With the goal of helping others achieve inner peace, spiritual teacher and coach Yol Swan offers her eponymous Swan Method of insight into the wiles of the controlling ego, as well as ongoing, disciplined, creative and meditative activities to free readers “from the bondage of [their] limiting beliefs and mental fluctuations.”
Swan uses “the yoga and Advaita Vedanta philosophical schools as the foundation to explore the mind and the path to enlightenment.” These philosophies are explained in detail in the first three chapters: The Premise: Oneness; The Revelation: A Divine Play; and The Process: Individuation in Duality. She offers three exercises to practice regularly: stillness, breathing correctly, and healing the inner child.
The author follows with a discussion of her Swan Method, which requires concentrated, consistent focus on, among other things, where your attention is; detaching from emotional responses to current experience and delving into where, in the past, these responses came from; trusting your intuition; and strengthening your sense of self.
Finally, she offers a deep dive into the benefit of the practice she describes as: “You are the space where everything unfolds. You are not in the world, the world is in you—or rather, the world is you.”
This program is not for the occasional dabbler in spiritual enquiry. This is a comprehensive exploration of Buddhist and Hindu philosophies with forays into Zen and Taoist stories and Greek mythology. It requires real commitment: first, to focus on and comprehend the opening 150 pages of scholarly lessons on the ego, energy, consciousness, karma, and much more, and second, to integrate the exercises in focus, memory, and self-knowledge into a consistent moment-by-moment practice.
Swan writes clearly, and the many stories she includes from ancient cultures to illustrate the concepts lend color and lightness to what can be intense instruction.
For anyone willing to go slow, breathe, and smile as inner peace replaces distraction and psychic pain, the Swan Method is a valuable program.
Also available as an ebook.
