IN PURSUIT OF CLASSICAL YOGA

More than 100 people recently gathered at a yoga studio in central Bangkok for an open house of Sivananda Yoga, one of best-known yoga systems in the world. A teaching team from India and Thailand guided students through two yoga classes, with Swami Mahadevananda, a member of the executive board of Sivananda Yoga Vedanta Centre leading the meditation and chanting of Sanskrit mantras to help participants open their hearts and vibrate with energy.

“When people start to chant together, it makes them feel many things in common. Chanting by itself also elevates the body and the mind and makes people happy,” says Swami Mahadevananda.

This was his third trip to Thailand in recent years to spread the message of Sivananda yoga. The main aim was to train new yoga teachers under the well-respected Teachers’ Training Course (TTC), which is based on the teaching of Swami Sivananda, one of the great yoga masters of India.

In 1957, Swami Sivananda told one of his closest disciples, Swami Vishnudevananda, “Go to the West. People are waiting,” and sent him first to America and then to Europe to spread the teachings of yoga. Today, the Sivananda Yoga Vedanta Centre is a worldwide non-profit organisation dedicated to teaching of classical yoga. 

Swami Mahadevananda says many people seem to associate yoga with the postures that make up physical exercise. From that kindergarten stage, they start to learn and realise there is much more behind it: that yoga is in fact a philosophy, lifestyle and new way of thinking and doing things. 

“We have come to spread the message from Swami Shivananda and Swami Vishnudevananda in the Far East. Slowly, we are try to expand from Japan to China, Singapore and Vietnam and now in Thailand. With our affiliated Arati Yoga Centre in Bangkok and the TTC in Phu Chai Sai, Chiang Rai, Thai people can come and learn about traditional yoga and start to teach Sivananda yoga in their country,” Swami Mahadevananda says.

“We have welcomed many Thais at the Sivananda Ashram in India and they have asked if we could set up a TTC in Thailand, which is why I came here for the first time three years ago. This is the fourth time we are holding an international yoga TTC in Thailand and I will be teaching at Phu Chai Sai throughout October.”

Swami Mahadevananda says he met his teacher Swami Vishnudevananda in Canada back in 1967 while waiting for a chartered flight to return to his home country of Italy.

Then 25 and a strict vegetarian, he was already practising yoga. While in Montreal, he’d checked if there were any yoga centres and found the Sivananda Ashram Head Quarters in Val Morin, Quebec in a local paper.

“When I first met Swami Vishnudevananda, the first thing he told me was to stay in Canada. I wanted to do something with my life so I extended my visa for another six months. During one final relaxation, the feeling was so good. It was very clear in my mind that yoga was my life. This came as a natural choice and it is one about which I have never had any regrets.”

Swami Vishnudevananda recognised the need to train people in yoga disciplines and in 1969 created the Sivananda Yoga TTC. That same year, Swami Mahadevananda was appointed director of the Sivananda Yoga Vedanta Centre in Montreal, Canada, where he served for 10 years, at the same time overseeing the Sivananda Yoga Vedanta Centres in New York, Los Angeles and Washington DC before moving to India.

“The Swami Vishnu asked me if I’d like to go to Kerala. My first reaction was ‘where’? I knew nothing about India! But three days later, I arrived in Kerala and took up my service at the newly founded Sivananda Yoga Vedanta Dhanwantari Ashram in the small village of Neyyar Dam. I’ve been there since 1979.”

Over the years, the Sivananda Ashram in Kerala has grown in popularity and today welcomes yoga practitioners from all walks of life. Along with the Sivananda Yoga Vedanta Centres all over the world, the TTC trains more than 30,000 yoga teachers, and is now largest yoga organisation in the world. 

Sivananda yoga is based on the five points of yoga: proper exercise, proper breathing, proper relaxation, proper diet and proper meditation. These simple principles make the Sivananda yoga accessible to people all around the world.

“Each point is like an apple seed. You may crush one with your own hand. But if you put it in the right ground under the care of right farmers, it becomes a big tree to give you a shade and yields many apples to replant. The five points are like the apple seeds’ they look very simple, and anybody, from the age of nine to 90 with arms and legs, can do yoga postures, learn breathing exercise, practice vegetarianism, be relaxed and meditate. And all these practices are like apple seeds that slowly grow inside us”.

Through the five points of yoga, says Swami Mahadevananda, yoga gives human beings the ability to treat the body, mind and soul with a holistic approach that brings strength and balance to this |chaotic world.