Swami Dharmananda Saraswati Maharaj is renowned for being both an inspiring teacher and one of the most practical people in her field. She was born in Southampton, is a member of the British Wheel of Yoga and the Director of the Dharma Centre for Yoga, Spiritual Awareness and Healing (formed in 1980 as a centre for the development of spiritual awareness through yoga). The centre is particularly known for running excellent yoga courses, including a teacher training programme.

Swamiji has practiced and run workshops on different aspects of yoga for over thirty-five years and was a friend of Ianthe Hoskins (previous secretary of the London Theosophical Society), who occasionally gave talks to Dharma Yoga Centre students. Swamiji became associated with the Bihar School of Yoga in Northern India in 1973 and was later initiated as a sannyasin of the Saraswati Dasanami (order founded by Shankara) by Swami Satyananda Saraswati. The School is the headquarters of the International Fellowship Movement and was founded by Satyananda in 1964. It is now directed by his successor Swami Niranjanananda Saraswati.

Swamiji was given the task of spreading the wisdom of yoga to lay people in the West. Anyone who knows her work will appreciate the natural way in which she has taken to the task and untiringly worked with students seeking to integrate modern living with spiritual precepts and practices.

Swamiji’s knowledge of yoga and spiritual development is very much the product of a continuous search. Her broad outlook and understanding of fundamental practices has been achieved by leaving hardly a stone unturned. She has consistently kept up-to-date with new developments, while expanding and adapting early discoveries. As well as being a regular participant at yoga conferences in the UK, she has constantly enjoyed healthy dialogues with friends and colleagues from a variety of related disciplines.

When Swamiji set out on the yogic path, many of the exercises which have now come into popular use had to be looked for and experimented with independently. Her enthusiasm for practices of both India and China - some of which date back thousands of years - have drawn her to a variety of teachings, including some that were not extensively taught or were deliberately hidden within sacred texts.

Yet among numerous sources of reference there have been some widely recognised and almost universally used - in yoga circles - ancient classics, such as the Patanjali Sutra and Hatha Yoga Pradipika, which Swamiji has repeatedly returned to and drawn upon for guidance and inspiration. Additionally, Swamiji’s spiritual teacher Trivadi Ramachandra (one-time secretary to Gandhi), with whom she shared a close working relationship, was a major influence. In recent years she has taken a keen interest in different forms of healing, and the Tantric master Sri Jammu Maharaj helped her to explore new possibilities in her work and officially gave her the title of Maharaj, after initiating her into his tradition.

Unknowingly, Swamiji first came into contact with some integral breathing exercises of yoga at the age of thirty, when being taught breath-control whilst learning how to sing. Her first book, Breath of Life, focuses on effective meditations on the breath and breathing exercises with movement. Swamiji was also introduced to various beneficial wrist and ankle twists as a child because of an early weakness in these areas. It was only later, when her spiritual search led her to investigate the richness of Indian religions, that she discovered the practices were also part of the yogic tradition.

Swamiji has constantly sought to bring her students’ attention to the wider aspects of yoga and its down-to-earth application for living in the world today - reminding them that every practice has a spiritual purpose. While being deeply grounded in her own tradition, she has comfortably moved beyond religious boundaries to touch and benefit those with different perspectives to her own. Many of her students have come from a variety of faiths, including Christianity, Judaism, Jainism, Buddhism and Hinduism, and have found that her teachings helped them to deepen their understanding of their tradition.

She has been zealous in promoting a wide view of development that aims to work with all levels and achieve perfect equanimity between everyday life and spiritual living - to see all life as sacred and every facet of ourselves as part of a spiritual whole.

Swamiji is currently working on two books: one on basic twists and stretching exercises, and another on integral spirituality, and has been working on some recording projects which have included musicians such as Rafael Szaban and Doug Boyle.

She now lives in the East of England and moved there to be close to her daughter Sarah.

“Let us all continue to grow in love, wisdom and the Spirit, and to share our growth with each other.”

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