Welcome

Hello, I am Ben. Welcome to my website. If you are interested in learning a little bit about me, you’ve come to the right place! (For example, if you want to know a fun fact about me, FYI I get up every day at 4:00am, and I could not imagine a life where I was not at the gym at 5:30am.)

I live in beautiful northeastern Ohio with my awesome (!) family, and I am: a [wanna-be] pianist-composer, [sort-of] teacher, open source software developer, [wanna-be] yogi, [aspiring] writer, [wanna-be, amateur] inventor, and [decidedly non-professional] athlete (i.e. marathon runner.)

Professionally I work as an embedded firmware engineer, with a background in systems integration and real-time closed loop control systems. (My specialty is embedded Linux and I have recently written a small Linux kernel module and am working on designing my own user-mode file system.)

However, if you are here for some reason looking for professional information about me, please checkout my other website (for my LLC, Kundalini.Software) or my Github profile instead. This website is my personal website — and while it does contain some software stuff — mostly this website is about me personally, as a human being!

Significantly, I am a devotee of Krishna, with a special affinity for Lord Ganesha and Goddess Saraswati.

I play the piano at the Unitarian Universalist Church in my hometown of Kent, Ohio for the 9am service. So if you ever want to hear me play and/or join a beautiful community of people, stop by anytime. Remember: whoever you are, whoever you love, we welcome you.

In 2024, I ran the Akron Marathon to raise money for charity… and I am pleased to say I raised more than $1000.00 for Akron Children’s Hospital.

About This Website

This website documents my Kundalini Awakening in India in 2011, the subsequent fundamental re-alignment of my core self, my process of Self Actualization and God-Realization, and the eventual re-establishment of dharma back to my life.

All pre-2025 video and audio posted here is raw, unedited, original, live-streamed content from a vlog I used to have called “Benny Does It All.” Remember, a lot of the content you will see is out of context, and might represent me performing “in character” in one of my personas. So please don’t take everything at face value.

The process of Kundalini Awakening is not always smooth or linear, but is of major importance on both an individual and collective basis.

For this reason — for better or worse — I am documenting my experience on this website.

My memoir, Journey Into Krishna, is in the process of being written, and much of the material for that memoir is being posted to this website in the meantime.

Religious Background

I was raised in the Judaeo-Christian tradition, am a devout Christian, and attended private religious school where I received a classical education emphasizing Western Values. And as I said, I am a member of the Unitarian Universalist church here in Kent where I live.

Additionally, I am a member of Iskcon (i.e. the International Society for Krishna Consciousness), am an ordained minister through the Universal Life Church, where I’ve also been awarded an honorary doctorate. I am also a card-carrying member of the Chapel of Sacred Mirrors (CoSM), a transdenominational church founded by Alex and and Allison Gray.

And I personally find The Church of the Flying Spaghetti monster to be funny. 😁

Kundalini-Ambdexterity

I am the creator of a novel system of Peak Performance and Self-Actualization called Kundalini-Ambdexterity, which is my modern framework for connecting to higher consciousness via full-brain development. (More info on this coming soon…)

Dr Ben

On the basketball court, my friends always called me “Dr. Ben”. When we got older, my friends also called me “Dr Ben Crazy” based on a funny skit from Big Chuck and Little John here in Cleveland. I also hold an honory doctorate.

So yes, please call me Dr. Ben if you want. But if you don’t feel like doing that, at least call me “Mr. Dover”, like some of my other friends do. 😁

Click here for more information on all my names.

Disclaimer

If you read a lot of my stuff and think i am sort of religious/spiritual nut (haha), it is probably OK to think that. 😁

I am just some guy, am American who went to India and fell in love with God in my own way. And now I am just trying to share my life journey and personal spiritual process of Self Actualization and God Realization with others the best I can.

Remember: there is no need to “wrestle with God”. I say: learn to play with her instead!

Other People

Additionally, there are some other amazing people who just happen to share the same name as me. I am not them. So sorry if you came here looking. But check-out this page if you would like to see some other amazing Benjamin Pritchards in this world.

Yoga Teaching

The most recent yoga class I taught was at the Student Recreation and Wellness Center at the University of Akron. I called my class “Yoga for Mind Body Connection”, and I described it like this:

Yoga for Mind Body Connection” is a gentle, holistic introduction to the traditional yoga practices of pranayama (breath control), asana (posture), and dharana (present-moment-based awareness.) Each beginner-friendly 45-minute session aims to unify the body, mind, & spirit, and to increase mental and emotional well-being by exploring the ancient science of yoga.

Before that, I had my own class at the Old Saint Mary’s Church in Hudson, where I also played the piano for some of the other teacher’s class.

Yogas

I am a practitioner of Bhakti Yoga and Karm Yoga, with a special affinity for:

  • authentic Kundalini Yoga, the yoga of union with the creativity of higher consciousness (i.e. the maha shakti)
  • authentic Nada Yoga, the yoga of union with the Music of the Divine
  • authentic Hatha Yoga, the yoga of union with the Sun and The Moon (i.e Divine Energy Balance)

My own spiritual sadhana primarily consists of Bhakti, which means moment-to-moment reliance on the all-pervasive benevolence of God to provide for the well-being and day-to-day needs of her devotees.

Additionally, my personal practice is one of San Kirtana, and consists of singing and chanting the Maha Mantra. (See below under “Music Compositions” to hear excerpts from my composition Grand Fantasia on the Maha Mantra for Piano, Percussion, and Mixed Voice that I wrote.)

I also practice Laughter Yoga, and invented (and pitched) a cool wearable device called The Kundalini Laugh-Bit for helping to bring about more of it. 😁😁😁

Kundalini Awakening

The entire story of my spiritual journey is told in my upcoming memoir “Journey Into Krishna, a Magically-Realistic Memoir of my Kundalini Awakening.” But in the meantime… here are a couple of sentences:

“This is a story about love: a story of falling in love with God, a story about almost falling in love in Paris, a story of actually falling in love in New York CIty.

This is definitely a story about love, but it is hard to know where to begin: where does a story really start? And who knows where it will truely end? So to me it seems like starting in the middle is as good of a place as any:

In the middle of this story I was standing alone in the early morning hours on a balcony in a city called Silchar, in the north-eastern Indian State of Assam. The year was 2011. I was staying at a place called the Cachar Club, and at this moment, I was standing on the balcony over looking the city as the dawn slowly broke. On this balcony I experienced God.

This is a story about love…”

If you want a sneak peak, you can listen to the first episode of my podcast here where I tell some of the story.

Note: I am looking for an agent / editor / publisher for my memoir; more info here. Also, I am also looking for someone to help me with the documentary I am envisioning presenting my memoir in documentary (video) format. Please contact me if you are interested!

Nada School of Yoga

Anyway, my most recent trip to India — a month long residential stay in Swargashram in Rishikesh at the Nada School of Traditional Yoga — was just too good!

Dedication

My exposure to, and embrace of, the traditional spirituality of India, and in particular, the Hindu concepts of Dharma, Ishvara, and Bhakti Yoga have made me the man who I am today.

It is not my intention to tell others what to believe, but if I had to give my advice — for sure I would say: please chant Hare Krishna and Be Happy.

Therefore, I would like to humbly dedicate my website to A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada, the man who brought knowledge to my country.


Kundalini Piano Platform

My free time is spend developing my Kundalini Piano Platform, which is the novel piano educational system that I’ve developed with funding from a National Science Foundation grant.

My system works with digital pianos, and has several novel pedagogical and music-making features.

The first is that it creates a mirror-image digital keyboard; this promotes true ambidexterity by allowing students to utilize what is known as symmetrical inversion to learn to play melodies with equal facility in either hand. (For more information on this, please see my explanation here.)

Next, the Kundalini Piano Platform makes a digital piano scriptable, so as to teach computer programming as part of musical education. (Please see here for a further explanation and an example.)

Lastly, for use with my system, I created my own transpiler that I call the Mozart Transposition Engine that can create mirror-image scores. (See the special edition of the Bach 13 2-part inventions that I created with my transpiler to see what mirror-image scores look like. A simpler example featuring an excerpt from Mozart’s Concert Rondo can be seen here.)

Much more information on this can be seen on my other website, KundaliniSoftware[dot]com

GitHub

You can find more information on the software I write on my other website, Kundalini Software, or by checking out my GitHub profile.

Additionally, the source to some of my cooler open source projects on GitHub can be browsed online using the awesome tool github1s.com

Podcast / Interviews

When I was younger I had my own “vlog”, which I called “Benny does it all.” I posted it mostly on Instagram, and I had a lot of fun with it. But these days I don’t do social media at all… but I do sort of miss some aspects of it. Anyway, I decided I would have a podcast instead of a vlog, and my podcast mostly consists of me interviewing people

Inventions

  • Kundalini Piano Mirror
  • Kundalini Connection Platform
  • Concussion Prevention Helmet
  • Kundalini LaughBit
  • Van Gogh Flow Compositing Visualization Engine
  • Kundalini Novelty Engine
  • Kundalini Smiling Mirror

Writings

Spiritual Fiction

Love Poetry [written for my soul-mate, my wife]

Mystical Poetry

Misc Poetry

Misc Fiction

Academic

Misc

Comics

Books

The intertwined story of my own spiritual journey, and the journey of creating my startup company Kundalini.Software is written into the stars, and told in my upcoming memoir:

Journey Into Krishna, a Magically Realistic Memoir of my Kundalini Awakening, by Benjamin Pritchard. [coming soon]

My other books:

  • Bach-In-The-Mirror
  • Arrangements of selected Godowsky Studies on the Chopin Etudes
  • 108 Rules of Thumb for Life
  • the Kundalini Piano Method Book, volume 1
  • Kundalini-Ambidexterity, a novel method of Self Actualization and Peak Performance
  • Benjamin Pritchard, the collected works

are all in process.

Musical Compositions

In 2024, I graduated from the University of Akron (as an adult with) an associate’s degree.

While at the University of Akron, I taught yoga, and studied music theory, composition, and piano with Dr. James Wilding. The following are some of my compositions:

  • Grand Fantasia on the Maha Mantra for Piano, Percussion, and Mixed Voice
  • Original Setting of Om Nama Shivia
  • Dash-Avatara
    • Movement 1: Matsya
    • Movement 2: Kurma
    • Movement 3: Varaha
    • Movement 4: Narasimha
    • Movement 5: Vamana
    • Movement 6: Parashurama
    • Movement 7: Rama
    • Movement 8: Krishna
    • Movement 9: Balarama
    • Movement 10: Kalki
  • Passacaglia for Solo Piano on “What Are You Longing for?“. (First performed at the Unitarian Church in Kent, Ohio on Easter Sunday, 2025.)
  • Invocation of Angels
    • Movement 1: Invocation of Mother Mary
    • Movement 2: Appearance of Goddess Saraswati
    • Movement 3: Showered with the blessings of the Nine Muses
    • Movement 4: Born away on the wings of Angels
  • The Ballad Of Farmer Brown From Rootstown

Commentaries

I am begining to work on a 500hr certification Yoga certification, and on Sunday mornings I do my systematic study. A big part of this is called “Svādhyāya”, which means “study of scripture or sacred texts”, and is one of the niyamas (disciplines) of Patanjali’s Ashtanga Yoga. Along these lines, you can checkout some of my thoughts / reflections on verses from the Bhagavad Gītā and Śrīmad Bhāgavatam which I am building up a little bit at a time.

Talks

  • Excerpt from Dharma-talk, 12-April-2025
    • “The Sanskrit word “hare” means something like: “addressing the energetic potency of God.” And I think the Eternal Dharma (“Sanātana Dharma“) means: Krishna’s assertion of the Reality of Hare: the existence of the all-pervasive benevolence of God to provide for the well being and day-to-day needs of her devotees.”
  • Excerpt 23-April-2025

Word Cloud

I am interested in a lot of things, and I am just listening them here. Explore them if you are interested: Enneagram, Method-Acting, Kundalini-Awakening, WIng-Makers, Gopi Krishna. (links coming soon)

Places

I have been very blessed to have travelled extensively in my life. Here are some of the places I’ve been: Germany, Austria, Switzerland, France, Italy, South Korea, China, Mexico, Hong Kong, Macau, Canada, and India. (More info on my experiences in these places coming soon.)

Books

I love to read and have read a lot of books. I am listing some of them here: Water For Elephant. (More coming soon)

Just for Fun

Finally, if you would like to see a video that I made using my awesome visualization engine, check this out. The video expresses my sentiment when I first got back from India, and is described by the poem I wrote to go along with it:

RamaKrishna is supreme Freedom / an unfathomable ocean of eternal bliss / enticingly beckoning all people / to please find her / and make her your own.

Special Thanks

I would like to thank of the friends, teachers, students, and mentors I’ve had over the years.

And of course my family!

I love you guys.

Thanks for visiting; hare krishna, and please have a nice day.