Keith Lowenstein – Kriya Yoga For Self-Discovery

Air Date - 03 September 2025

Kriya yoga is an ancient meditation technique that focuses on breathing and the spine to unlock deep states of awareness, self-realization, and spiritual growth. Kriya can provide a fast path to awakening, yet its practice has been shrouded in secrecy, passed only from master to initiate for millennia. How may we learn more about this sacred practice and know if it is right for us? My guest this week on Destination Unlimited Keith Lowenstein, M.D., M.Div., is a physician, holistic coach, and yogic meditation instructor. In 1980, he began his training in Kriya yoga with Ganesh Baba. He is board-certified in integrative medicine, psychiatry, and obesity medicine. He also integrates medical acupuncture into his work. Keith has a Masters of Divinity with an interfaith focus, is an ordained, interfaith minister and is a Yogacharya in a Kriya (Raja) Yoga lineage.

His website is humanholistics.com, and he joins me this week to share his path and book, Kriya Yoga For Self-Discovery: Practices for Deep States of Meditation.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:04):
My name is Victor Furman. Some call me the Voice.
I've always been fascinated with human nature, spirituality, science and
the crossroads at which they meet. Join me now and
we will explore these topics and so much more with
fascinating guests, authors and experts who will guide us to

(00:28):
Destination Unlimited. Korea Yoga is an ancient meditation technique that
focuses on breathing and the spine to unlock deep states
of awareness, self realization, and spiritual growth. Korea can provide

(00:52):
a fast path to awakening, yet its practice has been
shrouded in secrecy, passed only from master to initiate for millennia.
How may we learn more about this sacred practice and
know if it is right for us? My guest this
week on Destination Unlimited, Keith Lowenstein is a physician, holistic coach,

(01:14):
and yogic meditation instructor. In nineteen eighty he began his
training in Crea Yoga with Ganesh Baba. He is board
certified in integrative medicine, psychiatry and obesity medicine. He also
integrates medical acupuncture into his work. Keith has a Masters

(01:35):
of Divinity with an interfaith focus. Is an ordained interfaith
minister and is a yoga charia in Korea Raja Yoga lineage.
His websites are Humanholistics dot com and Koreabreath dot com
and he joins me this week to share his path
and book Crea Yoga for Self Discovery Practices for Deep

(01:58):
States of Meditation. Please join me in welcoming to Destination Unlimited,
Keith Lowenstein. Welcome, Keith.

Speaker 2 (02:07):
It's so nice to be here, Victor. Thank you so
much for inviting me.

Speaker 1 (02:11):
Keith, please share with our listeners your early path and
how it led to your interest in meditation and ultimately yoga.

Speaker 2 (02:21):
Well, well, yoga really is meditation, which is something many
people don't quite understand. But yoga is a spiritual path
period here in the West, it's become something on every
street corner that people think of as more of an
exercise and fitness program, but so they're kind of one

(02:42):
and the same. Although I didn't really understand that either
when I first got into it, but it was really
my childhood. I got interested in meditation through through dreams
and then in hindsight, you know, kind of playing with
different techniques that I learned again later from my teacher

(03:03):
that reinforced what I was playing with as a child,
and then my nature just grabbed me early on. Even
though I grew up in New York City. New York
City is filled with nature all around, and I was
really lucky to live near where there were woods or
water almost all the time. And I had an early

(03:26):
exposure to religious Renaissance art, and that really grabbed me
in a way I didn't understand quite as a child.
But those pictures of the energy and spiritual transformations and really,
you know, just seemed like part of the natural world
to me, and so they weren't didn't seem otherworldly at all.

(03:49):
So I just kind of at home with all of that.

Speaker 1 (03:52):
And your initial degree was in fine arts, is that correct?

Speaker 2 (03:56):
Yes, My initial degree was in fine arts, absolutely, and
and that is actually kind of how I ended up
meeting my teacher, and so I enjoy the arts, the
visual arts very much.

Speaker 1 (04:07):
So tell us about your introduction to Korea yoga, your teacher,
Ganesh Baba, and how this dramatically changed your life.

Speaker 2 (04:14):
Well, I really didn't know what Korea yoga was, even
though the book by Parmahansa Yoga Nanda, Autobiography of Yogi
is a very popular book, probably more with people a
decade older than me or so, but it's always been
around and is on the I guess top spiritual list
of books that most people get exposed to if they're

(04:37):
in that pursuit. But I was introduced to ghanish Baba.
A good friend had some of my artwork is how
I understood it, and ghanish Baba saw some of it
and said that he was interested in meeting me.

Speaker 3 (04:50):
And at the.

Speaker 2 (04:52):
Time I was well read in Indian and Buddhist philosophy,
and rash Nishem Mukdananda were very popular in this untrue
with throngs of people headed to see them and an
invitation to go see another yogi. You know, it just
didn't really grab me. I was like, I really just
wasn't attracted to that the scene that I had seen

(05:14):
in kind of the popular press and stuff. So I declined,
and shortly thereafter I had a huge life transformation. I
lost a job, I got very very sick, I had
to move or relationship ended, and so after all of that,
and I was kind of like, okay, now which way
to turn? I got called again. He was in upstate

(05:34):
New York at the time, and I went up to
meet him, and yeah, we kind of tested each other
out a little bit, I think, and it was a
very small situation, you know, just a couple people around,
and he had a small group of you know, maybe
ten fifteen twenty max people around who kind of helped
take care of him and knew him. I was twenty
two at the time, he was eighty seven, and over

(05:58):
a three four months period of some kind of reproachment
going back and forth, I ended up really kind of
dedicating myself to studying with him. What he taught me
just really really worked. It was just like, Wow, this
is really something, and that's how we started to work together.

Speaker 1 (06:17):
In retrospect, do you see that initial call by him
because of your art as a synchronicity, Oh?

Speaker 2 (06:27):
Absolutely, you know, well, you know, synchronicity, I think is
I think this was a little more.

Speaker 3 (06:37):
Somehow.

Speaker 2 (06:38):
I think there was more of a connection, and I
guess you could look at it as synchronicity, but I'm
not so sure that it was. I mean, I guess
there's an a causal connection, which is kind of what
synchronicity talks about. But synchronicity is certainly something that you
know runs through my life. I have a good friend

(06:59):
who says he's never known anybody else with so much
ongoing synchronicity in their life. And a friend of mine
recently wrote something. Actually, another woman who studied very closely
with the Ganesh Baba, my teacher during those years, and
she she had a blog post the other day, I'm

(07:20):
prone to synchronicity, it said, and I thought, Wow, that's
really just great. I just I just loved that phrase.
Eve Newhouse is her name.

Speaker 1 (07:30):
Now, ganesh Baba was the one who recommended that you
pursue the study of medicine. How did this manifest for you?

Speaker 2 (07:37):
Well, you know, I was, I mean I started teaching
very early on. You know, he had me teaching Korea
with him within you know, months of meeting him. And
I remember within six months I signed up for anatomy
and physiology class at the local community college to help

(08:00):
me teach career better because it's a very physiologically based
meditation technique. And and at the end of that year,
and I think I at the end of that year,
he kind of you know, turned to me and was like, well,
now it's and I was thinking about different graduate programs

(08:21):
or different types of integrative health to pursue, but he said, no,
you now you have to go to medical school, allopathic
medical school. You have to get an MD, and and so,
you know, so I did. Initially I would say that,
you know, it was I didn't always listen to everything
he said, for sure, but over time it was like, hmm, yeah,

(08:47):
I probably should have listened to that one or this
one and so so.

Speaker 3 (08:52):
So.

Speaker 2 (08:53):
Yeah, so I looked around and you know, on how
to do it because my degree was in art and
I needed a you know, some prerequisites for medical school
and take the MCATs and this and that, and Columbia
and New York had had a program if you had
a bachelor's degree, you could join it, and it was

(09:14):
they kind of had a little structured and.

Speaker 3 (09:17):
To go through it, and so I did. I joined that.

Speaker 2 (09:20):
I moved to New York and started that and I
remember him saying to me, you know, you know you
can't go, Yeah, you're not ready, and I was like, well,
classes are starting. I mean so I felt like I was, well,
you said to do this, and classes are starting. And
so anyway, he ended up coming with me and then
we lived and taught together in New York City for
three years. After spending about a year and a half

(09:43):
up in the up in the up in a rural
area in the Finger Lakes region.

Speaker 1 (09:48):
What is integrative medicine and how did this become part
of your practice?

Speaker 2 (09:53):
You know, I grew up in the sixties and early seventies,
was my you know, childhood and adolescence, and I was
exposed to alternative medicine it was called then. I was
very nutrition conscious, I was very environmentally aware. In fact,
some of the artwork onish Baba Saw was about the

(10:16):
destruction that seemed like was happening to the planet with
a disregard of natural resources and pollution, and so that
was really just all always an interest of mine. I
had read about acupuncture, nutrition hands on work, and I
just always incorporated that from when I was young. Really,

(10:38):
I think even my grandparents had some My grandfather, my
maternal grandfather, was sick and so there were some alternative
therapies they were trying back then in the sixties, and
I was kind of comfortable with that, and I intended
to become an integrative a medicine primary care doctor when
I first went to medical school. Although I ended up

(11:01):
in a integrative I ended up in psychiatry for a
variety of reasons. Was influenced there actually a little bit
by Herbert Benson, who wrote the Relaxation Response, and when
I was studying with him a little bit during medical school,
he he kind of encouraged me to do a little
bit more of a traditional route than I was intending,

(11:21):
and you know, it was absolutely correct and the right
thing to do. And I've actually had a fascinating career
in psychiatry. I incorporate always incorporated nutrition. Everyone comes in
first as a they come in with a week's diary
of what they eat, and I incorporate acupuncture into what

(11:43):
I do, and exercise and meditation and different types of psychotherapy.
So yeah, so that's how I got interested. So I
guess integrated medicine is really taking the best of everything
and really trying to put it together from a scientific standpoint,
not seeing different things as markedly different, and techniques that

(12:06):
don't necessarily complement one another, which can be often very effective.

Speaker 1 (12:13):
What inspired your book Crea Yoga for Self Discovery?

Speaker 2 (12:17):
Well, you could say, in a sense it was a
homework assignment. You know. Part of the way he taught
was having.

Speaker 3 (12:24):
Us rewrite things, and.

Speaker 2 (12:28):
He was hoping for, you know, a book about spiritual practice,
and you know, I certainly had hoped to do it
decades earlier, but it was it was the moment to
do it, and it was a very synchronistic affair. I
realized as I was getting older that I had to.

(12:51):
Although I always taught for forty five years, I've been
teaching this, you know, not so much publicly. But I
realized ten fifteen years ago, probably not fifteen years ago,
that you know, it was time to begin to make
myself a little more available in a public way, and
the book was part of that.

Speaker 1 (13:12):
So in essence, the book was part of it, and
you were sharing your experiences in this practice.

Speaker 2 (13:18):
Oh yeah, I mean I was hoping that the book
would The other real I guess inspiration for the book
is there were a number of books written on crea
yoga out there, and I thought that they were unnecessarily
complex and really didn't give the essence of the practice

(13:41):
and certainly didn't pull it together in a more holistic
and integrative way as I was taught it and how
I teach it, you know, after medical training, which you know,
in hindsight, I think that was probably the project that
was probably my mas and overall, you know, practice this

(14:02):
deeply because I was with him for a better part
of five years pretty much just sitting next to him
and doing meditation and so taking that going into medicine, practicing,
and then pulling it all together for the West. In fact,
he wanted everything in English. So even some of some

(14:23):
some Sanskrit words he still used when I wrote the book,
I was, you know, I moved them into English. And
so that was his goal to have it all in English.
And so there was no kind of getting lost and
what does this word mean or that word mean? You
could really just go forward with the practice.

Speaker 1 (14:41):
Please tell us about your co author, Andrew J.

Speaker 3 (14:44):
Lett.

Speaker 2 (14:45):
Oh well, Andrea, So I was, I was trying to
find the time to write. And I had a few
physician friends who were authors who wrote a number of books,
and you know, they would they're like, oh, you know,
get help. You know, we don't write our own book.
You know, here's here's here's some names. And so over
about seven years, actually I interviewed seven different kind of

(15:09):
co writers and then, you know, none of it really clicked.
And so here's a synchronicity story for you. So one
day I got on Indeed, and I was like, wow,
do people who write advertise on here? And yeah, and
there were a couple people and they were local. I
wanted to do something local, not long distance. And I

(15:29):
thought okay, And so I wasn't quite ready. Six months
later I got a postcard in the mail from Indeed.
I thought it must be time to look, and boom,
I looked and there was Andrea, you know, a little
advertisement in her picture and her CV and I didn't

(15:49):
have to really deeply sign into it into that program
because I could see her email like it was showing.
So I emailed her and we met for coffee and
really that was it, you know, I think we met
for coffee and three hours later she was like, wow,
I better go, you know, check on my daughter. So

(16:09):
it was a good meeting to begin with. And we
worked together for and so she she had a degree
in neuroscience and studied nutrition and she taught yoga for
twenty years, Hata yoga. So it was a very good combination.
And she had some writing awards. So I worked with
her trying to teach her creat you know, for a

(16:30):
number of months, and then you know, she would write
the book and then one day, she just said to me,
you know, Keith, I'm not going to be able to
write this book. You know, You're going to have to
write it. And so I was like, okay. So then
I spent like about you know, two weekends, two three
day weekends, and wrote three hundred pages just boom, and
all kind of came right out. And then I gave

(16:52):
her that and said, well, can you kind of organize
this a little bit? And you know, she worked on
it for a number of months and it back to
me and that turned out to be probably the first
fifty to sixty percent of the book, and and it
went like that. So she was very instrumental in that.
And and we even taught together a couple of times,
and she had great energy and it was very easy

(17:14):
to work with her. When we taught together, we complemented
each other well. So so she also teaches sometimes And yeah,
so that's that's that's a little bit about about about
Andrea wonderful.

Speaker 1 (17:28):
As in all yoga practices, there's a lineage of master teachers.
What is the lineage of Korea yoga.

Speaker 2 (17:36):
Crea Yoga is really basic Indian meditation. You could think
of it as the art and science of yoga meditation,
and and there's many lineages and they all have slightly
different names. But there's there's something called Patanjoli's Yoga Sutras

(17:58):
pulled together about two thousand years ago, fifteen hundred years ago,
somewhere in there. Dating it's a little challenging, but it
was the first kind of written compilation of the practices
that were being handed down with oral tradition for many years.
And Raja yoga is really a a is reelly potently

(18:18):
yoga sutras, and so is Crea yoga. It's one of those,
one of one of the one of the lineages from
that tradition. Yoga kind of has four main traditions. There's
Raja yoga, which is as psychophysiological type of practice that
that's Korea. Crea is one of those. It's got Bacha yoga,

(18:40):
which is a very devotional form of yoga, much like
Christianity is practiced. It's got karma yoga. A good example
of that is Mother Teresa, who many people you know
know about. It has a Yana yoga, which is more
study of scripture, maybe a little bit more like the
Hebrews do with de Torah. But those are kind of

(19:01):
broad comparisons, and Hatha yoga really is part of potentially's
yoga sutras that has eight parts to it. And so
the first two parts of kind of like the Ten Commandments,
and then the third part is the Ten Commandments or
the eightfold Noble Path, and the next part is the

(19:22):
physical body or asanas and uh, and then it kind
of you know, goes from there the different stages, so
in that and and I think we're going to come
to that in a little bit. And so the lineage
here starts with someone named Babajee, which you know, maybe
a specific individual or may really represent and maybe a
specific individual, but really represents kind of yogi's in the Himalayas,

(19:47):
who this this is really what they do. You know,
they're they're they're devoted to practicing meditation all the time,
and and they've kept these practices. The hamalias have been
pretty protected over the centuries, even though there's been you know,
various changes and various wars of this and that and
conquering of different cultures. But these these techniques seem to

(20:10):
go back thousands of years and are ubiquitous, in my opinion,
across all the major religions east and West. So it's
not that it's it's all that if you really look
deeply at physiologically what people are doing, there's there's great similarities.
So this man, Lahiri Mahasayah had a calling to go

(20:32):
to the Himalias and met his teacher there, Babajee, and
he came back and you know, lived a license as
a householder. It's also practice for householders. It's not meant
for well. It certainly can be used for monks, but
that's not a prerequisite, right. This is something to use
for people who you know, go to school, have a family,
have a job, but to practice and develop their spiritual

(20:53):
site at the same time. And so Lahiri Mahasaiah had
a variety of students, you know, some are well known,
some are not. And it's kind of continued from there.
I have actually training from four of the different lines
in various ways. And ghanish Babo's parents were followers of

(21:15):
Lahiri Mahasaya and so as a baby, his his as
an infant, his life was saved by Lahiri. The originator
of these techniques are the person who brought them, you know,
into the householder tradition and started to share them, and
then he worked with someone named Sanya Mahasaya, who was
one of Lahiri's a youngest and last students, but very

(21:38):
senior from a spiritual standpoint. And then he had other
teachers as well, and he was first became a swami
by Swami Shivnanda, who practiced very similar techniques but from
a slightly different tradition. And so from from my standpoint,
I have just absorbed a lot. I've been just very
lucky and had all these different teachers that had connections

(22:00):
to this lineage that I didn't really even realize initially.
There's also ghanish Baba received training from Shri Riktashwar, who
was the teacher of Yoga Nanda. So there's a lot
of cross fertilization. It's a little complicated, and that the
names are not ones that people hear frequently, but I've

(22:22):
written a book and it's a little clear in there.
In fact, ghanish Baba's full name is Shri Mahant swamming
ganishan On Saraswatigiri.

Speaker 1 (22:31):
You come from a rich tradition. My guest Keith Lowenstein,
his book Create a Yoga for Self Discovery, Practices for
Deep States of Meditation. Keith, please share with our listeners
where they can get your book and find out more
about you and your wonderful work.

Speaker 2 (22:48):
Yes, well, thank you. Yeah, well, the book is published
by Inner Traditions and you could go to their website.
It's also available all the major booksellers you know online,
and I have a website www dot Korea k r
I y a Breath dot com, Korea Breath dot com,

(23:09):
and there you can see I offer I offer online
classes four times a year. In fact, the next class
starts October eleventh, on a Saturday, so they are noon
Eastern time and nine am Pacific time. They run about
an hour an hour and a half. There's a free

(23:29):
introductory lecture the first one, and then it's followed by
six very structured classes after that. And once you take that,
you're welcome to come to other You're invited to other things,
including monthly meditations where group gets together and talks about,
you know, how things are going for them. And there's practice, practice, practice, practice,

(23:50):
always practice.

Speaker 3 (23:52):
So yes, and.

Speaker 1 (23:54):
We'll be back with more of Keith after these words.
On the Old Times Radio.

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(24:22):
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Speaker 1 (25:35):
Back on Destination Unlimited. My guest this week, Keith Lowenstein.
We're talking about his book Crea Yoga for Self Discovery
Practices for Deep States of Meditation. Keith, before we go
on with the book, you had also told me you
have a master website that has all of these things
on it. What's that website?

Speaker 2 (25:55):
Yes, I have another website. It is called human Holistics
with an S at the end, humanholistics dot com. Because
I also have a master's in Interfaith Divinity and so
I do spiritual counseling there, and I do coaching. I
work with physicians and burnout and do really a holistic

(26:20):
form of coaching for anybody, and can work on nutrition, lifestyle.
I'm not there as a physician, but given my decades
of work as a physician with multiple board certifications and
all kinds of specialties, it really has informed that coaching
practice and really can help people get back on track.

(26:43):
And so those three things are there if you look,
and there's a link there to the Korea site as well.

Speaker 1 (26:49):
Wonderful. Now, what does Korea mean and how does the
meaning sort of work into what we're talking about today.

Speaker 2 (26:57):
Well, create kind of means work and y'ah can refer
to breath or spirit, and yoga is is kind of
yoking things together, like the mind, body and spirit. So
it's the integration of mind, body and spirit. So in
Korea we're really using the breath as well as other things,

(27:18):
but it's the work of the breath to really integrate
the mind, body and spirit and to have a more
integrated life.

Speaker 1 (27:27):
What is the importance of spinal alignment in Korea yoga?

Speaker 2 (27:32):
Well know, many meditation techniques talk about sitting up, but
that's about all they do. And I think it's really
just kind of faded over the centuries or over the millennia, really,
But breath is so it's intricately related to the nervous system.
And the nervous system has different parts to it. Right,

(27:55):
we have the voluntary part, like we can move our arms,
we can think, but there's a whole nother part called
the autonomic nervous system or automatic nervous system that is
digesting our food, making our urine, pumping our heart. You know,
thank goodness, we don't have to remember to do all
of that stuff right, So and breathe for us. But

(28:16):
the breath and so this all happens in the brain
stem kind of a very old, kind of ancient part
of the brain, goes back to reptiles. But the breath,
we can reach right into that center and modulate it
through the breath. So one of the things that happens
in that center is the fight or flight response can

(28:38):
get activated, which many people are aware of when we're
stressed or this or that. And so the breath really
helps build up the other side of that nervous system,
the more restorative and relaxing side of that nervous system.
So the sympathetic speeds things up. The pair sympathetic kind
of slows it down. And we have nothing in the culture,
our culture that helps us with the pair of sympathetic side.

(29:01):
Everything's go, go, go, go, go go go. So by
sitting straight, it allows us to breathe fully because if
we're hunched over, our lungs, which come all the way
up to above our clavicles, can't really fill up. So
the practice is very breath focused, and you learn these

(29:23):
breathing techniques to just help you just learn to deliciously
love your breath and play with it in just you know,
wonderful and creative ways. And that's just really makes a
huge change for people. And it's something that they can,
you know, grab onto fairly quickly, and it's regardless and

(29:45):
anyone in a similar state of health will experience similar
changes from the techniques. So and it's only you know,
one of one of the techniques, but breath is just
so so so powerful and and the diaphragm is also
negatively affected by poor posture, and that's our main muscle
for breathing, and it connects actually to the lower ribs,

(30:09):
but also connects to our low spine. And so if
our lumbar spine isn't right and we're hunched over and
our rib cage is collapsed and our balloons, these two big,
beautiful living lungs like that want to like fill up
fully just can't. And all that leads to kind of
stress and dysfunction in the nervous system. And so by

(30:33):
sitting up while you're really opening things up and then
you start to practice you know, breath work and it
really opens up a whole other world.

Speaker 1 (30:42):
If someone has back issues, will this practice help them?

Speaker 2 (30:48):
You know, depending on their back issue, right, they'll need
to work with whoever they're connected with. So you know,
sometimes the physical therapist can be very helpful. Sometimes all
you need is massage. Sometimes you need more than that.
You need a you know, an osteopath or or even
more intensive work, depending but physical therapy is a good

(31:09):
way to start. But you have to build up the
muscle slowly in your back. But regardless, I mean, you know,
as the years go on. So a healthy, uninjured twenty
year old should be able to like handle this with
a little discomfort. But you know, a sixty year old
who has some degenerative change and maybe he's had an
injury or some genetic you know, contributions, it's a little

(31:34):
bit harder. And you know, having some support and not
pushing things because you don't want to hurt yourself is
very important. But any change that increases your ability to
rest for respiration and helps your posture because also your
nervous system clearly functions better. When you're in these states

(31:54):
and in deep states of spiritual engagement, your posture can
really significant change.

Speaker 3 (32:00):
Just by itself.

Speaker 2 (32:02):
But even if you're you know, someone with bad osteoporosis
who's maybe eighty two, right, if they if they you know,
have a little bit of support and they start to
breathe and they get just a little bit more movement, Wow,
they do get a great sense of relief. Now, are
they going to be a great krea yogi? You know,
we do have some physical limitations here, but crea yoga

(32:25):
isn't the only technique for these things. But what Korea
does is it is it really kind of takes the
natural kind of physiological changes that occur in spontaneous spiritual experiences,
and we teach ourselves how to get us how to
get ourselves into that state of receptivity through our body

(32:47):
and mind and then and then we can experience it
that way. So and then there's all kinds of practices
and they're you know, they're all valid in their own right.
And you know, different practices work with different work well
for different people. Even in Korea, there's four main practices
that we focus on to begin with, and you know,

(33:08):
people are gonna have different resonance with different ones. They
can play a little bit more with one, and that's
the other thing, it's not a very rigid, rigid, rigid routine.
You know, there's there's flexibility in play. It's a it's
a creative process of integration. So it's it's like learning
a sport. You know, you learn kind of these different

(33:31):
practices and you practice them, you know, drills like you
were gonna do if you're gonna learn baseball, you'd learn
to throw and catch and run and the rules and
then you sit down and then you then then you
can play the game. And boy, playing the game of
meditation is really just wonderful and it just gets.

Speaker 3 (33:50):
More and more and more.

Speaker 2 (33:54):
Interesting as the years pass. I mean, it's just a
you just kind of open up to like the collective
unconscious and just more and more. There's just so much
and of course compassion and opening your heart and so.

Speaker 1 (34:14):
What are some of the pranayama the breathing techniques employed
in Korea yoga.

Speaker 2 (34:20):
So you know, they're pretty basic, basic techniques. So we
teach something called full yogic breath or and we refer
to it as our four for regular relaxed rhythmic respiration.
And we're kind of teaching how to take a full breath,
how to fill up the whole the whole body from
the pelvis all the way up to the throat with breath,

(34:42):
really like experiencing that, learning about how the ribs move
holding it. So there's inspiration, there's retention, and then there's
slow exhalation and then so that there's retention on with
full breath, there's retention with empty breath. Retention isn't really
rest in the long run, but it is helpful to

(35:03):
re educate the respiratory system. So that's a lot of
what we're doing here is re educating the nervous the
respiratory system. So the names that they've been assigned to
keep it in English is jet breath, ocean breath, and
vacuum breath. And what are those For people who have
some pranayama experience. Pranayama is the name of breathing exercises.

(35:27):
That's what that means, right, breathing exercises. So jet breath
is capola batti and it's a it's a rapidly it's
a rapid breath, kind of like breath of fire. Shining
skull breath are similar. Ujaya breath is ocean breath, and
that's when you're you know, working with kind of vibrations
in the back of your throat and your nasal cavity.

(35:50):
Vacuum breath is a modified Udiana banda, which is again
you know, using using abdominal muscles and using using them
in a different way with some retention with empty lungs,
and you know, you kind of practice those other ones
to help you get into deeper states and really for
your lungs to get accustomed to being more expansive. You know,

(36:11):
after some work with that, wow, you breathe completely different
and you're in this just beautiful flow and it very
quickly changes how you feel and your ability to concentrate
in your presence. And really the only thing that we
can control to any great degree is our attention, and

(36:34):
this breath work really helps us, you know, learn how
to do that.

Speaker 1 (36:38):
Or are there mantras in this practice?

Speaker 2 (36:41):
You know, there are specific mantras with everything, but they're
a mantra or using vibration. Vibration sound chanting is one
of the pieces one of the practices. And OHM is
really you know, what's what we use as as the
most basic and it's thought to be really the most universal.

(37:05):
So you can think of ome as I mean the
Bible says, in the beginning was the word? What was
the word? What is the word? And so I think
of it as a vibration. In the beginning, there was
an initial vibration, something happened, right, something started to vibrate,
And so, so, what are we getting at here? What

(37:25):
is God? What is God? What is you know, ultimate
universal unity, as ghanash Baba liked to call it, or
the divine? What are we touching? People touch it? People
experience deep love when they touch it?

Speaker 3 (37:38):
What is that? How is it?

Speaker 2 (37:40):
You know? The way you know, from a scientific viewpoint,
the way I think of it is it's when we
just can get so still, as Yogananda puts it, when
the when the search lights of our five external senses
are turned inward, the nervous system then starts to work
completely differently. All the parts start to communicate differently. We

(38:03):
get very still, and we perceive, we get close to
perceiving that stillness, that that initial vibration, that oh the word,
you know, that that kind of sense, and it's so
familiar to us. It's like, oh, oh my god. You know,
it's like there's such a deep recognition. It's like, oh,
I'm home, Like this is really this is really the place,

(38:27):
and that's where all the love just pours in because
you know they're just the unity of everything just is
so clear. Oh, Ohm is a way, one way.

Speaker 1 (38:40):
Absolutely. How does meditation in Crea practice differ from other practices?

Speaker 2 (38:47):
I think the way gennesh Baba talkt Korea is very
creative and leads let let's lets you really play. So
the way I like to teach it is, you know,
a master of the basics or as best you can,
which is posture, breath, you know, third eye, concentration and
playing with vibration. Master the basics and we refer to

(39:10):
them as the four v's verticalization, ventilation, visualization, and vibrationalization.
Master the four v's, and play with the edges, you know,
and start to start to see kind of where you go.
Every practice is a little bit different in every every tradition,

(39:30):
or not even the traditions, because every tradition has multiple lineages, right,
and they all kind of focus on one little piece
or another. But you know, everybody for for meditation, you know,
most people sit, I mean the Sufi's dance. You know,
in chigong there is movement. Chigong is like Korea in motion.

(39:52):
It's you know, beautiful, but it's just it's a it's
a sitting practice and it's and it's yeah, I see
it as a foundational practice that no matter what you do, actually,
if you learn this and put your practice on top
of it, you will really accelerate. And that's how it

(40:17):
was first explained to me that this is kind of
an accelerated process, and for me it was, I mean,
it was a way to really learn to connect kind
of on demand, so to speak, and then you know,
with to be able to do that more and more
over time, as opposed to waiting for synchronicity to kind

(40:37):
of happen for those moments. So it's a way to
kind of flow with synchronicity and to bring more of
that in your life because you're a little more in
tune with the energies that we don't necessarily pay attention
to because they're not as much in the physical realm,
the space time continuum, so to speak.

Speaker 1 (40:59):
My guest is Keith Lowenstein his book Crea Yoga for
Self Discovery, Practices for Deep States of Meditation. Will be
back with more after these words on the Old Times
Radio Network.

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Speaker 1 (44:43):
Back on Destination Unlimited. My guest this week, Keith Lowenstein.
We're talking about his book Crea Yoga for Self Discovery
Practices for Deep States of Meditation. Keith, your book refers
to Korea as spirit in fa used science. Please explain.

Speaker 2 (45:04):
Well, as I mentioned, Korea and Raja yoga, are use
physiological and psychological techniques to help shift your state of awareness.
So you're the state of awareness of your nervous system,
just like sleep is a different state of awareness, or
some people refer to it as a different state of consciousness.

(45:26):
But you know, we are still alive. There's consciousness really there,
and we have a very challenging time just defining consciousness.
But we work with the science from like I was explaining,
from the physiological standpoint, but you know, it's and we
kind of move up and so we have practices for

(45:47):
the physical body, for our biology, our physiology, for our mind,
and for the spiritual side, and we are learning to
kind of we're kind of it's an inner technology. It's
like a software that we just we install slowly and
well it's even just there, but we start to use

(46:08):
it and it shifts the way our hardware functions. So
just like if you put a new program into your computer,
all of a sudden, you can do things on it
that you couldn't before. So everything's still the same, all
the hardware, but the software. So we're kind of playing
with the software and science actually has plenty. You know,
there's a brand new book that came out just recently.

(46:32):
I Am a part of Infinity, the Spiritual Journey of
Albert Einstein, And when I teach, I love to use
this one quote of his and it's that particular quote
is the front piece of the book, and the quote
is I'm going to read it because it's just so powerful.

(46:52):
A human being is a part of the whole called
by us universe, a part limited in space and time.
It's like I was talking about before. You know, this
helps you experience energies that are beyond space and time.
Einstein continues, we experience ourselves, our thoughts and feelings as

(47:15):
something separate from the rest, a kind of optical delusion
of consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us,
restricting us to our personal desires and to the affection
for a few persons nearest to us. So it's really
he's talking about our delusion lost in just this reality,

(47:36):
the space time continuum. And he finally says, our task
must be to free ourselves from the prison by widening
our circle of compassion, to embrace all living creatures and
the whole of nature in its beauty, and he goes
on after that and even talks about that it's the
task is important in itself, and the striving of the

(47:57):
task helps with inner secure and and and liberation to
a degree because because of the devotion there. So yeah,
so scientists are not are clearly also connected to with
spirit and and and that's that's that's the goal here.

Speaker 1 (48:17):
You share that Ganesh Baba found that the practice of
Korea yoga automatically brought out interpersonal restraints and observances in
the practitioner. Please share these with us and why they're
so important, so.

Speaker 2 (48:31):
That that refers to the first two practices in potentially's
yoga sutras. They're called the Yamas and niyamas. But again,
like I said, they're like the Ten Commandments or the
eightfold Noble path. And but by by these practices so
many traditions have you kind of change your behaviors first,
which is quite a challenge. But but but this, these

(48:55):
practices kind of change you from the inside out and
you kind of don't it happens automatically. You become more compassionate,
which is really kind of the root of almost all
of it, you know, and those things really really just
melt away. He would always say, you know, no worries

(49:16):
about that. It will come practice, practice, practice, And it's
the compassion that you develop and touching that ultimate universal
unity that just you know, changes your nervous system. It
causes deep neuroplastic change in your nervous system. And once
you have experienced that change, it is very difficult to

(49:41):
go back and forget about it. You might have a
difficult time staying there, and that's where the practices come
in to help you stay there more often. But it's
not something you can forget.

Speaker 1 (49:52):
How may this practice open our third eye?

Speaker 3 (49:56):
Well, that's one of the practices.

Speaker 2 (49:58):
So learning learning, so calming that nervous system down, getting
in a place of constant calmness, you know, working on
your autonomic nervous system, and then taking that concentration and
utilizing it in a way to focus your attention in

(50:20):
various areas in a deeply relaxed state that allows that
to develop over time. I mean, it's not something you
know you do in five minutes, right, it's just it's
it's another one of the practices. Right, You're no longer
your eyes are no longer busy looking all around, They're inside, right,
they're quieted down, and it's it's and that's part of

(50:42):
the process. But you know, knowing how to look and
where to look and all that, it just comes with
time and practice.

Speaker 1 (50:49):
What would you like readers to take away from creat
yoga for self discovery.

Speaker 2 (50:54):
That they need to practice? Yeah, yeah, that that It's
not the only way, you know, but it is a
a way that can be you know, an accelerated path
under other than kind of the spontaneous spiritual experiences. That
the deep connection, deep connection with the source or divinity

(51:18):
or you know, the infinite is there. I mean, it
is just there and and and.

Speaker 3 (51:27):
It's a guide.

Speaker 2 (51:27):
It will introduce you and it also teaches you a
little bit about the nervous system. And there's a variety
of different things in there, you know, a universal theory
of human experience, how it relates to the electromagnetic spectrum.
I mean, there's all kinds of other little tidbits in there.
But I mean the goal is to have some faith

(51:48):
in yourself practice and just you know, and and wherever
you are, you know, if you are really have the
intention of moving into this these other dimensions, your teacher
will show up.

Speaker 1 (52:04):
Absolutely. We had the synchronicity talking about synchronicities of meeting
through All Faith Seminary International. What drew you to that
organization and led to your ordination as an interfaith minister
and Masters of Divinity?

Speaker 2 (52:19):
You know, I think it was, Yeah, in in nineteen
eighty three, I was living in New York with Ginnesh
Baba and I was at Columbia and we got an
invitation on Easter Sunday to go to an interfaith service
at Christ Church on Park Avenue and to have him participate.
And so, you know, we walked in and there's you know,

(52:43):
Swami sach Adnanda, peer of eliak Khan, Rabbi Gelberman and
Stendal Rast and Ghanesh Baba you know, participated in the
service with them. So I spent the day with all
of them. And it was also my birthday that year,

(53:06):
which was you know kind of you know, a a
a wonderful thing. And so I met Rabbi Gelberman. Rabbi
Gelberman UH would have regular discussions with Swami Sachi Dinanda.
They broadcast regular meetings where they would talk about interfaith discussions,
and Rabbi Gelberman was started a number of interfaith UH

(53:30):
seminaries over the years, and I remember at the time thinking, wow,
I would really like to kind of pursue that interfaith studies,
but yeah, to be in New York, and you know,
during my pre med time, I didn't have time to
do that, and then I was gone from New York.

Speaker 3 (53:48):
But then COVID happened.

Speaker 2 (53:49):
Then it went online and I was like wow, so
I I reconnected with them and was able to pursue that.
So that's that is how that that is how that
came about.

Speaker 1 (54:03):
And we have the pleasure of being trained and ordained
through that same lineage, for which I am so grateful.

Speaker 2 (54:11):
Yes, I mean, it's really just a beautiful program that
still goes on. And I'm now actively involved there and
teach there and initiated spearheaded the start of a new
program that has this also this wonderful part of it
called the Seekers Compass, a program that focuses on mysticism.
They have programs that focus on a course in miracles.

(54:33):
There's a rabbinical track, there's an interfaith track, and now
there's this mysticism track where you can become a minister,
pursue a master as a doctorate in all these fields
and I work there with on the on the Mysticism
program with Reverend Bud James, who's you know, wonderful and
it's a very interesting, interesting program.

Speaker 1 (54:55):
Absolutely, and it's through that organization that you and I
had the synchronicity of meeting and having this blessed connection
for which I'm so, so so grateful. My guest, Keith
Lowenstein his book Korea Yoga for Self Discovery Practices for
Deep States of Meditation. Keith, once again, please share with
listeners where they can get your book and find out

(55:15):
more about you and your amazing work.

Speaker 2 (55:18):
Yes, so Careerbreath dot com or Humanholistics dot com you
can you can look up.

Speaker 3 (55:24):
Both of those.

Speaker 2 (55:25):
My book is available at the publisher and Traditions or
wherever you enjoy buying books online or at your local bookstore.
And if you're interested, please don't hesitate to reach out.
You can reach me through either of those websites. And
I wish you all the best in your travels, your

(55:46):
and your pursuits.

Speaker 1 (55:47):
Keith, thank you so much for joining us and sharing
this wonderful journey that you've taken and all of the
blessings and teachings that you've received and continue to pass
on today.

Speaker 2 (55:58):
Thank you, thank you for for having me, this was
really an honor.

Speaker 1 (56:02):
And thank you for joining us on Destination Unlimited. I'm
Victor the Voice Furman. Have a wonderful week.