Are You Aware of Who You Really Are?
Yoga Was Never About Self-Improvement
But Self-Realization
I am a yogi living among Hollywood stars in Los Angeles, a city built on image, where how you look from the outside is valued far more than how you feel on the inside. Every night I meditate and ask the universe to send my way the people who will benefit from my teachings the most, and to help me be a conduit for them to hear exactly what they need to hear so they can heal. Anyone who walks into my yoga room, I know in my heart that our paths did not cross by accident. They could have walked into any yoga class or yoga teacher training, yet they came to me, and I honor that as a sacred contract. Our souls met long before our physical bodies came into existence, and they agreed to meet again in the physical realm.
I teach yoga in Malibu, where some of the most stunning, beautiful people are my students. They arrive in their Rolls Royces and Ferraris, too afraid to leave their Birkin bags in the cubbies, so they keep them beside their yoga mats, the diamonds in their hands and ears catching the light as they move through their Downward Facing Dogs.
And still, they come to me with their suffering.
Anxiety, loneliness, fear, restlessness, the quiet emptiness no luxury can fill.
Because we are not different. Beneath status, wealth, beauty, and story, the human experience is the same. The mind can create heaven, and the mind can create hell.
Inner peace is not a lifestyle, not a location, not a possession. It is a state of consciousness. And yoga is the path that teaches you how to enter it.
Whether it be an unhoused person or someone living in the mansions tucked up in the lush hills overlooking the Pacific Ocean, I only see souls. Sometimes I do not even remember people’s names, and I feel embarrassed because I never want anyone to think I do not care, but the truth is I care on the deepest level. When I teach, I want them to heal at the soul level, not the surface. That is transformation, not a surface level yoga class that is borderline entertainment that fades when the class ends. The popularity of spirituality is often confused with aesthetics these days. Flowers, crystals, scents, tarot cards, and rituals can be beautiful, but they are not the work. The real shift happens inside of you and resonates in your day to day life long after the class is over.
You live in a modern world shaped by image, performance, and identity crafted from the outside in. Who you appear to be often matters more than who you are.
Yoga, sound baths, and mindfulness classes and rituals nowadays are what happy hour was to the previous generation.
Yoga was never designed for this direction of movement. Yoga moves the other way.
Yoga is not self improvement
Yoga is self recognition
In the yogic tradition, the root of suffering is avidya, misidentification, mistaking your temporary identity for the Self. We confuse roles, personality, wounds, survival patterns, and stories for who we are. From this comes comparison, anxiety, loneliness, striving, and the quiet feeling that something is off even when life looks good on the outside. Yoga is not self improvement. Yoga is self recognition.
The Seer resting in the Self.
Patanjali defines yoga as yoga citta vritti nirodhah, the stilling of the fluctuations of the mind. When the noise settles, drashtuh svarupe avasthanam, the seer rests in their true nature. This is identity shift at the deepest level, from constructed self to essential Self.
In modern language, yoga is the movement from performing yourself to inhabiting yourself, from reacting to embodying, from fragmentation to coherence, from seeking validation to becoming presence.
Stage III Cancer
16 Rounds Chemotherapy
25 Rounds Radiation
2 Surgeries
I walked down dark stairs
into blackness
and came back
Not motivation. Truth.
I did not come to yoga from strength. I came from fracture, from fear, from loss of control, from watching my identity dissolve in real time.
I was diagnosed with stage III cancer. Sixteen rounds of aggressive chemotherapy, twenty five rounds of radiation, two surgeries. My body weakened, my world narrowed, and the version of myself I thought I was began dissolving slowly and piece by piece.
During the most aggressive cancer treatment, I was in what they call chemo coma. There was a moment I will never forget. It did not feel like a dream or a hallucination. It felt more real than anything I have experienced in waking life. I experienced myself walking down dark stairs into a silent underground pitch black place, a kind of blackness that cannot be experienced in our reality. There was no light, no story, no identity, only a vast empty stillness. I understood it was a crossing of realms. I continued descending. My legs, even without a physical body, were running down the stairs so fast. Then a voice arose from within, and said “not yet, it is too soon”, clear and unmistakable. I turned around, started climbing back up the stairs, and woke up.
That moment did not give me motivation. It gave me truth.
I saw how fragile the constructed self is and how real the deeper Self is.
Yoga became the path of returning to that ground, not learning more, becoming more real.
Yoga means Union
Atman and Brahman
The individual Self and the One
You were never separate.
Because identity does not change through information. It changes through embodiment. Through union. Most people in the West mistake yoga for a wellness practice. But real ancient yoga, Raja Yoga, is a metaphysical science. The word yoga means union, the union between atman, the individual Self, and Brahman, universal consciousness, the One. Yoga is the remembering that you were never separate. The One expresses itself through the many, through form, through personality, through you.
When this truth is no longer an idea but a lived reality, identity reorganizes naturally. You realize, recognize, remember who you truly are. You stop living as a fragmented individual trying to hold life together alone. You begin living as a channel through which intelligence, energy, and purpose move. Your actions are no longer forced, they are inspired.
You stop grinding and start flowing with life. You stop swimming against the current. You drop the paddles and let the current of life guide you, absorbed in the scene, present in the movement.
This is alignment, not aligning with an upscale brand, a certain goal, or an unrealistic version of yourself you are trying to become, but aligning with Source itself. When alignment happens, life stops feeling like a solo effort. You realize you are supported by something far larger than your personal will. The universe moves with you, through you, as you.
This is what people call flow. In yoga, flow is not a moment. It is a way of being, a sustained state of coherence between inner truth and outer expression.
Identity does not transform through information
It awakens through embodiment
Asana
Pranayama
Bandha
Dhyana
Samadhi
The ancient yogic techniques for self awareness.
This is why we practice asana, not to perfect the shape but to embody the truth. Asana teaches you to remain inside your body instead of abandoning it. Pranayama regulates prana and stabilizes the nervous system so you stop living in survival mode. Bandha contains your energy so it stops leaking into distraction and emotional reactivity. Dhyana reveals the patterns you are not. Samadhi dissolves the false center completely.
This is the original science of identity transformation.
For the modern human, yoga is not about escaping life. It is about moving through life without losing yourself inside it. You can build, create, love, work, lead, struggle, succeed, and still remain established in Self. This is sthira, inner steadiness. This is svadharma, living from your true nature rather than borrowed identity.
When identity shifts, behavior reorganizes naturally. Health becomes expression, not effort. Clarity replaces confusion. Relationships stop repeating old patterns. You stop forcing life and begin moving with it.
What do you do with all this information?
I will be unfolding this deeper through Yogi Maha Method Journal and inside the spaces where we practice, not just talk. Consider this your invitation to stay close to this work, because what is coming is not more information, but real transformation, the kind that shifts identity, restores alignment, and reconnects you to your true nature.
This is Yoga
Not performance
Not image
Not information
Self Realization
Finally…
No more overload. You turn it into an embodied practice that resonates on a cellular level, so it becomes your blueprint, a memory when life starts doing its thing and knocking you down.
Shut the blinds. Turn all devices to silent mode. Wear earplugs. Put on eye pillows. Burn sage. Close off all sensory input. Close your eyes.
Withdraw the senses, pratyahara. Claim your energy back to you.
Inhale, pull prana inward into the spine, allowing your natural light to flow back to you.
Exhale, let prana move from the center, your spine, out to your extremities, replenishing your whole body.
Two minutes, every day, until the body remembers its nature. Then it becomes your blueprint. When life knocks you down, you know the way back.
May you be healthy. May you be happy. May you be at peace. The light within me honors the light within you.
Namaste, my friend.
Maha