Sadhguru

Born Jaggi Vasudev in Mysore (now Mysuru), Karnataka, in 1957, Sadhguru earned a bachelor’s degree in English literature from the University of Mysore and worked in poultry farming and construction before reporting an intense afternoon of contemplative stillness on Chamundi Hill in 1982. He began conducting yoga classes across southern India and, in 1992, founded the Isha Foundation, building a large residential ashram and temple complex at the base of the Velliangiri Mountains near Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu. Through books such as Inner Engineering: A Yogi’s Guide to Joy (2016), international speaking tours and a massive digital video presence, he has become one of the most visible contemporary Indian gurus.

At the centre of the Isha curriculum is "Inner Engineering," a flagship programme that combines ethical and attentional framing with Shambhavi Mahamudra Kriya, a twenty-one-minute daily sequence of posture (asana), breath regulation (pranayama) and meditative focus. In his books and talks, Sadhguru presents yoga not as callisthenics or a belief system, but as a practical discipline for steadying body, breath and attention so that a person’s mood is less dictated by external friction. Often playing on the English word "responsibility" as "the ability to respond," he distinguishes deliberate choice from compulsive emotional reaction.

Reading Sadhguru alongside the broader history of modern yoga requires separating structured breath-and-attention routines from the sweeping empirical and historical claims that frequently appear in his public Q&A sessions. When he speaks about lunar eclipses affecting cooked food, water retaining energetic memory, mercury solidification (rasa vaidya) or unverified physiological mechanisms, scientists and medical researchers point out that traditional folklore and personal authority are not substitutes for controlled clinical or physical evidence. Likewise, institutional controversies surrounding land use and ashram governance remind readers to keep a healthy distinction between a useful breathing discipline and uncritical deference to a charismatic leader.

Approached as an invitation to notice how reactive habits hijack the day, his distinction between compulsion and conscious response offers a grounded prompt: even when you cannot choose the circumstance in front of you, you can pause long enough to choose how you meet it.