1. Vishnudevananda Saraswati was an Indian yoga guru known for his teaching of asanas, a disciple of Sivananda Saraswati, and founder of the International Sivananda Yoga Vedanta Centres and Ashrams.
24 Facts About Vishnudevananda Saraswati
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Vishnudevananda Saraswati established the Sivananda Yoga Teachers' Training Course, possibly the first yoga teacher training programs in the West.
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Vishnudevananda Saraswati was born Kuttan Nair in Kerala, South India, on 31 December 1927.
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Vishnudevananda Saraswati entered the Sivananda Ashram by the River Ganges in Rishikesh in 1947 at the age of twenty.
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Vishnudevananda Saraswati took sannyas, becoming a monk, in February 1949, and was appointed the first professor of hatha yoga at the Sivananda Yoga Vedanta Forest Academy.
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Vishnudevananda Saraswati arrived in San Francisco in December 1957, and began to teach yoga; he moved to New York to teach hatha yoga in 1958.
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Vishnudevananda Saraswati is credited as the asana pioneer within Sivananda Yoga.
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Vishnudevananda Saraswati condensed the teachings of classical yoga into five principles: proper exercise, proper breathing, proper relaxation, proper diet, and meditation and positive thinking.
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Vishnudevananda Saraswati published his guide to hatha yoga, The Complete Illustrated Book of Yoga, in 1960.
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Vishnudevananda Saraswati founded the first Sivananda Yoga Vedanta Centre in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, in 1959.
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Vishnudevananda Saraswati set up the first yoga vacation in Val-Morin, Quebec, in 1961; this has since become a tradition in the Sivananda Yoga Vedanta Centres and Ashrams.
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In February 1962, Vishnudevananda Saraswati saw the present site of the Yoga Camp in Val Morin, and chose to settle in the dense forest area near the Laurentian Mountains.
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Vishnudevananda Saraswati founded the Sivananda Ashram Yoga Retreat on Paradise Island in the Bahamas in 1967.
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Vishnudevananda Saraswati established the Sivananda Ashram Yoga Farm in 1971 in Grass Valley, California.
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In 1974, Vishnudevananda Saraswati inaugurated a fourth ashram, in Woodbourne, New York, near the Catskill Mountains, and in February 1978, he inaugurated the Sivananda Yoga Vedanta Dhawanthari Ashram in Neyyar Dam, near Thiruvananthapuram in the foothills of the Sahyadri Mountains, Kerala.
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In reaction to a vision of a world in peril, Vishnudevananda Saraswati began his peace mission.
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On 30 August 1971, Vishnudevananda Saraswati piloted his Peace Plane from Boston to Northern Ireland, a twin-engine Piper Apache plane painted by artist Peter Max.
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Vishnudevananda Saraswati continued eastward, "bombing" Pakistan and Bangladesh with flowers and peace leaflets.
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On 15 September 1983 Vishnudevananda Saraswati flew over the Berlin Wall, from West to East Berlin, in a highly publicized and dangerous mission to promote peace.
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Vishnudevananda Saraswati organized yearly symposia on topics relating yoga to modern life.
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Vishnudevananda Saraswati's body was then placed into the Ganges at the Sivananda Kutir, and the rite named jalasamadhi was performed, merging the abandoned body with the water.
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Vishnudevananda Saraswati's post sparked a controversy amongst some who followed Vishnudevananda and the Sivananda Yoga Vedanta Centres.
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Several former and current students criticised the ISYVC for continuous reverence of Vishnudevananda Saraswati and demanded the organisation to remove his portraits from altars and yoga practice rooms.
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In respect to the four allegations against Vishnudevananda Saraswati that were investigated and corroborated, the report concludes that the allegations are 'credible'.