How Sivananda Ashram, In Rishikesh, Changed My Life

It has been three years since the events that are described here took place. Three years since I was a student at Yoga Vedanta Forest Academy, in Sivananda Ashram Rishikesh, learning about a divine lifestyle and how not be affected by little miseries of life.

And yet, I never mentioned anything about the place here. I didn’t even mention much about it in my Rishikesh travel guide blog.

It is not that over the years I’ve lost touch with Sivananda Ashram or that I didn’t want to talk about it. I just never found a compelling reason.

But today, I just happened to have found one.

My Sivananda Ashram, Rishikesh Experience

This place, for me, is like a second home, a place that has nourished my roots and made me what I am today. And just like you don’t feel a need to write about your home, I never felt it important to write about Sivananda Ashram either.

But this time, as I visited Rishikesh to spend a few nights in the Ashram, I was accompanied by a sense of realization — a force, rather — which motivated me to write about it.

It all happened when a friend repeatedly shared his discontentment in life. “It feels as if I am stuck in a hamster wheel and there’s no way out,” he would repeat every time we meet.

Though, unlike others, he would still escape his life in New Delhi, almost every weekend, to trek and recharge his batteries in the Himalayas, the fact that it was a no permanent solution that I suggested to him a rather slow and more effective and lasting solution. I introduced him to the idea of divine living and made him visit Sivananda Ashram Rishikesh — just like I am introducing it to you now!

How I Got Associated With Sivananda Ashram

When I finally quit my corporate career in 2015, I did so after hopelessly failing in life. I gave up my well-paying job in a media house in England, before moving to India, looking for a change. I thought, moving to India would make me happy. But it didn’t. About one year after my relocation, I switched to three different companies and a few different profiles. Wherever I would go, I would feel a little incomplete within, wanting something else but that. I would plan weekends with my friends only to return next Monday feeling a bit more unsatisfied.

(But now that I look back at it, I know that it wasn’t my lifestyle or the monotonous jobs that lacked something, it was me, or the ever-growing void in my head that felt unresting)

So after changing a few jobs in India, I couldn’t hold it any longer. In March 2015, I decided to leave everything behind and start travelling. I booked a one-way ticket to Bhutan with a rucksack and a few belongings. For the next 6 months, I travelled across parts of Bhutan, Nepal and Northeast India. But as time passed, I realized that I was only, once again, losing time with no purpose and direction. And this time, I was clearly, and more evidently, losing money too. While those 6 months of uninterrupted travelling were sure a highlight and I gained many great experiences, I had no clue about WHAT NEXT!

Six months later, in September 2015, I returned home, feeling more restless than ever. I was hoping for a spark of light when during a casual dinner discussion my father suggested the two-month-long Yoga Vedanta course in Sivananda Ashram, Rishikesh.

If you do not know, Rishikesh is one of the best places to visit in India for learning Yoga and Meditation. You can call it the hub of spiritual tourism in India – a place that is more popular than all four Char Dham Yatra temples put together.

Yoga Vedanta Forest Academy

Since its inception in 1948, Sivananda Ashram has been running three batches, every year, wherein they train a selected 40 students from across India. The training is given irrespective of their religion and professional background. The only condition is, however, they should be men of Indian origin, aged between 20 and 65 years old.

For two months, you stay in The Yoga Vedanta Forest Academy inside the Sivananda Ashram premise and follow a strict schedule, that starts as early as 4 in the morning.

Speaking of the routine, the students wake up at 4 in the morning, followed by a daily one-hour meditation class at 5 am. Throughout the day, the students are bound to attend various lectures learning about Indian scriptures like Bhagwat Gita and Upanishads. Other than that, they learn about Indian and Western philosophy and study what the many great philosophers like Aristotle and Adi Shankara once said and preached.

The aim of the course is not merely academic equipment of Yoga and Vedanta knowledge but a complete transformation of the way we think and perceive life. For two months, the ashram life teaches about discipline and persistence, while integrating our personality in a way that we succeed.

Imagine it like a 20th-century gurukul where students learn about order and discipline — something more useful than any college degree today.

How Sivananda Ashram Changed Me

If anything, Sivananda Ashram — thanks to its daily meditation and lectures on how to live a more harmonious and divine life — instilled a sense of positive thinking in me.

If I look back to the original me I would describe myself as an ‘unperturbed directionless person’, while the new me is still ‘unperturbed’ but ‘fairly nonchalant’ at the same time, and that’s a good combination.

The daily routine of meditation and yoga that I continued after my two-month course has conditioned me in a way that negative thoughts are becoming a rarity. I mean if I think of the time when I started travel blogging in January 2016 with little to no idea about how to make money from travel blogging, I cannot imagine how I continued doing it for the initial 8 or 9 months with no income and no hope whatsoever. If it were not for the positive thinking and persistence (and the old me was dealing with it) I would have given up somewhere in the middle, and be right now sitting with a grumpy face in a 4*4 cubicle, working on someone else’s dreams.

So yea, over time, as I continued practising what I learned in the Ashram, I can feel a stronger and more positive change from within.

Some Factual Tips

• The Yoga Vedanta Forest Academy runs three batches every year (March-April | May-June | September-October) with each course running for a duration of two months.
• The course is free of cost (however, any donations are always welcome) with two months of free stay, food, lectures and everything else of daily need.
• The food served in the Ashram is totally Sattvik, however, you will be amazed by the quality of food (that range from fruits to wholesome meals throughout the day) and the kind of accommodation (which may be minimalistic and simple but super-clean).
• If you think of it as an opportunity to learn Yoga and get a degree to start your career in Yoga, please don’t enrol for the course. Because the aim of the course is rather instilling a divine and positive thought process in the lifestyle of the attendees. Enrol only if you are coming with a keen spiritual aspiration and a deep interest in the practice of Yoga-Vedanta. There are going to be daily lectures on Bhagwat Gita and philosophy and Upanishads for at least 5 hours every day and not everyone can handle it.
• Smoking, use of intoxicants and drugs, and other dissipating habits are strictly forbidden. Students are expected to live an austere life in the Ashram and should be mentally prepared and physically sound to stand the rigour of the course. You will also be asked to do Karma Yoga which includes duties like weeding the gardens cleaning toilets to serving food in the Dining Hall.
• The total group size of a batch is 40 people who are carefully selected after reviewing their academic background and their thoughts on spirituality. Applicants are required to apply (which can be downloaded from YVFA’s website). You may be requested to come for an interview before you’re shortlisted.
• There are quite a few Sivananda Ashrams across India (with two of them in Rishikesh itself, I think) with names such as Sivananda Yogpeeth and Sivananda Dhanvantari Ashram. Please note that they all operate as independent identities and have no connection with the original Sivananda Ashram in Rishikesh. The Sivananda Ashram with Yoga Vedanta Forest Academy is the original Sivananda Ashram with Swami Sivanandaji’s Samadhi Shrine. So if you visit or have already visited any other Sivananda Ashram please make no connections!

Got questions? Write them in the comments below.

You can also visit me in Manali where I run a homestay now and practice and teach Yoga and other learnings of Sivananda Ashram. It’s a 5-room property located inside of the forest. Guests can stay for a month (starting INR 10 thousand for a private room) and detox and practice divine living.

Check the following video of the property and contact me on Instagram (username: FOOTLOOSE DEV) for a booking…