of support that fits your needs:

Basic Level (most popular)
Includes:

• 3 group sessions per month
• 1 private session with Harshada per month
• $1000 discount on the January India Pilgrimage Retreat
• Tuition: $777/month or $5500 prepaid*

Immersion Level (a very deep dive)
Includes everything in the Basic Level, plus:

• 2 additional private sessions per month (3 total)
• Access to any existing online courses.
• Ongoing WhatsApp text support with Harshada
• Tuition: $1100/month or $9600 prepaid

* Tuition rates displayed are "early registration" rates applicable until August 1

**Discounts are offered for qualified LGBTQ+ and BIPOC applicants on case by case basis — email to inquire.