About the Traditional Yoga Association
While Yoga originally took form in the cauldron of India many thousands of years ago, in just the last hundred years it has reached almost every corner of the globe. As the popularity of Yoga grows in the West, away from its traditional seat, care needs to be taken to sustain the ancient traditions that have served to keep Yoga alive across millennia. The Traditional Yoga Association (TYA) was founded by Swami Ambikananda and fellow Yogis in response to this need.
Early in the last century a remarkable modern-day saint, Swami Sivananda, founded the Sivananda Ashram in Rishikesh and rose to prominence in Northern India. His teachings, which held at their heart the synthesis of the different facets of Yoga, soon spread throughout India and then the world as his disciples carried his message to North and South America, Europe, Africa and Australia.
Gurudev Swami Sivananda, a doctor who became a monastic in order to serve not only what ailed people at a physical level, but to heal spiritually and emotionally
One prominent disciple of Gurudev Sivananda was a monk named Swami Venkatesananda, remarkable as a Hatha Yogi as well as a Sanskrit scholar and teacher. For twenty-two years he traversed the globe bringing to all who wanted to hear, Gurudev's message of Yoga as that which heals the fragmentation in our lives.
Swami Venkatesananda, a disciple of Gurudev Sivananda, carried the message of the synthesis of Yoga to an enthusiastic Western Audience. He translated into English some of the most profound of the ancient teachings of Yoga.
Swami Ambikananda met Swami Venkatesananda in 1970 and studied Yoga and Vedanta philosophy with him for twelve years until his death in 1982. In 1998 she was welcomed into the ancient order of sannyas by the President of Sivananda Ashram, Swami Chidananda, thereby offering her life to spiritual disciplines and the service of Yoga as articulated through the tradition she learned from her guru. Swami Ambikananda has been teaching Yoga for thirty years. She is also a writer and has had several books published on Yoga, health and philosophy. She is a certified acupuncturist and uses Yoga and acupuncture as the primary means of healing for those who seek her help.
Swami Ambikananda, disciple of Swami Venkatesananda and founder of the Traditional Yoga Association, has continued spreading her guru's message and the tradition of rendering into English (from Sanskrit) the ancient teachings of Yoga.
The lineage...
Continuing on the path established by Swami Ambikananda's lineage, the Traditional Yoga Association seeks to harmonise traditional teaching methods with today's requirements for a structured learning environment.
Towards this end an association was formed in 1995 by Swami Ambikananda Saraswati, Br. Uddhava Samman and Bri. Manisha Wilmette Brown. The TYA created a Yoga Teachers Training Course that honours the traditions of the East while fulfilling the need for informed and creative teachers who have studied in a structured environment and proved their abilities as teachers in the West. The Traditional Yoga Association became a registered charity in 2001 (Charity Number 1091469).
Brahmachari Uddhava Samman (Ph.D.) is a co-founder and current general secretary of the TYA. He teaches in the Reading area and is particularly interested in those for whom Yoga is very often out of reach: people with disabilities or physical problems that would prevent them from entering a mainstream class.
Br. Uddhava is also a co-ordinator of MUKTI, a project run by the TYA to support the education of dispossessed and endangered children in India.
Brahmacharini Manisha Wilmette Brown is one of the co-ordinators of MUKTI and the editorial director of the TYA. She has worked with Swami Ambikananda on editing The Katha Upanishad, The Uddhava Gita, Age with Spirit, HealingYoga and other publications.
Bri. Manisha has an MA degree in Values in Education, and her teaching focuses on applying the ethics and values of Yoga in personal and ecological transformation. Learning from her experiences as a cancer survivor, Manisha makes self-healing through nutrition a key aspect of her Yoga practice.
Penny Hitchings became a trustee of the TYA in 2002 after completing the Yoga Teachers Training Course and is a valuable member of the administrative team.
Isabel Sanz is a graduate of the Traditional Yoga Association’s Yoga Teachers Training Course and co-ordinates the TYA‘s activities in Spain.