What is Integral Yoga?
Author
Carmen Prema
Date Published
Integral Yoga
The spiritual investigation of life's deepest questions — Why have I been born? Where do I come from? Why am I living? Where will I go after death? — asks for a body and mind capable of inquiry, attention and sustained practice.
For this reason, the ancient Yogic traditions developed integral approaches to human development, cultivating the body, breath, senses, mind and consciousness as interconnected dimensions of being. Yoga is not merely a way to reduce suffering or improve wellbeing. It is a path towards understanding the nature of existence and discovering a more complete way of living.
Sri Aurobindo gave the name Integral Yoga to a vision of Yoga that embraces the whole of life. Rather than following one exclusive path, it brings together the essential principles of different Yogic approaches and seeks their unification in a larger whole. As Sri Aurobindo writes, the Integral Yoga “takes up all of them in their essence” and seeks their “unification (in essence, not in detail) of all these aims, methods, approaches”.
This vision is particularly important to Sundari. We do not understand Yoga as a collection of separate techniques, but as an Integral Journey in which each experience prepares and enriches the next. Āsana refines the body and perception. Prāṇāyāma harmonises the vital energy. Meditation gathers and quietens the mind. Self-enquiry turns awareness towards its own source. The different practices become expressions of one process: conscious integration.
In our schiil, this is the basis of the Integral Flow. Transformation does not need to be forced. When practice is coherent, each stage naturally prepares the next. Physical awareness opens into energetic perception; energetic perception supports concentration; concentration deepens into meditation; meditation reveals the deeper dimensions of consciousness. The journey is progressive, but not linear. It unfolds as a spiral, returning again and again to the same dimensions with greater awareness.
For Sri Aurobindo, this movement is not limited to formal practice. He expressed it simply: “All life is Yoga.” In The Synthesis of Yoga, he describes Yoga as a “methodised effort towards self-perfection” through the expression of the potentialities hidden within the being, leading towards union with the universal and transcendent Existence."
This understanding is at the heart of the Sundari approach. Practice does not end when meditation ends or when we leave the yoga room. Life itself becomes the field in which awareness is integrated. What is discovered in practice gradually becomes present in relationships, choices, work, creativity and everyday experience.
Integration of the Whole Being
Integral Yoga does not separate the spiritual from the physical. The body is not an obstacle to spiritual development, but part of the field in which consciousness evolves.
Sri Aurobindo writes that, when the aim is “a total perfection of the being, the physical part of it cannot be left aside”, because the body is “the material basis” and the instrument through which life is lived. He connects this total perfection with the possibility of a Divine Life fulfilled on earth.
This perspective resonates deeply with Sundari's understanding of Body Architecture. The body has its own intelligence. Alignment is not imposed according to an external ideal, but discovered through the natural organisation of structure, breath and awareness. When the body becomes balanced, breathing becomes freer; when breathing becomes freer, energy can circulate more harmoniously; and when energy becomes harmonious, the mind can settle.
The same principle extends to the subtle dimensions of practice. Prāṇa, nāḍīs and cakras are approached as interconnected aspects of the human experience. The cakras can be understood as symbolic maps of different dimensions of consciousness, while the nāḍīs describe the subtle pathways through which prāṇa is experienced. They are not isolated stages to be conquered separately. They participate in an Integral Flow.
From Practice to Transformation
The purpose of Integral Yoga is therefore not simply to acquire techniques or reach particular states during meditation. It is to allow practice to transform the whole way of being.
Sri Aurobindo describes Integral Yoga as aiming at “a harmonised totality of spiritual realisation and experience”, through “an integral opening of the whole consciousness” — mind, heart, life, will and body — to the Divine Reality.
This movement can be understood as a progression from experience to integration: Experience the body - Become aware of the breath - Perceive the energy - Observe the mind - Discover the stillness.
You begin to recognise the consciousness that is present through all these experiences. Then the practice returns with you into life.
This is the Integral Journey: not a movement away from life, but a gradual integration of every dimension of experience into a more conscious way of living.
At Sundari, Yoga, Meditation, Daoist Arts and Integrative Therapies are therefore not treated as unrelated disciplines. Each offers a different entry point into the same movement of integration. The practices may differ, but the direction remains one: towards greater harmony between body, energy, mind, heart and consciousness.
Sri Aurobindo's vision gives an important philosophical foundation to this approach. Integral Yoga is not about escaping the world, but about opening consciousness to a greater reality, allowing to this consciousness to transform life. As he writes, “the spiritual change” must reach “the whole being, even into the lowest recesses of the life and body”.
This is where the Integral Journey becomes a way of living.
The purpose is not to become someone else.
It is to remove what obscures our essential nature, to recognise what is already present, and to allow that recognition to become embodied in the way we live.