JEFF CRAFT'S BACKGROUND
Jeff Craft's Background
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Jeff Craft's Training Experience Overview
| 2009 | 500 Hour Pranakriya Professional Level Yoga Teacher Certification - Yoganand Michael Carroll (N. Augusta, SC) |
| 2008 | Additional Myofascial Release Training - John Barnes |
| 2008 | Registered Yoga Teacher - Yoga Alliance |
| 2007 | Licensed Massage Therapist - State of Georgia |
| 2007 | Certified Yoga Instructor - Nashik, Maharashtra, India |
| 2001 | Shamanic Breathwork Process Training - Venus Rising (Asheville, NC) |
| 2000 | Certified NLP Practitioner - Peak Performance (Atlanta, GA) |
| 2000 | Nationally Certified in Therapeutic Massage & Bodywork - NCTMB |
| 1999 | Certified Karuna Ki Master - The Reiki Institute (New York, NY) |
| 1999 | Certified in CSFT and CSFT Teacher Training - Dr. Glassey (Ft. Meyers, FL) |
| 1998 | Certified in Bio-Cellular Transformation - Len Ponath (Dallas, TX) |
| 1998 | Certified in DNA Cellular Rejuvination - Len Ponath (Dallas, TX) |
| 1997 | Certified Reiki Master - Barbara Roberts (Atlanta, GA) |
| 1997 | Dual Certification for Massage Therapy and NeuroMuscular Therapy
(NMT) - Rising Spirit Institute (Atlanta, GA) |
Jeff Craft's Bio (abridged)
While completing his undergraduate degree in Musical Theatre Performance at Georgia State University (1990-1994), Jeff spent several years in self directed study of Pranic energy healing as well as metaphysical and spiritual topics. His interests in healing and spirituality lead him to complete a dual certification in Massage Therapy and Neuromuscular through Rising Spirit in Atlanta, Georgia in 1997. That same year, he completed his Reiki Master Training.
Amidst additional energy healing training, Jeff received his formal introduction to Yoga in 1998 when he was initiated into Babaji's Kriya Yoga. While exploring Kriya Yoga, he spent the next several years attending additional trainings in multiple healing modalities, including Core Energetics, NLP (Neuro-Linguistic Programming), multiple energy healing modalities, Myofascial Release, Myofascial Unwinding, and Shamanic Breathwork.
He also began his education with Lisa Michaels, learning about and experiencing the power of ritual and working with the energies of creation to bring about healing, transformation and deeper access to the Spiritual Self.
During this same time, he was introduced to Tantra as a practice of Sacred Sexual Exploration.
In 2002, he met and received initiation from his Guru (Spiritual Teacher). Shortly thereafter, his Teacher started him on a formal path of Yogic study with classical Tantra Yoga and Advaita Vedanta (Non-Dualism) as the foundation for Tantra Yoga as a Path of Spiritual Transformation.
During the Summer of 2007, Jeff traveled to Yoga Vidya Gurukul in India to attend a one Month intensive Yoga Teacher Training program. Yoga Vidya Gurukul is linked to the lineage of the Bihar School of Yoga which was founded by Swami Satyananda Saraswati, who is a disciple of Swami Sivananda. In early July of 2007, he received his 200 Hour level certification as a Yoga Teacher in Traditional Indian Hatha Yoga as was passed down by the Tantric tradition of the Bihar School.
In June of 2009, Jeff completed the 500 Hour Pranakriya Professional Level Yoga Teacher Certification with Yoganand Michael Carroll, who was a Master level teacher in the Tantric Hatha Yoga tradition of Kripalu.
He would like to offer Heartfelt Gratitude to everyone who has assisted me on my Journey. In addition to his Guru and the teachers mentioned above, he has been highly inspired at some point on my Tantric Spiritual Path by teachings from the following people (in no particular order): Ramakrishna, Swami Vivekananda, Paramhansa Yoganada, Babaji, Swami Satyananda Saraswati (and the Bihar School of Yoga), Daniel Odier, Mukunda Stiles, Ramesh Balsekar, Swami Shivom Thirth, Swami Muktananda, Swami Nityananda, Arthur Avalon (aka Sir John Woodroffe), Lama Yeshe, Geshe Kelsang Gyatso, and Ramana Maharshi.
Jeff Craft's Spiritual Story - Finding Tantra Yoga
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For each of us there is a thread of experience that has led us to this exact moment, as it is. Various threads for each aspect of our lives, running sometimes parallel, sometimes crossing, and sometimes changing color or simply ending. It is these threads that weave the patterns of our individual and collective existence to make the fabric of our daily lives.
This story is about the threads that were woven together to bring me to this moment as a Tantra Yoga Teacher. I present it to you so that you may better know me, and in so doing perhaps better know your own Self as one who is walking a path towards Spiritual Discovery. | ||
| From the earliest times in childhood, I can remember a special bond and love for my Grandmother. My fascination with her was the deep love for God and Jesus that she openly expressed. And of course the love she expressed towards me and my brother. All of the things we could not have at home like sugared cereals, ice cream, and soft drinks with sugar were abundant at Grandmother's house. And she was an excellent cook, filling us with fried chicken, macaroni and cheese and made-from-scratch biscuits. |  | |
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Amidst the food and the play time, Grandmother would share her faith in God with us. She would play the piano and sing hymns, and tell stories about how she had helped to heal people in the name of Jesus, or had seen Angels sitting in trees and on rooftops. I wanted to know what she knew! I wanted to experience this God she spoke of. We prayed together, watched the 700 club together, and went to church on Sundays. It all seemed very magical to me. As time went on and my brother and I began to transition into adolescent boys and teenagers, our natural interests began to change as well. We became curious about adult things like smoking and chewing tobacco of course, but we also became interested in pinball, video games and Dungeons and Dragons role playing games. As Grandmother began to discover our interests, a side of her I had never seen before began to emerge. The love I had previously experienced as unconditional became anger and judgment. Somehow pinball and video games were evil, and Dungeons and Dragons was Satan worship. As time went on, more judgmental types of comments were seen, and while she did most often still try to love and nurture me, the damage was already done. The innocence of youth had come to an end. And with it grew a great confusion about God. I felt not only betrayed by my Grandmother, but my connection to God had also betrayed me. God was abandoned in bitterness and my relationship with my Grandmother remained strained until her death. As teenagers, my mother invited us to church, but neither my brother nor I felt any real connection. Something just didn't quite feel true about it. My father was not connected to religion at all. I later realized his rejection of religion was caused by my Grandmother as well, just as had happened to me. As I continued growing up and into my late teenage years, my bitterness with religion was great, but it only masked the deep desire to know God that had been created in my young days with Grandmother. Moving out of the house and to Atlanta at the age of 18 allowed me to meet many new people with new outlooks on life and Spirituality. My first new connections were with people who were more Pagan in their outlook and very interested in Metaphysics and psychic phenomenon. I began to explore these ideas as well, as they seemed somehow anti-religion, yet showed the possibility of providing the answer to my still hidden longing. | ||
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Early on in these explorations, I discovered the connection to healing with energy, and my desire to learn how to heal was re-sparked. I began to read books and play with energy healing, but felt very nervous about discussing it with others for fear they would judge me. My solution to this problem was to become a massage therapist. This gave me a traditional reason to touch people, where I could explore energy healing as well. I continued learning and growing as both a bodyworker and as an energy healer.
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In the late 90's, signs of a failing relationship pushed me into a search for help and healing. My first stop was Breathwork. I had an incredibly powerful experience where I felt completely free from all of life, and laughed deep cosmic laughter for 15 minutes straight. This of course ended and the pain in my life came back into awareness, but my spark to understand God in a more conscious way had been greatly fanned by that experience.
I continued with Breathwork and added Transpersonal Psychotherapy to the list of things to help me. The promise of healing and answers coupled with a frantic desire to find peace kept pushing me into more and more healing avenues. Workshops, spiritual retreats, and Personal and Spiritual growth events. I explored Western Tantra and Sacred Sexuality. I also took initiation into Babaji's Kriya Yoga. In my personal life, I studied personal growth and spirituality almost non-stop. During this time, I learned a great deal about myself and spiritual topics. My exploration and study brought about two distinct experiences that pointed to my True Nature. One was on a trip to the Beach. I traveled by myself to have some time to meditate and reflect. One morning at breakfast, I found myself to be in a very good mood, and the waitress was as well. Having waited tables myself, I began to reflect on the impact that a waitress has in people's lives. The joy this woman was sharing with me, and how easy it is to take her position for granted. Most people don't even stop to really appreciate what she does. My thoughts then began to wander to all the people who created this moment as I sipped my coffee. In a split second my mind connected the waitress who served it to the person who brewed it to the person who delivered it to the person who exported it to the people who picked the coffee beans to the plants that grew the coffee to the soil and the water and the Sun light and the seeds and then it all disappeared into nothing and I received an instant shock of the most intense Love I had ever experienced up to that point in my life. I experienced directly and saw and felt that Love was the source of this coffee I was drinking and it was all I could do not to fall into deep sobs right there in the restaurant. As soon as I got to my car and could drive away I fell apart. There it was: Love - the source of all of Life. Not a concept, but a direct experience. Within a few months of that, another experience came about. I was petting my dog and practicing something I had heard about. As I petted him, I focused only on the idea of loving him without expecting anything in return. As I continued this practice for a few minutes, a natural curiosity overtook me and I began to look at my dog very closely. I began to notice things I had never paid attention to before: little marks, the shape of his ribs and ears, the quality of his fur. And as I was intensely focused on a few strands of fur, there came a sudden and unexpected realization that *I* in this moment felt completely Loved. As this awareness of feeling Loved grew in me, I began to sob uncontrollably. I got up and began to pace through my house, crying. The Love continued. I looked out my window and saw a neighbor, who I had never met, planting flowers around his mailbox, and all I could think was how much Love I felt for him as I continued to sob. The irony of this experience was that I felt like I was going crazy, and that something must be wrong with me. To feel such intense Love without conditions or cause was just overwhelming to me. This experience lasted for around 10 minutes and then began to fade. Each time I shared the story of what happened to me over the next month or so, the intense feeling of Love would return as I spoke about it and the tears would flow. | ||
| For about another year after these experiences, I continued to explore Spiritual Growth workshops, but a growing dissatisfaction and disconnect to these processes began to emerge. I found myself outside the workshops watching what was happening with other participants rather than fully participating. I was observing how people were interacting, what they believed about themselves, how their behavior did or did not sync up with the beliefs they expressed. |  | |
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In late 2001, I lost my job as a bartender and my massage business was not doing very well. In early 2002, my relationship of 7 years finally ended. It could not be saved no matter how hard I tried, and all of my spiritual growth did not change the fact that it wasn't working. By June of that year, I had moved out, closed my Massage office and had gone to work at a spa. To top it all off, I was in great credit card debt and could see no way out. Everything in my life had fallen apart.
Shortly after my move, I attended my last scheduled Spiritual Growth weekend. The morning before I was to attend, I woke up around 4 or 5 in the morning and could not go back to sleep. I found myself doing something very outside my normal thinking. I got dressed, went outside and began to stand and pray and open myself up to God. In my mind's eye, I began to see a golden light coming in through the top of my head, and it began to radiate out of my heart in all directions. As I watched, I saw this golden light permeating all things, connecting all things, and I knew intuitively I was being shown a manifestation of God. God was this light and it was in all things. When I was done, I went for a walk and reflected on this experience. When the final Spiritual Growth weekend came, I tried to share my experience, but much to my surprise and frustration, nothing that I tried to say made much sense. I went round and round in circles somehow unable to actually make a point and share what I had experienced. I finally gave up. The Spiritual Growth weekend finally came to an end, and as I watched the group and looked within myself a strange sadness was present. I knew that this resource had taught me all it could teach me. It had taught me a lot and had really strengthened my desire to understand and know God, but it now stood before me, empty. It had nothing more to offer me, and I knew that what I was really looking for was not there. All I knew at that point was I needed to find the Truth, and I did not know where to go next. I asked God to help me and I went on with my life. A month later in July, I met the man who would become my Spiritual Teacher. In September of 2002 I was accepted as a student and he began to give me the missing pieces I needed. My life and my relationship to life and God were forever changed. Within the first year, he announced one day that it was time to start my Tantric education, and he handed me an introductory book to Traditional Hindu Tantra. My only experience with "Tantra" as this point had been Western Tantra or Sacred Sexuality and as I read the book, I was slightly baffled that I could find little to no references to sex or sexual union. I read many additional books on Traditional Hindu Tantra. Still, almost no reference to sex, and even when it was mentioned it was dismissed as not being important. | ||
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What lay before me in all the books I was reading were detailed rituals of spiritual worship, and incredible philosophy and explanations of the workings of the universe and my relationship to God and Creation. I enjoyed the books, but there was still the curious question of how all this intellectual explanation helped me experience God directly. I kept reading, and found my ways to books on Buddhist Tantra, and then books by different Tantric teachers. In this process I began to realize that I had started with the most complex of all Tantric Concepts, and the books were leading me to more and more simple ways of looking at it.
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And then it began to come together. It was all about being present in this moment and exploring the relationship to life and to God so that what was True and remained constant would be revealed. It was about finding the one thing that was common to all of it and all life and directing awareness to that and that alone.
I continued to explore Western Tantric concepts but I began to explore them in context of Traditional Tantra. In doing so, I discovered how the practices taught in Western Tantra fit into the Traditional Tantric system, and what the original intention behind them was in pursuit of Enlightenment and deepened spiritual knowledge. Further exploration of Traditional Tantra lead me to discover that so many Yoga branches I had already heard of such as Hatha Yoga, Ashtanga Yoga, and Kundalini Yoga, really most any Traditional Yoga I could think of, was linked to Tantric Tradition. I wanted to know how they fit in as well. With this, I found myself in India taking a Hatha and Ashtanga Yoga Teachers Training Course to be a Yoga instructor. During my time there, I discovered and experienced the intention of Yogic Postures and Yogic Breathing excercises and how they fit into the Tantric System. What I once dismissed as meaningless exercise, I discovered to be a powerful tool of spiritual transformation. Through regular Tantric practice, regular study and with the guidance of my Teacher, I continue to deepen my experience and relationship to my Self and God. I have found myself on a steady, unstoppable course which pulls me towards the Truth. The Truth is revealed to me more each day and it seems to snowball. In late 2007, I was directed to begin teaching Tantra Yoga. I know it is an opportunity both to share what I have come to know and experience, as well as to further deepen my own experience of God. It is a blessing to have my Heart's Passion blossom into something that I can share with others. As I reflect back upon my Grandmother, I see what a blessing she was in my life. In an ironic twist of fate, she both lit the desire to know God within my heart, and then destroyed all I thought God was so that I was forced to look for God elsewhere. Thank God for you Grandmother! | ||
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Although my relationship with her stayed distant, I got reports that she was changing towards the end of her life. Many of the judgments she had were falling away, and she had a new openness and acceptance towards life. I saw her for the last time about a year before her death. She was overflowing with love and still speaking about God and the power of Jesus.
My mother reported to me that on Grandmother's deathbed, without much concern for her own pain or suffering, she instead asked if I had recovered from my cold, because she knew I had a singing performance and wanted me to be in good health for it. Even as she died, she was more concerned about my happiness. It seems that God continued to grow in her Heart as well, only I was not there to watch the transformation. As the threads of our lives are woven together, it is only after many years that the pattern in life's fabric can be seen. It is always as God intends it to be. It is always beautiful when it is completed. And its Source is Pure Love. This is God. | ||
Man is not important for his ego and personality. He is important because, as a soul, he is a part of God.
- Paramhansa Yogananda, The Essence of Self-Realization
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