PARAMAHANSA NIRANJANANANDA

Swami Niranjanananda was educated in yoga as a child by Swami Satyananda Paramahansa. His formal education occurred during many years of travel and residence in western countries where he conducted many yoga programmes, thus becoming an excellent propagator of Swami Satyananda's teachings throughout the world.

This experience has contributed to his distinctive ability to equally understand the scientific focus of the western mind and the more mystical one of the East.

In 1983 he was recalled to India and appointed President of the Bihar School of Yoga.

During the following eleven years he guided the development of Ganga Darshan, seat of the Bihar School of Yoga, of Sivananda Math and of the Yoga Research Foundation.

In 1994 the Bihar Yoga Bharati, Institute of Advanced Studies in Yogic Sciences, was founded under his direction and he is its current Chancellor.
Swami Niranjan has authored over twenty books and guides national and international yoga programmes.

He is renowned for his depth of wisdom and ability to convey ancient teachings in a way that is easily understood in our contemporary world.

He is a source of inspiration, not only through his profound knowledge, but also through his gentle humour and innate compassion.

Dr. Rishi Vivekananda has been a physician for 45 years, and a consultant psychiatrist for 40 years. During most of that time, he has taken a keen interest in ways to integrate the ancient eastern techniques of yoga with the modern knowledge as regards the mind, the functioning of the body, and healing. He has also studied yoga in its role as a system of evolving the quality of human personality.

He has spent most of his professional years as a consultant psychiatrist in private practice in Australia, but from 1977 to 1986 he moved around the world, especially India and the Americas. During that time he taught and learned about the synergy between yoga and science, and has become known worldwide as a knowledgeable and informative speaker, and workshop director, whose humor and ease of communication make his programmes entertaining as well as enlightening.

Since March 2002, Rishi Vivekananda has been on a world lecture tour, spending three months of the year in Australia, and the rest of the time teaching in India, Europe and the Americas. This is planned to continue in the future.

Rishi Hridayananda began learning yoga over 40 years ago and in 1969 she met Swami Satyananda, who became her guru. This intensified her commitment to disseminating yoga in society. Through her husband's work in psychiatry Hridayananda came into contact with many people suffering from mental sickness and she began to teach them yoga.

In the 80's she moved to the Bihar School of Yoga in India where she was initiated into Sannyasa.

Swami Satyananda sent her to Kolkata to run the activities of the yoga school there. This was very successful, especially yoga for stress management, managing chronic diseases like hypertension, depression and diabetes.

Returning to Australia, she was initiated into Rishi Sannyasa. Since then Rishi Hridayananda has worked tirelessly to make herself a vehicle of her guru's teachings and of the Satyananda Yoga® system.

Swami Sivamurti was born in Australia. In 1976, in India, her guru, Paramahamsa Satyananda, initiated her into poorna sannyasa and commissioned her to spread the teachings of yoga in Greece.

In 1978 she founded Satyanandashram Hellas, spreading the yoga teachings throughout Greece. In 1984 she established an ashram at Paiania which was inaugurated the following year by Paramahamsa Satyananda.

She runs yoga programmes and lectures throughout Greece and in other parts of the world, making herself an active and dynamic medium for the spreading of the Satyananda Yoga® system and of the teachings of Swami Satyananda.

Swami Sivamurti is a member of the International Yoga Fellowship Movement and a founding member of the European Yoga Fellowship. Each year she visits her guru in India and spends some time at the Sri Panch Dashnam Paramahamsa Alakh Bara and the Bihar Yoga Bharati.