2026 Sedona Yoga Festival

Modern yoga is recognized as the quintessential path for personal growth and wellbeing through personal practice. We excel in our identity as the practitioner, and celebrate the sense of the agency which yoga helps us regain. A classical understanding of yoga, however, celebrates the intersection of self-effort and divine grace. It encourages us to recognize how the profound insights revealed by yoga are glimpses of a Higher Reality which surrounds us, and boldly inspires us to embrace that Higher Reality.

In this lecture and discussion inspired by the wisdom of the Yoga Sutra, explore the nature of Higher Reality known as Ishvara (Yoga Sutras 1:23-29), the relationship between self-effort and divine grace, and how we can reconcile yoga’s focus on self-effort with the notion of trustful surrender to the divine.

Suggested Reading: The Secret of the Yoga Sutra, by Pandit Rajmani Tigunait, PhD