A Victorian yoga ashram is being investigated following allegations of indecent behaviour.

Police say the Shiva School of Meditation and Yoga in Mount Eliza is under investigation, following complaints of indecent acts against several women.

Their investigation comes after the school revealed late last year that accusations had been made against the ashram founder and director Swami Shankarananda, 72, also known as Russell Kruckman.

Swami Shankarananda later issued a statement apologising for the disastrous effect of his former "tantric sexual activities" on some followers, and said he had stopped his behaviour.

Some of the former followers have now started a leavingshivayoga website, on which they've made statements regretting not speaking up sooner about feeling pressured into having sex.

One woman said she was told by the Swami to keep quiet about their sexual encounters.

"He would reply with things like `oh baby, this lies outside the boundaries of the normal world. You can't look at it with worldly eyes. You're exploring the shakti with your guru and it's not cheating'," she wrote.

The website convenor, who did not wish to be named, said the women's statements would not affect the police investigation.

Ex-members of the ashram have also started a petition site demanding the Swami stand down pending the police investigation.

Link:

Victorian yoga ashram investigated

Tuesday, March 17, 2015 - 5:17am

(CNN) Want to share more than commercialized romance with your significant other? Try Partner Yoga to put the emphasis back on connection instead of consumerism.

Partner Yoga is a style of yoga designed to connect people -- especially couples -- via the somatosensory system, otherwise known as your sense of touch.

Not only can physical contact reinforce intimate emotional connections and increase dopamine release to enhance pleasure sensations, but studies have shown it also reduces stress.

In 2006, Dr. James Coan, director of the Virginia Affective Neuroscience Laboratory at the University of Virginia, conducted an experiment with 16 married couples and found that holding your partner's hand reduces anxiety by mitigating the stress response.

According to Coan, subsequent research has shown that hand holding between loving couples also promotes enhanced health, overall well being and, even, increased life expectancy.

The Partner Yoga moves I've included below all involve hand holding and/or intertwining arms as the foundation for connection, so you and your partner can partake in your own touch-response experiment.

Coordinated Breathing

Sit across from your partner in a seated straddle position with your feet touching your partner's feet.

Reach out and clasp hands. Look at one another as you establish a long, deep breath.

Continued here:

Partner yoga doubles the pleasure and halves the stress

TIME World Burma Burma Jails New Zealander for Insulting Buddhism in Facebook Post Soe Zeya TunReuters Phil Blackwood, a bar manager from New Zealand, comes out of court after being sentenced to two and half years in prison, at Bahan township court in Yangon on March 17, 2015. Two Burmese were also jailed in what critics deem the latest instance of spiraling religious intolerance in the Southeast Asian nation

A Burmese court sentenced a New Zealand citizen and two Burmese nationals to 2 years in prison with hard labor for posting a promotional advert on social media that depicted the Buddha wearing headphones.

State prosecutors claimed the image posted last year on the Facebook page of V Gastro bar, where Phil Blackwood worked as the general manager, was an insult to the Buddhist religion.

The establishment later issued an apology for causing offense, but Blackwood, along with the bars Burmese owner Tun Thurein and manager Htut Ko Ko Lwin, were arrested on Dec. 10 and have been held in Rangoons notorious Insein Prison ever since.

Ahead of Tuesdays decision, the visibly disheveled Blackwood still appeared optimistic.

Well, hopefully a bit of justice is going to happen, Blackwood told the BBC as he was frog-marched into court by police.

Hours later, activists panned the decision that they say further erodes freedom of expression and promotes growing religious intolerance in the former military state.

That these three men acted in a culturally insensitive way by posting the Buddha with headphones image on Facebook is obvious, but that is nothing they should have been hauled into court for, much less sent to prison, said Phil Robertson, deputy Asia director of Human Rights Watch.

Burma has been rocked by myriad bouts of ethnosectarian violence pitting Buddhist extremist against the nations tiny Muslim minority since the countrys ruling military junta unveiled political reforms in late 2011.

The nationalist movement, known locally as 969, has helped bolster a growing wave of Buddhist chauvinism throughout the country. Nevertheless, over 90% of respondents to a poll conducted by local media outlet DVB said the V Gastro trio did not deserve to be jailed.

See more here:

Burma Jails New Zealander for Insulting Buddhism in Facebook Post