Founder & Spiritual Director

Yogi Vishnu Panigrahi

• Meditation
• Yoga Philosophy
• Spiritual Practice

Long before Yogi Vishnu Panigrahi ever taught a class, he was growing up beside a Radha-Krishna temple that his grandfather had built in western Odisha. Born into a Brahmin family, he spent his early years around that temple, serving the sadhus who passed through it, and it was there that his relationship with spiritual life began, long before he had a name for it. That upbringing later carried him into the Himalayan yogic tradition, where he studied under respected teachers including Swami Veda Bharati and Swami Avdheshanand Giri.

Over the past 25 years, this early grounding has grown into a life spent almost entirely in service of others' spiritual growth. He now travels widely to teach yoga, meditation, and what he calls inner-faith, and remains closely involved at Samadhi Yoga Ashram, in Rishikesh and Bali, where he guides students who have come looking for something beyond a physical practice.

His own words capture his approach better than any description could: "A yoga teacher is a teacher of love and compassion. They share not only information, but experience and that experience is what opens the eyes of the student." That is the spirit he brings into his sessions on meditation and yoga philosophy. He is less interested in delivering information than in helping students actually feel the ideas he teaches, so that self-awakening becomes something real rather than a phrase from a book.

Students who study under him should expect a teacher who speaks from decades of lived practice rather than theory, and who treats every question about the inner life as one worth sitting with, not rushing past. His classes tend to move slowly and thoughtfully, leaving room for reflection as much as instruction.