This article does not cite any sources. Sivananda Saraswati, and founder of anti gravity yoga montreal International Sivananda Yoga Vedanta Centres and Ashrams. He established the Sivananda Yoga Teachers’ Training Course, one of the first yoga teacher training programs in the West.

Vishnudevananda was born in Kerala, a state in South India, on 31 December 1927. His family were members of a Nair caste. His father was a Brahmin named Panchanatham. He was particularly inspired by these words: «An ounce of practice is worth tons of theory. At his second visit, he and others waited as Sivananda ascended the stairs from the bank of the Ganges to the ashram. When Vishnudevananda declined to prostrate, Sivananda surprised him by prostrating before him. This lesson in humility was the first given to Vishnudevananda by his guru.

Vishnudevananda entered the Sivananda Ashram in Rishikesh in 1947 at the age of twenty. In this capacity, he trained scores of Indian and Western students. Vishnudevananda travelled throughout North America, teaching yoga and observing the western life style. He founded the first Sivananda Yoga Vedanta Centre in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, in 1959. In February 1962, Vishnudevananda saw the present site of the Yoga Camp in Val Morin, Quebec, and intuitively chose to settle in the dense forest area near the Laurentian Mountains. By summer the Sivananda Ashram Yoga Camp had opened.

From the modest beginning of a few small cottages and tents, there has been considerable expansion. In 1967, Vishnudevananda founded the Sivananda Ashram Yoga Retreat on the Bahamas. In August 1971, Sivananda Ashram Yoga Farm was established on land in Grass Valley, California. Vishnudevananda inaugurated a fourth ashram, located in Woodbourne, New York, near the Catskill Mountains. He named it the Sivananda Yoga Ranch Colony. As with the other Ashrams, Vishnudevananda chose that land because of its strong spiritual vibrations. In February 1978, Vishnudevananda inaugurated the Sivananda Yoga Vedanta Dhawanthari Ashram in Neyyar Dam, near Thiruvananthapuram in Kerala.