Sadhguru

Biography

Sadhguru (born Jagadish Vasudev, 3 September 1957) is the founder and head of the Isha Foundation, based in Coimbatore, India. The foundation, established in 1992, operates an ashram and yoga center that carries out educational and spiritual activities. Sadhguru has been teaching yoga since 1982. 

He is the author of the New York Times bestseller Inner Engineering: A Yogi's Guide to Joy and Karma: A Yogi's Guide to Crafting Your Destiny, and a frequent speaker at international forums.

Sadhguru also advocates for protecting the environment against climate change, leading many initiatives like Project GreenHands (PGH), Rally for Rivers, Cauvery Calling, and the Journey to Save Soil. 

In 2017, he received the Padma Vibhushan, India's second-highest civilian award, for his contributions to spirituality and humanitarian services. Also in 2017, Sadhguru unveiled the Adiyogi Shiva statue, the world's largest bust, in Coimbatore, India.

Sadhguru has been criticized for promoting a number of pseudoscientific claims.

After graduating from the University of Mysore, Vasudev went on to build his first business, a poultry farm, in Mysore. Vasudev explained that his motivation to start a poultry farm was driven by the serenity it yielded in the hours he was not working. 

The business required minimal attention throughout the day, so Vasudev was able to pursue other interests during his time off, like writing poetry. The business grew profitable, but his family repeatedly criticized and opposed his decision to work with poultry. 

This led Vasudev to enter the construction industry with a company named Buildaids. He started the company in partnership with a friend, who was a civil engineer. Though Vasudev had no formal engineering training, he used the experience gained from building his poultry farm in his new endeavor.

At the age of 25, after a series of spiritual experiences, he shut down his businesses and began to travel and teach yoga.

In 1983, he taught his first yoga class, in Mysore. He began traveling across Karnataka and Hyderabad on his motorcycle, conducting his style of yoga classes, known as Sahaja Sthiti Yoga, subsisting on the income from his poultry farm rental and donating the funds received from his students.

Jagadish Vasudev, commonly referred to as Jaggi, was born into a Telugu family on 3 September 1957, in Mysore, Mysore State (now in Karnataka, India). He was the youngest of five children to Susheela Vasudev (mother) and B.V. Vasudev (father). His father was an ophthalmologist at the Mysuru Railway Hospital and his mother a homemaker.

Vasudev married his wife, Vijikumari, in 1984. In 1990, Vijikumari and Jaggi had their only child, Radhe. Vijikumari died on 23 January 1997. Radhe trained in Bharatanatyam at the Kalakshetra Foundation in Chennai. She married Indian classical vocalist Sandeep Narayan in 2014.