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Yogic training is available here to all people regardless of race, religion, sex, age or social status. The techniques taught are based on the ancient disciplines of yoga, samkhya and tantra, revised to fit the modern way of thinking and lifestyle.
The Yoga Research Foundation under the Bihar School of Yoga was founded by Paramahamsa Satyananda in 1984. The foundation aims to provide an accurate assessment of yoga within a scientific framework in order to establish it as a science. Initial research programmes planned by the foundation are to develop the health promoting aspects of yoga.
Swami Shankarananda of the ashram says, "Yoga has the only remedy for heart disease and other major ailments”. He says that keeping in mind the theraputic aspects of yoga, the Bihar School of Yoga conducted stress management courses for the employees of Indian Oil Corporation refineries at Barauni, Baroda and Mathura and for the staff of BCCL. The research revealed that through yogic tech-
niques, discipline, production and one-to-one relationships improved, he says.
The Bihar School of Yoga also has a charitable institution under it, namely Sivananda Math, working for the uplift of the downtrodden, especially in rural areas. The yoga school offers several courses which include health management courses, Sannyasa introduction courses, meditation courses and even a children's gurukul course.
Paramahamsa Satyananda, who founded the yoga school, left Munger in 1988 with the spirit of kshetra sannyasa (renunciation of the establishment). Today he is in meditation at Rikhia near Deoghar. Paramahamsa Niranjanananda is in his early thirties, but he was made the president of the Bihar School of Yoga by Paramahamsa Satyananda on his renunciation. Initiated into sannyasa at the tender age of four, Paramahamsa Niranjanananda guides all the activities of the ashram, including yoga courses and training. Today he is guru to thousands of devotes and yogic trainees in India and abroad.
The Hindustan Times
7.11.93 SOUL SEARCHING India, no doubt, is a strange
visualize it as the land of beggars land of snakes and snake
or as a vast slum. Cheryl Osborne charmers, elephants and mahouts,
from Australia faced opposition old temples and fortresses to
fromfriends and relatives about many a westerner. Some even her decision to make a trip to
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