Living the Practice

For over three decades, Rohini Ralby has shared the spiritual practice she learned through years of one-on-one instruction from her Guru, Swami Muktananda Paramahamsa. As her practice has deepened, she has found different ways to give outward expression to inward experience and understanding.

In her 2012 book Walking Home with Baba: The Heart of Spiritual Practice, Rohini interspersed illuminating stories from her life and discipleship with chapters on tools and techniques for the spiritual practice her Guru taught her. Here, in the first of two volumes, she gathers a collection of prose teachings, poems, and paintings, organized thematically to explore the dimensions and stages of true spiritual practice, or sadhana. Showing not only the depth and discernment she has gained through the grace of her Guru, but also an artistry informed by her many years of training and education in dance as well as her mastery of Tai Chi Chuan, these pieces communicate the lived actuality of spiritual practice, and serve as lamps along the path.

From an early age, Rohini Ralby was committed to finding the best teachers in every field she pursued. Originally from the Boston area, she completed her undergraduate studies at Washington University in St. Louis and earned a graduate degree at Mills College.While at Mills, she began intensive study of Tai Chi Chuan,and subsequently ran her own school in Cambridge, Massachusetts while also earning a degree in acupuncture and studying Chinese calligraphy and Alexander Technique. In 1974, she met Swami Muktananda Paramahamsa, and remained a close disciple until his mahasamadhi in 1982. During that time, she studied spiritual practice with him one-on-one.

In the four decades since Muktananda, affectionately known as Baba, left his body, she has continued to devotedly live that practice.Since 1990, she has shared it with students all over the world. In 2012, with Bancroft Press, Rohini published Walking Home with Baba: The Heart of Spiritual Practice, a guide to the inner practice she learned from Muktananda and continues to share. Living the Practice: The Way of Love is the first of two books that collect Rohini’s shorter writings in both prose and verse as well as some of her paintings, organized thematically so readers can locate, read, revisit,and contemplate her teachings and reflections.