During October 2026, we celebrate the founding of Integral Yoga by Swami Satchidananda in 1966 in New York. We look back at how Integral Yoga came to the West, the memories of some who were there in those early years, explore some of the spiritual roots from which it...
It was 1966. The Beatles had stopped touring. A generation of young Americans was searching for meaning, for peace, for something the world around them could not seem to provide. From that searching rose the counterculture: restless, idealistic, and beneath all its...
It all started in June 1968. I had just graduated from Columbia University with a degree in math and philosophy. But after all those years of studying Eastern and Western philosophy, much of it still felt theoretical. I wanted a real practice. Then I noticed an ad in...
The Beginning When Peter Petronio first encountered Swami Satchidananda in the summer of 1966, he was already a renowned spiritual master with students in India, Sri Lanka, Hong Kong, and Europe. It was Peter’s close friend, the artist Peter Max, who had met Swami...
The Integral Yoga community celebrates the extraordinary life and legacy of Peter Max (1937–2026), known to us by the name Atman, given to him by Swami Satchidananda. One of the most celebrated artists of the modern era, Peter helped define the visual language of a...
Question: Wouldn't I also be attached to a person when I truly love them? Swami Satchidananda: One should be loving but not attached. Attachment is far different from love. Attachment is always personal and selfish: "So and-so makes me happy when we are together; if I...
On September 17, 2026, Sadasivam Greenstone (Richard Alan Greenstone) passed away peacefully at his home in Yogaville, Virginia, with his beloved wife, Satya, holding his hand. He was 80 years old. For 60 years, Sadasivam had been a student of Swami Satchidananda. He...
Among those influences, one figure stands out with remarkable clarity, authority, and spiritual force: Avvaiyar, lovingly remembered throughout Tamil Nadu as “the Old Lady” or simply, Avvaiyar. Swami Satchidananda quoted Avvaiyar often—so often that even a brief...
More than a century before Vedanta and Yoga became familiar parts of the American spiritual landscape, Ralph Waldo Emerson discovered in the wisdom of India a profound resonance with his own deepest intuition: that beneath the apparent separateness of life is an...
In this short video, Doreen Gail Hemp shares her journey of loss and learning how to find gratitude amid the loss. Even in life’s most challenging moments, beauty quietly waits to offer us comfort. In times of pain or loss, noticing the small things around us — the...
There are friendships that transcend the limitations of time, culture, and tradition—friendships that seem destined, woven into the very fabric of life’s unfolding story. Such was the deep and abiding bond between Br. David Steindl-Rast, OSB, and Sri Swami...
Sambasivam Chaitanya’s journey now brings him to Tiruvannamalai, to the holy presence of Arunachala, and to Ramanashram, where one of modern India’s greatest sages sat in the stillness of Self-realization. At Ramanashram, Advaita was no longer only a subject of...
The full moon of Guru Poornima has waned, but the contemplation it awakens does not end with the observance. Only a few weeks later, on August 19, we mark the Mahasamadhi of our beloved Guru, Sri Swami Satchidananda (Sri Gurudev). These two sacred observances...
The majority of the suffering that you experience is caused not by something outside of yourself but by your internal reaction to things. And those reactions that bring pain are usually based on attachments and expectations that are unfulfilled. You make an...
On the blessed morning that marked the beginning of the Guru Poornima celebration at Satchidananda Ashram–Yogaville, July 25th, 2026, our beloved brother and senior monastic, Swami Daasyanandaji, peacefully left the body. The timing of his departure seemed deeply...
Editor’s note: On July 31, 1966, Sri Swami Satchidananda arrived in New York City for what was expected to be a brief visit. Sixty years later, and as we also mark the 40th anniversary of the Light Of Truth Universal Shrine (LOTUS), we revisit Sri Gurudev’s own...