The Yogi
The living practice at the centre of everything else — carried directly from the lineage.
Four generations ago, my great-grandfather, Haṭha Yogi Sri Sri Sri Veerananda Swamiji, walked away from an ordinary life into the forests of southern Karnataka. He spent decades in caves, in silence, in the earth itself — practising Haṃsa Kuṇḍalinī Yoga and attaining states beyond birth and death.
Yoga and meditation are not one page of the Vanya Siri story; they are the ground it stands on. Every other calling I carry — research, healing, education, film — grows out of this practice.
The Lineage
The Swamiji was born in Gauribidanur Taluk, entered the householder's life, and was led by puṇya-phala to the cave at Kuntavarapalli in Bagepalli Taluk, where he received Jñāna Yoga dīkṣā from Sri Swami Chidghanananda Maharshi and took up Haṃsa Kuṇḍalinī Yoga.
His life was measured not in years but in dīkṣās — from the Narasimha Swamy cave where Kaivara Thatha had performed tapas, to twelve years at Dattatreya Matha in Chikkaballapur where annadāna and jñānadāna flowed without pause. A yogi who spent twelve years eating nothing spent his last chapter making sure children were fed.
The Practice
What he left behind — a discipline of living close to the wild, of taking nothing and giving freely — is the ground on which this Trust stands. My own practice is haṭha yoga as he taught it: body, breath and stillness, in the place where the forest and the sacred meet.
The meditation I teach is the meditation of the lineage — the exploration of the interior, practised on the same earth the Swamiji walked.
Yoga as a Way of Living
For me, the practice extends beyond the mat. Climbing a boulder requires the same single-pointed attention as a posture; a research walk through the forest requires the same patience as a pranayama. Yoga is the centre of the wheel — and every spoke of Vanya Siri is turned from it.
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The yogi's inheritance is not in what he owns, but in the stillness he keeps.
Raghunandan S.