Sufi Mindfulness Yoga uses scientific evidence from the field of psycholinguistics to link individual speech sounds into word formulas. These formulas, or mantras, when used in a prescribed manner, can help you maintain emotional balance. Used in a meditation setting the practices can help you reach the spiritual goal of self-transcendence.

The concept of using words for their inherent emotional quality goes back thousands of years. Perhaps the oldest examples are Vedic mantras which Hindus still use today in their religious services. Other somewhat younger religions, including Buddhism and Islam, also have a rich history of using words, or mantras, to evoke a specific feeling or to petition God for a specific quality in one's life.

I first become interested in the use of speech sounds for emotional impact over forty years ago after dropping out of my senior year at Lehigh University. I spent years of adventures and misadventures at ashrams and communes and experienced various transformative Hindu, Buddhist, and Islamic mantras. But I was't satisfied with accepting mantras on a religious or spiritual basis. I wanted to understand how they worked. How could they affect my physiology in a way that could change my emotional state.

This desire for a rational explanation of the power of mantras led me to enroll in grad school and earn a Ph.D. in psycholinguistics and conduct research on speech sounds and emotions. From this research I established an introductory program I called Holistic Emotive Practices, or simply HEP, for short.

Further research has revealed that the prinicples underlying HEP provide a link between two major religious schools that use mantras. Specifically, my works on sounds shows how certain Sufi practices apply to the tenants of the Yoga Sutras, a centuries old work attributed to Patanjali that serves as the basis for many schools of yoga today. This revelation led to Sufi Mindfulness Yoga, a very detailed program designed to help you help achieve self-transcendence through deep meditation, and also help you lead a more mindful daily existence. The various parts of this website have much valuable information on the science and theory behind Sufi Mindfulness Yoga (SMY) and how you can learn the practices of SMY. You can obtain a thorough treatise on the topic in my book, found at this link: Sufi Mindfulness Yoga

The path that lead me to develop SMY had many highly unusual, and oft dramatic events including: dropping out of college after listening to Ram Dass, trying to jump start a commune, spending time at yoga ashrams and Sufi communities, encountering shamans and psychics, seeing vivid visions and experiencing out-of-body excursions. Through this turbulent times I kept a journal and now on the other side of this whirlwind portion of my life I have weaved together these happenings into a memoir you can obtain at this link: Seeking Sound Judgment. This volume speaks to the human side of SMY and lets the reader see some of the magical mystery tour that evolved into HEP and SMY.



See the Science page of this website for a synopsis of the science behind HEP and SMY.

Check out the Theory page of this website for a synopsis of the theory behind HEP and SMY that is based on the integration of Patanjali's Yoga Sutras with Sufi practices.

Click on the practices link to learn the actual individual practices that comprise SMY .



You can find info on events events related to HEP and SMY at this link.

Also Check out the Spirituality page for some of my essays and presentations on spiritual topics of interest.