Arun Pandala​, Yoga Acharya (Master of Yoga) is one of the senior-mostSivananda Yoga teachers in India. He has been practicing the Sivananda Yoga system since 1992 and teaching Yoga for over 25 years.  He holds an Experienced Registered YogaTeacher ERYT 500 certification from Yoga Alliance, USA.

He was nominated Secretary of the Technical Committee, and member of the Advisory, Steering committees, and various task forces since 2014, for Quality Council of India’s YogaProfessionals Certification project, which aims to create world standards forYoga, as directed by the Prime Minister, Shri Narendra Modi.

Arun is the joint Founder of Sivananda YogaCentre, Gurgaon, one of the largest Sivananda style programmes in the world, which ran, before the lockdown, 7 yoga centres, where over 30 yoga classes were taught every day. SYCG runs yoga retreats and teacher training courses and corporate yoga training, and has taught yoga to over 50000 people in Gurgaon over the past 16 years.

In the time of lockdown and the online era of the past two years, Arun and SYCG have reached out to more than 100,000 people around the world, taking yoga to far corners of the globe using audio video technology.

Arun’s vision is a disease and pain free planet with yoga showing the way. In his talks and seminars about yoga and healthy living, he inspires a generation of people to adopt a traditional lifestyle, without compromising or sacrificing all the goodness that the modern era offers.

He teaches with compassion, wisdom, insight and common sense. He infuses great humour and brings simplicity to a complex modern world of disease, illness, pain and stress on one side and the ancient science, philosophy and practices of yoga on the other.

Arun got into yoga 30 years ago, because of a necessity. He had severe back pain, and his father brought him to the newly opened Sivananda Yoga Vedanta Centre inNew Delhi to see if yoga could help mend his back.

In1992, at age 29, Arun was not in great shape, either physically or mentally. It was here, that yoga found him and he found yoga. The back pain went away pretty soon, mood and energy lifted, his fitness levels peaked. As he says, he has not had to take a single day off in the past 30 years because of any sickness whatsoever!

As his health improved back then, he felt a calling to understand yoga better and go deeper into the science and art of yoga. Arun went on to do his Yoga Teacher Training from the Sivananda Ashram inTrivandrum, and started a life of transformation, mentorship and guiding people down the right path in daily ethics, personal discipline, and the vast science of yoga. For nearly 20 years, after taking an early retirement from a two decade long unsatisfying corporate life, Arun has blazed an entirely new path, making ancient yoga a viable option for modern people to look after themselves.Many thousands of people around the world consider him to be a guru, mentor, guide, philosopher and friend, who has shone the light, and been the reason fora transformative experience in their lives.

Recently turned 59, Arun exhibits extraordinary energy, works tirelessly to alleviate the suffering of people around him and lives like someone half his age. He attributes the quality of his life to yoga, which he says has given him happiness, hope, a clear vision and tremendous immunity and good health.

Arun explains that yoga allows you to have an extraordinary life, making the best of every circumstance you are presented with. Yoga, he says, is not about disease or health or exercise – it is like a foster mother, who is there to sculpt a beautiful life out of ordinary, even mundane things.

Part of Arun’s teaching is what he experienced in his own life – that yoga is the discovery, or the rediscovery of your own potential. He says, yoga helps you to understand, and thereby sets your free.

Deeksha Jain Prasad, Yoga Acharya (Master of Yoga) has been practicing yoga for 20 years, and holds an Experienced Registered Yoga Teacher ERYT 500 certification from Yoga Alliance. She is the joint founder, joint director and senior acharya at the Sivananda Yoga Centre, Gurgaon. Deeksha’s forte is in her daily, simple approach to yoga practice – it has to be done! Her practical understanding of yoga and its benefits then translates into her sharing this wisdom with the others.