Swami Muktimurti’s Teaching Tour

To the Shores of Uruguay

By Mangalananda, January 2012

You may have heard Swami Muktimurti’s angelic voice on CDs like ‘Pranam’ and ‘Nada Yoga Swara Sadhana’. Or you may be lucky enough to have experienced her kirtans and bhajans live, or even singing alongside Sri Prahlada and Carmella Baynie. Mukti’s exceptional voice imbibes the spirit and ‘bhav’ of Satyananda Yoga as she inspires yogis throughout the world with her love of chanting, kirtan and nada yoga.

Mukti began the yogic path in 1978 as a mere teenager living at Mangrove Yoga Ashram before moving to Munger ashram, India in 1996 to live and work for a decade. Today, back at Mangrove as Enrolments Officer for the Satyananda Yoga Academy (SYA) in Australia, Mukti shares worldwide the sadhana from her Munger days: “Since I came back from India to Australia, people have been asking to learn the material that we were chanting in the ashram in India and so I’ve been travelling around teaching chanting, and teaching mantra and stotrams.”

Mukti has recently returned from her third tour to Uruguay, South America, invited by yoga teacher and karma sannyasin Janardhana (SYA Diploma graduate), who runs Satyananda Yoga® in Uruguay along with a dedicated team of karma yogis. Mukti explains “Since not so many Uruguayans are able to travel often to India, Janardhana brings India to Uruguay by inviting mostly India-trained swamis… Uruguay is a very small country in the south of the South American continent, at approximately the same latitude as Sydney, bordered by Argentina and Brazil.”

After a lengthy flight from Sydney to Montevideo, host Janardhana whisks Mukti out into the countryside for a program with an enthusiastic crowd of eighty chanters in Las Piedras. This is followed by a weekend retreat hosted at the Mariapolis Convent.

The theme for this tour to South America is Bhakti Yoga: “All the programs were tied into love… about singing, chanting and connecting with the heart.”

For the next two weeks, Mukti finds herself commuting mostly between the two main yoga centres in Uruguay: the Satyananda Darshan centre in Montevideo city and the Niranjan Kutir in the outer suburbs, teaching an abundance of workshops, classes and sessions including private tuition in “…harmonium, chanting and singing”.

Mukti’s workshops in Uruguay are attended by enthusiasts and many keep coming back each year to learn the bhajans and stotrams: “They have been practising all year and are getting very proficient in chanting.”

Keeping the Uruguayans in the loop with Swamiji’s sadhanas like the three early morning mantras, the Saturday Mahamrityunjaya havan and full moon Rudrabhishek (the adorning of Shiva) ceremonies, have modest beginnings. “They couldn’t get a proper sized sivalingam for the first Rudrabhishek - we had only a little tiny one, about four inches high. It was like playing with dolls, which was very amusing and rather sweet! Then one of their people, a sculptor, made a big sivalingam carved out of stone, so they have been using that ever since.”

Nada yoga meditation practice and learning the Satyam Chalisa were some of the features of this tour: “I taught them the new Satyam Chalisa which was recently composed about Swami Satyananda. Swami Niranjan says that it is the new trademark for our ashrams in India, both in Munger and Rikhia.” As well as giving them grounding in other sadhanas: “I taught them the Vishnu Sahasranam, the thousand names of Vishnu, and an introduction to chanting the Bhagavad-Gita.”

In the midst of all this comes the Indian festival of lights, Diwali: “We decorated the whole place with candles.” Mukti’s eyes sparkle with humour when recalling the weekly kirtan at Satyananda Darshan: “They got me to sing all of the kirtans. I managed to get one other person to sing another one in the middle, otherwise it was all the ‘Mukti show’!”

The intensity continues over the weekend: “On Saturday we had a Mahamantra Akhanda kirtan then Mahamritunjaya havan… On Sunday… a Rudrabhishek in the morning followed by more workshops into the evening.”

Can Mukti’s incredible endurance in leading programs in an Hispanic land be attributed to sampling the occasional South American treat? “They eat a lot of dulce de leche which is a type of caramel.” Gracious hosts Janardhana and his wife Shraddha take Mukti on a scenic drive up the coast… “The water is brown and looks like chocolate milk… it’s not technically the ocean, it’s the mouth of an enormous river that separates Uruguay from Buenos Aires in Argentina… called the river Platte, as in silver plate… as the light shines on it… Uruguay has some likeness to Australia with a lot of imported Australian gum trees and plants and the people have a similar independence of mind and attitude.”

As Uruguay awaits the sweet voice of Mukti in 2012 while savouring their ‘dulce de leche’, Australians can enjoy her kirtans and bhajans with special upcoming programs like ‘In Search of the Lost Chord’ with Carmella Baynie in April and much much more.