Yoga Guru Swami Satchidananda
The Most Important Name in Yoga You Never Heard Of
"Swami who," you ask? Although Swami Satchidananda is the person widely credited for making "yoga" a household word in the United States, his name does not often roll off the tongues of many Americans.
But the Swami, who died in 2002 at the age of 88, was well known to a Who's Who list of disciples with whom you are probably very familiar. Satchidananda's famous followers and yoga students include Carol King, Peter Max, Jeff Goldblum, Allen Ginsberg, Alice Coltrane, and Scott Shaw. In fact Rivers Cuomo, the lead singer of the rock band Weezer, grew up in Yogaville, a community in Virginia founded by the Swami.
Before popularizing yoga in the United States, Swami Satchidananda's life played out much like the life of the mystic Siddhartha, as described in Herman Hesse's novel by the same name. It wound down a tortuous path from religion to worldliness, then back full circle to becoming a holy man.
The Making of A Yoga Guru
Satchidananda was born in southern India to upper class devout Hindu parents. Like other children, Satchidananda played at being a guru as a boy. But as he grew up he soon gravitated to more earthly pleasures. Strikingly handsome, he became a chain-smoking, successful businessman with a wife and children. But something was missing in the future yoga master's life. And when his young wife died Satchidananda left his two sons with their grandparents and, like the mythical Siddhartha, set off seeking enlightenment.
Satchidananda's spiritual path took him far and wide across the Indian landscape. For years he sought holy men, yoga masters, and sages who might show him "The Way." After much searching he found and studied with a guru who eventually ordained him a Swami.
Swami Satchidananda spent the better part of the 1950's and 60's as head of an Ashram in the Sri Lankan hills. It was here he developed and taught his soon to be famous Integral yoga style.
Integral Yoga Goes West
In 1966, after almost two decades of service at the Ashram, the Swami accepted an invitation from one of his followers, the artist Peter Max, to visit New York City. It was not long before the Swami had become a permanent resident and citizen of the US. After serving as the opening speaker at the 1969 Woodstock festival, Satchidananda became an overnight cult figure. He was now in a position to spread his gospel of yoga and enlightened living to the west.
While in the United States the Swami became a prolific author and public speaker, and founded the Integral Yoga Institute. He opened the Light of Truth Universal Shrine (LOTUS) at Yogaville in Buckingham, Virginia in 1986.
In the summer of 2002, Satchidananda died from a chest aneurysm in his hometown of Nadu, India. But both Yogaville and the practice of Integral yoga thrive still.