Nayaswami Gyandev

Sharing the transformative power of Yoga

For more than four decades, Nayaswami Gyandev has shared all aspects of Yoga with thousands of people. He teaches both internationally and online, training teachers of Ananda Yoga and Ananda Meditation and offering courses on many aspects of Yoga to a wide variety of audiences. Gyandev also serves as director of Ananda Yoga Worldwide and Ananda School of Yoga & Meditation. He and his wife, Nayaswami Diksha, are Ananda ministers who live in the Ananda Village ashram in Northern California.

A disciple’s journey

For more than 40 years, Gyandev has been a disciple of Paramhansa Yogananda, author of the spiritual classic Autobiography of a Yogi. His training as a disciple came through Swami Kriyananda, a direct disciple of Yoganandaji and the founder of Ananda Yoga and Ananda’s worldwide network of spiritual communities. Gyandev has received the honor of being a Kriyacharya—a teacher of Kriya Yoga, the powerful meditation technique championed by Yoganandaji and other great Yoga masters.

Teacher, author, storyteller

Gyandev has authored six books:

• Spiritual Yoga: Awakening to Higher Awareness
• The Hidden Story of the Mahabharata: With Inner Meanings from Paramhansa Yogananda
• A Concise Bhagavad Gita
• Guide to the Mahabharata and Life of Sri Krishna
• Yoga Therapy for Insomnia (coauthored with Dr. Peter Van Houten)
• Yoga Therapy for Headaches (coauthored with Dr. Peter Van Houten)

He has also produced nearly 60 Ananda Yoga videos, highlighted by the 48 videos of The Ananda Yoga Series. They are freely available at AnandaYoga.org. One of Gyandev’s greatest joys is telling stories from India’s spiritual tradition. For more than thirty years, his performances have been delighting audiences worldwide.

A passion for the Yoga tradition

In the late 1990s, as standards for training yoga teachers loomed on the horizon, Gyandev got involved. He wanted the standards to honor the fullness of Yoga’s tradition—especially meditation, the central technique of Yoga—and not only the postures. That led him to co-found Yoga Alliance and serve on its board of directors for many years. He hopes his work will help keep the ancient Yoga tradition—and the lineages that have maintained its authenticity through the ages—prominent within the yoga community.

Science meets art

Gyandev has long had a scientific mindset. Belief alone has never satisfied him; direct experience is his criterion for knowledge. That’s why, when he was young, he abandoned contemporary religion in favor of science and, ultimately, a PhD in applied mathematics from Stanford University. When his interests turned to spirituality, Yoga’s scientific approach naturally appealed to him. Its teachings and techniques gave him tools to gain personal experience of higher realities—the only valid measure of spiritual attainment. However, he quickly realized that Yoga is also an art. To attain the highest, we must practice it creatively, with an open heart, intuitive understanding, and, most importantly, attunement to God and guru. Altogether, they can take us to divine bliss, Ananda.