Swami Sivananda: The Doctor Who Kept Practising

Founded at Rishikesh in 1936, and what it was for is in the name.

The formula

Serve, Love, Give, Purify, Meditate, Realise.

Six words, in that order, and he repeated them for thirty years.

And the order is the argument. Service comes first. Not meditation, not study, not renunciation, not initiation. Serve, and then the rest.

His other one: Be good, do good. Which he was aware sounded simple and used anyway.

And: an ounce of practice is worth tons of theory, which he said to people who had come to Rishikesh to discuss Vedanta.

The books

He wrote around two hundred of them, and possibly more depending on how compilations are counted.

On yoga, on Vedanta, on bhakti, on the Gita, on the Upanishads, on the Puranas, on japa, on concentration, on the mind, on health, on diet, on daily routine, on how to deal with anger, on how to sleep, on what to do when practice is not working.

And he gave them away.

The Divine Life Society printed and distributed them at cost or free, sent them unsolicited to people who had written once, and posted them abroad, and this was the mechanism by which a sannyasi in a small Himalayan town became known across the world before anybody had travelled.

A caution about the books, honestly

A great deal of it is repetitive.

He wrote fast, he wrote for beginners, he covered the same ground in many titles, and a person who acquires twenty Sivananda books will find substantial overlap.

That was deliberate. His stated view was that the same thing has to be said many times and in many forms because people arrive at it from different directions and on different days.

But it means a reader does not need to work through the catalogue. Two or three will do, and Bliss Divine and Sadhana are the usual entry points, and the health titles stand on their own.

Sannyasa, freely given

And this is the most criticised thing about him.

He initiated people into sannyasa quickly and in large numbers.

Including Westerners. Including women. Including people who had been at the ashram a short time. Including people by post, in some accounts, which is the version that most offended traditional opinion.

The criticism

That sannyasa is a serious and irreversible commitment which classically requires years of preparation and a teacher's long assessment, that giving it out at speed devalues it, and that a proportion of those he initiated did not sustain it.

All of which is true.

His position

That the tradition was dying of caution, that the qualifications had become gates rather than preparations, that a person who wanted to give their life to it should not be told to come back in twelve years, and that the risk of a few unsuitable sannyasis was smaller than the risk of turning away the suitable ones.

Which is also true.

And the outcome is the next section, because what he did by giving sannyasa freely to people including foreigners is the reason a substantial fraction of the entire world now does yoga.

Trace the lineage and the scale becomes visible.

At the ashram

Swami Chidananda, who succeeded him as President of the Divine Life Society and led it for decades, and who is remembered for personal austerity and for work with leprosy patients at a time when that meant physical contact nobody else would make.

Swami Krishnananda, the General Secretary and the philosophical mind of the place, whose commentaries and lectures are the intellectually serious end of the lineage.

Out into the world

Swami Vishnudevananda, sent west in 1957, founded the Sivananda Yoga Vedanta Centres, wrote The Complete Illustrated Book of Yoga, and formulated the five points of yoga: proper exercise, proper breathing, proper relaxation, proper diet, and positive thinking and meditation.

Swami Satchidananda, who went to America, founded Integral Yoga, and opened Woodstock in 1969 in front of half a million people, which is the single most watched moment in the history of yoga in the West.

Swami Satyananda, who founded the Bihar School of Yoga at Munger, systematised yoga nidra into the form now used in hospitals, universities and armies worldwide, and produced the most rigorous teaching material in the modern field.

Swami Sivananda Radha, one of the women he initiated, who founded Yasodhara Ashram in Canada.

Swami Venkatesananda, Swami Jyotirmayananda, Swami Chinmayananda for a period, and others.

What that adds up to

A very large proportion of what the world now calls yoga descends from one ashram in Rishikesh, because one man gave sannyasa to people other teachers would have made wait.

And the cautions that belong with that

Because this entry is not going to end on the triumph.

One. The lineage has had abuse allegations, and they were investigated.

In 2019 former students publicly alleged sexual abuse by Swami Vishnudevananda, who had died in 1993. The Sivananda Yoga Vedanta Centres commissioned an independent external investigation, its findings were published, and the organisation issued apologies and undertook governance changes.

This entry states it because the Bhaktivinoda entry in the previous batch stated the equivalent about ISKCON, and the rule has to apply evenly. A lineage's good work does not buy it an exemption from its record, and an organisation that commissions an outside investigation and publishes the result has done more than most.

Two. What to look for in any yoga school

• Does it have a written safeguarding policy and somebody named to complain to who is not the teacher
• Are adjustments done with consent, asked each time, and can you decline without a scene
• What happened to the last person who complained
• Is there a residential element, and if so, can students leave, keep their phones and contact their families freely

Three. On teacher training

The two hundred hour certificate market in Rishikesh is very large and very uneven.

Yoga Alliance is a United States membership registry, not a regulator, and registration with it is not a licence and does not verify teaching quality.

In India, the Yoga Certification Board under the Ministry of Ayush certifies yoga professionals and accredits institutions, and it is the actual official scheme.

Before paying for a course: check who accredits it and what that accreditation means, ask how many hours are actually contact hours, ask who teaches anatomy and what their qualification is, and read what former students say somewhere the school does not control.

Four. The physical risk

Yoga injuries are real and are underreported. Shoulders in chaturanga and inversions, knees in lotus and its approaches, necks in shoulderstand and headstand, and lower backs everywhere.

The rules are ordinary: tell the teacher what is wrong with you before the class, not after, do not go into headstand or shoulderstand at all if you have a neck problem, high blood pressure, glaucoma or retinal issues without a doctor's clearance, and pain is information rather than an obstacle to be pushed through.

Sivananda's own approach, being a doctor, was moderate: a small set of asanas held steadily, breathing, relaxation, diet and regular hours, which is much less than the modern market sells and is what he actually taught.

What to see

• Sivananda Ashram, on the road toward Muni ki Reti, with the Divine Life Society headquarters, the samadhi and the bookshop
• Ram Jhula and Lakshman Jhula, the two suspension bridges, with the ashram belt between them
• Triveni Ghat, in the town, for the evening Ganga aarti
• Parmarth Niketan at Ram Jhula, for a larger aarti
• Neelkanth Mahadev, in the hills above, a serious Shiva site and a proper trip
• Vashishta Gufa, about twenty kilometres up the Devprayag road, which is quiet
• Haridwar, an hour away, and Kankhal where Anandamayi Ma's samadhi is

When

• Winter is cold and quiet. March to May and September to November are the workable months
• Avoid the monsoon, July and August, for the river and for the roads
• Char Dham season, roughly April or May to October, makes Rishikesh a transit town and it is very full

Now the safety section, which Rishikesh genuinely needs

One. The river

People drown at Rishikesh every year and a number of them are strong swimmers.

Why it is more dangerous than it looks

• It is glacier fed and it is cold all year. Cold water shock causes involuntary gasping and loss of breath control within seconds, and it disables strong swimmers before distance or fitness matters
• The current is fast and the bed drops away, and depth changes abruptly a short distance from the bank
• The stones are round and slick, and people fall in rather than choosing to enter

The rules: hold the chains at the ghats where chains exist, do not go past knee depth in open water, do not swim across, never enter after drinking, and do not let children in without an adult physically holding them.

Two. Rafting

It is regulated in Uttarakhand and there have been deaths.

Use a registered operator, insist on the lifejacket and helmet and keep them fastened, listen to the safety briefing, and tell the guide if you cannot swim. Do not raft in high water after heavy rain, and do not accept an operator who tells you the jacket is optional.

Three. Drugs

There is a steady trade around Tapovan and Lakshman Jhula, aimed at foreign visitors, and it is not a grey area.

The NDPS Act carries severe penalties including long mandatory minimum sentences for quantities that people assume are personal, bail is difficult, and foreign nationals are in Indian prisons on exactly these charges. A person offering you something on a bridge is not offering you a spiritual experience.

Four. Ashrams and courses

Rishikesh has genuine institutions and it also has a large commercial layer.

What is normal: a fixed modest charge for room and board, published rates, clear rules, and no pressure.

What is not: escalating fees, a course that turns out to require a further course, pressure to hand over money or documents, any suggestion that leaving would be spiritually harmful, and any teacher whose instruction involves physical or sexual access.

Police 112. Tourist helpline 1363. Women's helpline 181. Cybercrime 1930 for online payments.

Five. Altitude and the hills

Rishikesh is low and is fine. The Char Dham and the higher shrines are not, and people get altitude sickness and cardiac events on those routes every season.

If you are continuing upward: ascend slowly, do not go straight from the plains to a high shrine in a day, know that Kedarnath and Yamunotri involve substantial walking or pony travel at altitude, and get a check up first if you have heart disease, uncontrolled blood pressure or diabetes. Ambulance 108.

A daily practice from this entry

• Om Namah Shivaya
• The six words, in order: serve, love, give, purify, meditate, realise, with the note that the first one comes first
• And the Sivananda health rule, which is his real contribution to a devotional life: look after the body, because it is the instrument, and see a doctor when something is wrong

Who: Swami Sivananda Saraswati, born Kuppuswamy Iyer on 8 September 1887 at Pattamadai in Tirunelveli district, Tamil Nadu, died at Rishikesh on 14 July 1963. He trained in medicine at Tanjore, worked as a doctor, and edited a medical journal called Ambrosia while doing it. Around 1913 he went to Malaya and worked about ten years as a doctor on a rubber estate at Seremban, running a hospital, with a reputation, a practice and money, on estates where indentured and contracted Tamil labour lived in conditions producing malaria, dysentery, hookworm, malnutrition and industrial injury at very high rates.

The turn: he gave it up in 1923, not gradually, leaving the practice, the money and Malaya, and by 1924 was at Rishikesh taking sannyasa from Swami Vishwananda Saraswati. And then he opened a dispensary: from around 1927 he ran a small charitable dispensary near Lakshman Jhula for sadhus and the poor, and he never stopped, later building the Sivananda Charitable Hospital and an eye hospital. This matters because the rest of this series records the opposite: people told treatment is pointless, people with mental illness taken to shrines instead of doctors, fasting presented as attainment, spiritual states claimed as protection against toxins. Sivananda is the correction and it comes from inside: a Dashanami sannyasi in Rishikesh who wrote books on hygiene, diet, exercise and sleep, and told people a sick body is a bad instrument and looking after it is part of the practice.

The Divine Life Society, founded at Rishikesh in 1936. His formula was six words in order: serve, love, give, purify, meditate, realise, and the order is the argument, since service comes before meditation, study, renunciation or initiation. Also: be good, do good, and an ounce of practice is worth tons of theory. He wrote around two hundred books on yoga, Vedanta, bhakti, the Gita, japa, the mind, health, diet, routine, anger, sleep and what to do when practice is not working, and gave them away at cost or free, posting them abroad, which is how a sannyasi in a small Himalayan town became known worldwide before anybody had travelled. A great deal of it is repetitive, deliberately, on his stated view that the same thing has to be said many times because people arrive from different directions, so a reader needs two or three rather than the catalogue.

Sannyasa freely given: he initiated people quickly and in large numbers, including Westerners, women, people who had been at the ashram a short time, and in some accounts by post. The criticism is that sannyasa is a serious irreversible commitment classically requiring years of preparation, that giving it out at speed devalues it, and that a proportion did not sustain it, all of which is true. His position was that the tradition was dying of caution, that the qualifications had become gates rather than preparations, and that the risk of a few unsuitable sannyasis was smaller than the risk of turning away the suitable ones, which is also true.

The lineage: Swami Chidananda, who succeeded him and worked with leprosy patients when that meant contact nobody else would make; Swami Krishnananda, the philosophical mind of the place; Swami Vishnudevananda, sent west in 1957, who founded the Sivananda Yoga Vedanta Centres and formulated the five points of yoga; Swami Satchidananda, who founded Integral Yoga and opened Woodstock in 1969; Swami Satyananda, who founded the Bihar School of Yoga at Munger and systematised yoga nidra into the form now used worldwide; Swami Sivananda Radha, who founded Yasodhara Ashram in Canada; and others. A very large proportion of what the world calls yoga descends from one ashram, because one man gave sannyasa to people other teachers would have made wait.

The cautions: in 2019 former students publicly alleged sexual abuse by Swami Vishnudevananda, who had died in 1993; the Sivananda Yoga Vedanta Centres commissioned an independent external investigation, published its findings, issued apologies and undertook governance changes. This entry states it because the same rule was applied to ISKCON in the previous batch and has to apply evenly. In any yoga school, look for a written safeguarding policy and a named person to complain to who is not the teacher, adjustments done with consent asked each time, what happened to the last person who complained, and whether residential students can leave, keep their phones and contact family. On teacher training, Yoga Alliance is a United States membership registry rather than a regulator and registration is not a licence, while in India the Yoga Certification Board under the Ministry of Ayush is the official scheme. And yoga injuries are real: tell the teacher what is wrong with you before the class, avoid headstand and shoulderstand entirely with a neck problem, high blood pressure, glaucoma or retinal issues without medical clearance, and treat pain as information rather than an obstacle.

Rishikesh safety: people drown there every year including strong swimmers, because the river is glacier fed and cold all year so cold water shock disables swimmers within seconds, the current is fast and the bed drops away abruptly, and the stones are round and slick so people fall in rather than choosing to enter. Hold the chains, do not go past knee depth, never swim across, never enter after drinking. Raft only with a registered operator, keep the jacket and helmet fastened, and not in high water after rain. The drug trade around Tapovan and Lakshman Jhula is not a grey area, since the NDPS Act carries severe penalties with long mandatory minimums and difficult bail. Police 112, tourist helpline 1363, women's helpline 181.