SARAH TOMLINSON

Yantras: The Creative Self & Its Expression

Yantrika (Yantra teacher and practitioner), Yoga Teacher, Artist, Author and Speaker

Healing Conversation #209

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Creating Yantras is a traditional spiritual practice that, just like yoga and meditation, leads you to the source, to a feeling of contentment. Yantras were originally conceived over four thousand years ago in the northern regions of India. A mystical experience, a centering, comes from a meditative practice that has a spiritual focal point. Creating Yantras is a particularly powerful spiritual practice that enables you to connect your essential creative self with its expression. Working with these designs has become part of contemporary stress-reduction practices brought to us from the East along with yoga and Eastern philosophies.

Sacred Yantras are made up of the following components: the bhupur (outline); circle; petals; triangle, six-pointed star, or square; and bindu (central dot). Most of these shapes are purely geometrical and relate to the cosmic laws of sacred geometry. Sacred geometry is a pre-linguistic form of communicating through basic archetypal symbols that has been used in various forms throughout civilization. It is the shapes’ placement on the Yantra, centrally around the bindu, that gives the forms a magnetic charge. The elements are placed to bring your eyes from the outside to the center, mirroring the spiritual practice of harnessing the mind from its wandering tendencies to rest upon the object of perception and bring you to rest peacefully at the center of your being.

The only purely non-geometric form used in the Yantras is the petal. This form is thought of as the lotus petal directing your gaze inward to the center. The petal directs the lower mind to the higher mind or consciousness. Drawing the petals freehand (with the help of the semicircular guide) can bring a feeling of connecting your personality with the Yantra. The freeform of the petals is juxtaposed with the more structural universality of the geometric shapes. This merging of natural shapes with the strictly geometric forms is a beautiful aspect of the Yantra.

One of the key teachers in bringing this knowledge to the West was Sarah Tomlinson’s teacher, the late, great Sri Harish Johari, see further reading for his and other notable teachers in this century. Today the practice of Yantra Painting is done mostly in the confines of one’s own home as a devotional puja, an offering to a deity, to bring healing and good fortune to one’s family and home. It is, largely thanks to the students of Harish Johari also becoming taught and practiced in yoga centers throughout Europe and the USA allowing this ancient art to be incorporated into the many flourishing western spiritual practices. 

— In this episode, Valeria interviews Sarah Tomlinson the author of Nine Designs for Inner Peace: The Ultimate Guide to Meditating with Color, Shape, and Sound And Yantra Bliss Oracle Deck

Sarah Tomlinson is an internationally acclaimed Yantrika (Yantra teacher and practitioner), yoga teacher and artist, with renowned fans across the globe including Elena Brower and Sharon Gannon, co-founder of Jivamukti Yoga. Sarah worked extensively with her mentor Harish Johari in India, he initiated her into the spiritual practice of painting Yantras. Sarah is the author of Coloring Yantras, (Shambhala Publications, 2017), Nine Designs for Inner Peace, (Destiny Publishing, 2008) and creator of the Yantra Bliss Oracle Deck, (2017). She leads retreats and Yantra workshops around the world and enjoys lots of time by the ocean with her husband and two young boys. 

To learn more about Sarah Tomlinson please visit her website: https://www.sarahyantra.com/

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