Julie salter

Swami vishnudevananda
Swami sivananda 125 years old
Swami Vishnudevananda used to say that he went to the West, founded the Sivananda Yoga Vedanta Centres and Ashrams and trained thousands of yoga teachers.

•

Vishnu Devananda, Swami (1927-1993)

Disciple of the late Swami Sivananda, teacher of hatha yoga, and founder-president of the Sivananda Yoga Vedanta Centers, with branches in Canada, the United States, and Europe. He was born Swamy Kuttan Nair, on December 31, 1927, in Kerala, India. He became a school teacher at the age of 17, then later joined the Indian Army in which he served for two years. By chance he read a pamphlet by Swami Sivananda which emphasized the importance of studying the Hindu scripture Bhagavad-Gita. He did so and felt a strong impulse to visit the Sivananda Ashram. In 1946, while on army leave, he went to Rishikesh and became a disciple of Sivananda's. He decided to leave his family and become a renunciate. He was initiated, settled at the ashram, and became the professor of hatha yoga at the affiliated Yoga Vedanta Forest Academy.

At the suggestion of his guru, he undertook a tour of India, demonstrating hatha yoga asanas (positions) and training many hundreds of individuals. In 1957, he undertook a world tour, spending two years traveling through

•

My wife, Roshi Eve Marko and I just returned from our annual teaching at the Sivananda Ashram on Paradise Island where, on the last day, we discussed Swami Vishnudevananda with Swami Swaroopananda. Below is a brief history of the wonderful Yoga Teacher and Peace Activist Swami Vishnudevananda. Swami Vishnudevananda A number of Zen Peacemakers will be gathering there in March. Also, Sivananda Peace Ambassadors will be joining all our Bearing Witness Retreats

Vishnudevananda Saraswati (December 31, 1927 – November 9, 1993) was a disciple of Sivananda Saraswati, and founder of the International Sivananda Yoga Vedanta Centres and Ashrams. He established the Sivananda Yoga Teachers’ Training Course, one of the first yoga teacher training programs in the West. His books The Complete Illustrated Book of Yoga (1959) and Meditation and Mantras (1978) established him as an authority onHatha and Raja yoga. Vishnudevananda was a tireless peace activist who rode in several “peace flights” over places of conflict, including the Berlin Wall prior to German reunification.

In r

•

Roadmap to peace

October 1957: Indian Swami Vishnudevananda reaches the coast of California, carrying with him ten rupees, a few English phrases and a great mission: He was sent by his teacher Swami Sivananda (1887–1963) to the West to spread yoga, the spiritual ‘roadmap’ to inner peace. In the climate of the Cold War and unbridled capitalism, Swami Vishnudevananda realised just how much his work was needed. His goal was to set into motion a holistic evolution towards peace, carrying on in the tradition of Gandhi and Martin Luther King.

Yoga’s global reach

Today, millions of people practise the exercises that Swami Vishnudevananda began teaching in the West fifty years ago. Gyms, fitness centres and wellness hotels offer yoga classes, and yoga is finding new practitioners everyday. The founding of more than 70 Sivananda centres and ashrams around the world is proof of the enormous achievement of the dynamic yoga master. To name a few of the locations: New York, Montreal, the headquarters in Val Morin (Quebec), San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago, Nassau (Bah