How Will Ananda Grow?

The inviolable, built-in limitations of guru-based institutions

Eric Armstrong
8 min readSep 1, 2022

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Don’t get me wrong. I LOVE the folks at Ananda. They couldn’t be nicer. Their program is excellent. And Yogananda is the inspiration behind ALL of my energy-flow techniques. But EVERY guru-based system has built-in limitations. Will Ananda be able to overcome them?

Head and shoulders of Yogananda, in his younger days, wearing a turban.
Young Yogananda, from his book, How to Achieve Glowing Health & Vitality

To most people, Yogananda is best known as the author of Autobiography of a Yogi. I first read it in college, but found it even more inspiring several decades later when I read it again.

That book was uplifting, and even illuminating. It showed me what was possible. But it did not even begin to tell me how to achieve any of those possibilities.

It would be years before I was introduced to the practices Yogananda taught. That’s when the real inspiration began. (In his later years he did not look as healthy as he did in the picture above. But he had the same spark of energy glowing in his eyes.)

Note: This article contains Amazon affiliate links.

My Debt

Saying that I’ve been “inspired” by Yogananda is putting it mildly. The spiritual practices I teach and that I’ll be sharing in forthcoming books derive almost entirely from Yogananda, in one way or another:

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Eric Armstrong

Eric Armstrong has written books on weight loss, golf, meditation, & yoga. He even builds a Yoga Meditation Bench. Turns out it’s an Ancient Tradition!