Frequently Asked Questions

What is the Worldwide Integral Yoga Community?

Integral Yoga is a global community whose members live a yogic lifestyle based on the teachings of Sri Swami Satchidananda (Sri Gurudev). Sri Gurudev taught that through a life of non-violence, compassion, and selfless service, everyone can experience peace and joy and share this peace and joy with all. A pioneer in the field of interfaith understanding, he conveyed the principle of unity in diversity through the principle that “Truth is One Paths are many.” As a community, we honor all faiths and paths to this one truth. Members of this community are free to follow their own faith and to practice the teachings of Integral Yoga.

Internationally, there are six Integral Yoga Institutes, fifteen Integral Yoga centers, several thousand Integral Yoga teachers, and Integral Yoga monastics and ministers. All are committed to the path of Integral Yoga as taught by Sri Gurudev and sharing these teachings with others.

Through classes, workshops, retreats, teacher trainings, certification programs, lectures, books, CDs and DVDs, spiritual guidance, and more, Integral Yoga Sangha Worldwide provides time-honored methods that enhance physical, mental, and spiritual well-being to hundreds of thousands of people around the world.

Why support Yogaville and Integral Yoga Sangha Worldwide?

In 1966, Sri Swami Satchidananda (Sri Gurudev) was invited to the West to share the essential teachings and practices of Yoga. He accepted the invitation, agreeing to tour for a few weeks giving lectures and demonstrations. However, people were so eager to learn from this peaceful, joyful, charismatic Yoga master who conveyed the ancient teachings of Yoga so simply and so clearly that a few weeks turned into a few months.

At that time, Sri Gurudev was the director of Satchidananda Thapovanam, an ashram in Kandy, Sri Lanka (then called Ceylon), and although his new students in New York wanted him to stay, he explained that he had many responsibilities at the ashram and the ashramites and students there expected him to return. However, when he returned to Kandy, he found hundreds of letters from America imploring him to return to New York. What’s more, the American ambassador to Ceylon persuaded him that Americans needed the kind of spiritual guidance that he could offer. Sri Gurudev also recognized that the Western students were sincere in their spiritual aspirations, and he answered their call.

Until the end of his life, Sri Gurudev was invited all over the world to share the teachings and physical, mental, and spiritual benefits of Integral Yoga and the yogic lifestyle. Not only did he uplift thousands of students with his talks on how Yoga can lead to self-transformation, but he illustrated to them through his own example that Yoga integrated into daily life can lead to Self-realization. Through his books, including To Know Yourself, Beyond Words, Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, and The Living Gita, and through thousands of talks, he helped us awaken to our inner peace and joy and realize our highest potential.

By supporting Yogaville and Integral Yoga, you will help us continue to make Sri Gurudev’s much needed teachings available and accessible to all who are seeking to maintain a peaceful, joyful, healthy, balanced, and useful life under all conditions.

Become a part of Sri Gurudev’s mission!