Jagadish Vasudev, venerated as Sadhguru, is an Indian yoga guru and author. Jaggi Vasudev earned a bachelor’s degree in English from the University of Mysore and has been teaching yoga in southern India since 1982.
Jagadish Vasudev, a venerated as Sadhguru, is an Indian yoga guru and author.

Jaggi Vasudev earned a bachelor’s degree in English from the University of Mysore and has been teaching yoga in southern India since 1982. In 1992 he established the Isha Foundation near Coimbatore, which operates an ashram and yoga centre and is involved in various activities in spirituality, education and the environment.

Vasudev is the author of several books, including Inner Engineering: A Yogi’s Guide to Joy (2016). He has addressed the United Nation’s Millennium World Peace Summit, the British parliament’s House of Lords, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the International Institute for Management Development. He has also spoken at the annual World Economic Forum in 2007, 2017 and 2020.

In 2017 he received the Padma Vibhushan, India’s second-highest civilian award, from the Government of India for his contributions to social welfare.
Jaggi Vasudev was born in Mysore, Karnataka, India to a Telugu speaking family.] He had four siblings – two brothers and two sisters and was the youngest of them all. His mother Susheela Vasudev was a house maker and his father B.V. Vasudev[ worked at the Mysuru Railway Hospital as a physician. The family frequently moved due to the nature of his father’s job. He lived in Shimoga, Chikkaballapur, and Guntakal for a brief time and returned to Mysore with his family in 1969.

Vasudev showed an inclination towards nature during his early life. He spent time trekking alone in forests as a child and developed an interest in snakes, often keeping them as pets.

After his schooling at Demonstration School, Mysore and Mahajana Pre-University College, Vasudev graduated from the University of Mysore with a bachelor’s degree in English, despite a spotty attendance record and an irreverent attitude to tuition. Defying his parents’ wishes, he refused to pursue a post-graduate course and took to business instead.

Aged thirteen, Vasudev took yoga lessons from Malladihalli Raghavendra, and kept practicing asanas and pranayama daily throughout his youth, albeit without spiritual aspirations. At the age of 25, on 23 September 1982, he went up Chamundi Hill and sat on a rock, where he had a ‘spiritual experience’. Six weeks afterwards, he left his business to his friend and travelled extensively in an effort to gain insight into his mystical experience. After about a year of meditation and travel, he decided to teach yoga to share his inner experience.

In 1983, he taught his first yoga class with seven participants in Mysore. Over time, he began conducting yoga classes across Karnataka and Hyderabad travelling on his motorcycle, subsisting on the produce of his poultry farm rental and donating the collections received from his students to a local charity on the last day of the class.
According to Vasudev, his main motive in getting into business was to fund his urge to travel and explore. His first business was a poultry farm in a remote part of Mysore. Lack of finance, he built buildings and bird cages by himself over six months. In the process of constructing his farm, he also took to brickmaking, and soon converted this into a second business. the farm soon turned profitable. Operating his businesses occupied four hours of his time every day. The rest of his time was spent writing poetry, reading, swimming and relaxing. Vasudev says that though he was practicing asanas and pranayama from the age of thirteen, it was during his time at the poultry farm that he began to meditate in an established way.

His third business was a construction company named Buildaids. Vasudev entered the construction industry as a response to the constant questions from his relatives about why he was into the poultry business. He started the company in partnership with a friend who was a qualified civil engineer. Though Vasudev had no formal engineering training, he used the experience gained from building his poultry farm in his new company. Jaggi Vasudev is the author of several books. His books Inner Engineering: A Yogi’s Guide to Joy and Karma: A Yogi’s Guide to Crafting Your Destiny made The New York Times Best Seller list.[37][38][39][40] Vasudev is also the author of Mystic’s Musings and Death: An Inside Story.

Vasudev is a frequent public speaker who has been invited to address many prestigious forums and conferences across the globe, such as the United Nation’s Millennium World Peace Summit, the House of Lords, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the International Institute for Management Development. He has also spoken at the annual World Economic Forum in 2007, 2017 and 2020. Vasudev received the Padma Vibhushan, the second-highest civilian award from the Government of India in 2017 in recognition of his contribution to the field of spirituality.[48][49] He stood 92nd in The Indian Express’ list of 100 most powerful Indians, in 2012 and stood 40th in India Today’s list of 50 most powerful Indians, in 2019.
Located on the foothills of the Velliangiri Mountains, forty kilometres from the city of Coimbatore in the state of Tamil Nadu, South India, Isha Foundation was established as a non-profit organisation by Vasudev in 1992. Its social initiatives have been awarded with the Rashtriya Khel Protsahan Puraskar. Vasudev began conducting yoga programmes on the premises of the newly established Isha Yoga Centre in 1994, including a course for the Indian Hockey team in 1996.[54][55] In 1997, he began conducting classes in the United States[56][57] and from 1998 on wards, for life-term prisoners in Tamil Nadu prisons.

The flagship program is titled ‘Inner Engineering’, which introduces people to simple Yoga practices and the Shambhavi Mahamudra; corporate leadership forms a core audience of these programs. Designed by Jaggi Vasudev, the foundation built a 34-metre-tall (112 ft) and 500-tonne (490-long-ton; 550-short-ton) Shiva statue for inspiring and promoting yoga. It was inaugurated by the Prime Minister of India, Narendra Modi and has been since recognised as the “Largest Bust Sculpture” by Guinness World Records. It is a part of the Incredible India campaign.