Yoga's Trip to America

Yoga Journal looks back in gratitude to America's yoga pioneers.

By Holly Hammond

In 1966 B.K.S. Iyengar's Light on Yoga (Schocken) was published in the United States, a book that is still considered to be the Bible of serious asana practice. In 1973 Mr. Iyengar was invited to Ann Arbor, Michigan, to teach by Mary Palmer (mother of Mary Dunn). Nearly every Western teacher has been influenced by his emphasis on anatomical precision, many without even knowing it.

A 1965 revision of U.S. law removed the 1924 quota on Indian immigration, opening our shores to a new wave of Eastern teachers. In 1966 Amrit Desai founded the Yoga Society of Pennsylvania, and later Kripalu Yoga Ashram. Swami Rama amazed researchers at the prestigious Menninger Foundation in 1970 when tests showed he could control his autonomic nervous system functions including heartbeat, pulse, and skin temperature.

In 1966 Swami Satchidananda, another of Swami Sivananda's disciples, arrived in New York for a couple of days and ended up staying permanently. His Integral Yoga Institute now includes an ashram in rural Virginia and over 40 branches worldwide. Satchidananda opened the Woodstock festival in 1969, echoing Vivekananda's greeting of 75 years earlier: "My beloved sisters and brothers." Looking like an aging hippie himself, with flowing hair and beard, he provided a living example of a life dedicated to spirit. It was just what many young people were hungering for.

Ram Dass became another pied piper for American youth. The former Harvard professor left on a pilgrimage to India in the late '60s as Richard Alpert; he returned with a guru and a new identity. His 1970 tour of college campuses and his book Be Here Now (Lama Foundation, 1971) established the spiritual quest as a lifestyle for a new generation of seekers.

By the '70s you could find yoga and spiritual teachings everywhere. Near Santa Cruz, California, the silent sage Baba Hari Dass founded Mount Madonna to provide residential yoga programs. In 1975 Pattabhi Jois made his first visit to the United States and set off the wildfire of Ashtanga-vinyasa Yoga. Around the same time, T.K.V. Desikachar, son of the great master Sri Krishnamacharya, brought his Viniyoga to the West. And in 1975 the first issue of Yoga Journal was published: $500 was scraped together to print and distribute 300 typewritten copies. Little did the founders—Rama Jyoti Vernon, Rose Garfinkle, Judith and Ike Lasater, Jean Giradot, Janis Paulsen, and William Staniger—realize that their modest publication would become the magazine of record for yoga in the West. As Yoga Journal celebrates its 25th anniversary, we'd like to express our gratitude to all of those pioneers who planted the seeds of yoga in America's soil.

Contributing Editor Holly Hammond works as a freelance writer and editor in Berkeley, California.

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