Swami Krishnananda Shashtyabdapurti Mahotsava Commemoration Volume

A Souvenir released on Swami Krishnananda's 60th Birthday

The Amazing Expansion of Yoga in the West

by Swami Sangitananda

In my long life, the expansion of Yoga in my own country and in all Western countries in the unbelievably short time of twenty-five years has been one of the greatest experiences. It is nothing else but a miracle.

On the invitation of H.H. Swami Sivananda, I visited the Ashram of the Divine Society in Rishikesh in November 1955 and learned there what Yoga was and how to lead a spiritual life.

At that time, there were only seven foreigners in the Ashram, who like myself had come to discover Yoga. There were also a number of Gurudev's disciples, young Swamis, of whom no one had yet travelled abroad. On leaving the Ashram, the Master charged me to open a branch of the Divine Life Society in Perth (W. Australia). It was in 1956 that I started to speak on Yoga and of what I had learned of it to friends and strangers, but found very little interest and even rejection on the ground that Yoga was an Indian product and not

suitable for the West. The first question always asked was: "Is Yoga a religion?" But when I told them that Yoga was not a religion but a means of life which gave better health and relaxation, their attitude changed at once, and when Gurudev sent out the first of his Swamis to assist me, large audiences attended to see and hear the first Swami in ochre robe. This Swami brought  with him books with illustrations of many army postures and explanations how to do them and those books were quickly sold. The Swami also taught a number of people how to become a Yoga teacher, so that they were able to start classes.

This was only the first visit by a Swami. There came afterwards one Swami after another who visited not only Australia, but many countries all over the world, bringing the knowledge of Yoga to millions of people.

Now, two and a half decades after I started Yoga in Australia, there are Yoga classes, schools and colleges all over the world. In the telephone book of Perth alone are not less than twenty names of Yoga Schools. Yoga and meditation have become fashionable and have become part of the life of many Westerners. Even doctors recommend Yoga to their patients. In 1956 there were no books on Yoga or Indian philosophy in our bookshops, but now there are many shelves of such books. There are even shops specialising in occult, spiritual and metaphysical subjects. The newspapers contain regular advertisements for Yoga and meditation by a number of societies similar to ours. Visiting Swamis are interviewed by the papers, television and radio. Also, a number of Ashrams after the model of Indian Ashrams have been opened in many places of the West and a number of young Western boys have taken to Sannyas and wear the ochre robe in public.

From all over the world, young people travel continually to India, visiting the Ashrams and saints, and deeply interested in Indian philosophy. Evidently Yoga came as a necessity to the West, in order to balance the one-sided external outlook on life by the discovery of the inner divine nature of man.