Swami Kripalu

The name over the door of North America's largest yoga retreat center belongs to an Indian master who visited the United States only briefly and taught in Gujarati. Kripalu Yoga, a gentle, meditative and deeply inward practice built on "self-observation without judgment," is named for Swami Kripalu. It was shaped and spread, though, by his disciple Amrit Desai, and today the center that bears the name is a secular nonprofit that has outgrown the guru model entirely. It is an unusually clear example of how a lineage, a teacher, and an institution can each go their own way.

The silent yogi of Gujarat

He was born Haridas Jamnadas Majmundar on 13 January 1913 in Dabhoi, near Baroda in Gujarat.¹ Around 1932, by the tradition's account, he met his guru Swami Pranavananda, known as "Dadaji," in Bombay, and was initiated over some eighteen months into kundalini yoga; he took sannyasa in 1942 as Swami Kripalvananda, "the compassionate one."¹ What set him apart was the intensity of his own practice. For three decades, from about 1950, he is said to have kept a daily sadhana of roughly ten hours of meditation, marked by spontaneous movements and chanting, the "meditation in motion" that would give the style its name.²

Kripalu Yoga, made in Pennsylvania

The Western story runs through Amrit Desai, who became Kripalu's disciple in 1947 at fifteen and emigrated to America in 1960 to study art.³ Teaching yoga on the side, Desai named his flowing, meditative approach "Kripalu Yoga: Meditation in Motion" in his guru's honor, founded the Yoga Society of Pennsylvania in 1966, and built it into an ashram community that moved through several Pennsylvania sites in the 1970s.⁴ Swami Kripalu himself came to America in 1977 and taught at those ashrams for about four years, his only teaching in the West, before returning to India in declining health; he died there on 29 December 1981.¹ In 1983 the community moved to Stockbridge, Massachusetts, taking over a former Jesuit novitiate and establishing the Kripalu Center for Yoga & Health.⁴

From ashram to nonprofit

The center's turning point came in 1994, when Amrit Desai resigned as spiritual director after admitting sexual relationships with several female residents while publicly professing celibacy.⁵⁶ Rather than replace him with another guru, the organization remade itself: the residential ashram community closed, and by 1999 Kripalu had become a secular educational nonprofit governed by a board.⁴ It kept the yoga and let go of the master, which leaves Kripalu today as one of the few major lineages with no living lineage holder at all. (Desai, for his part, continues to teach into his nineties through his own separate Amrit Yoga Institute in Florida.⁷) The Related coverage section links to the record.

What Kripalu Yoga is

Kripalu Yoga is gentle, introspective and welcoming of every kind of body. Its hallmark is "compassionate self-observation," attention to what arises in a posture rather than achievement of a shape.⁸ Its teaching describes three stages: willful practice of postures, breath and alignment; then sustaining and deepening a posture through "witness consciousness"; and finally surrender, where movement is allowed to arise on its own, the "meditation in motion" at the tradition's root.⁸ The Kripalu School of Yoga has trained teachers for more than fifty years and offers 200- and 300-hour certifications; its RISE program brings evidence-based yoga and resilience training to nurses, teachers and first responders.⁹

The lineage today

The Kripalu Center for Yoga & Health occupies a hundred-acre campus in Stockbridge and describes itself as the largest retreat center in North America, a secular nonprofit running workshops, teacher trainings and research year-round, with no spiritual head.¹⁰ Kripalu-trained teachers work worldwide; the Kripalu Yoga Teachers Association supports its graduates. A teacher who names Swami Kripalu as their lineage is offering something gentle and inward. Expect self-inquiry, long held postures explored with curiosity, and none of the drill-sergeant precision of some other schools.

Related coverage

• US District Court, Massachusetts, 1998: Dushkin v. Desai, 18 F. Supp. 2d 117, reciting the admission and resignation.
• Kripalu Center's own account: "Holding the pose", the organization's history of the 1994 crisis and its remaking.

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