Adi Shankaracharya
The yoga taught in YogaJaya follows the Indian tradition of knowledge passed from teacher to student over a period of many hundreds of years. The lineage followed here was founded by Adi Shankaracharya in the 8th century CE, although the knowledge precedes this date by many thousands of years.
Swami Sivananda (1887-1963)
Swami Sivananda was born in south India on 8 September 1887. After ten years of dedicated service as a medical doctor, he left his middle-class existence to become a wandering mendicant in the spiritual tradition of India. His sincerity, generosity, humility and unalloyed compassion and joy drew to him many sincere men and women looking for guidance in lives beset with problems and pain. He founded the Divine Life Society in 1939 on the banks of the holy River Ganges in Rishikesh, north India. From then until his death, Swami Sivananda spent his time teaching and serving in any way he was able. He was a prodigious writer – the author of over 300 books - and is acknowledged as one of the great modern-day saints of India.
Swami Vishnudevananda (1927–1993)
Swami Vishnudevananda was born in south India on 31 December 1927. In 1947, he entered Swami Sivananda’s ashram in Rishikesh, north India where he took holy orders. He lived there for ten years during which he was appointed as the first professor of Hatha Yoga at the Yoga Vedanta Forest Academy. In 1957 he set out from Swami Sivananda’s ashram to carry out the instructions of his Master -- to spread the teachings of yoga in the West. For thirty-seven years he worked tirelessly as a dedicated spiritual teacher and advocate of peace, travelling the world establishing centres and ashrams of the Sivananda Yoga Vedanta Centre. He is considered a master of hatha and raja yoga and is author of the world-renowned classical text The Complete Illustrated Book of Yoga.