Selvarajan Yesudian

Grave in the Witikon cemetery

Selva Yesudian (* 25. February 1916 in Sholinghur , Madras ; † 26. October 1998 in Zurich ) was a from South India originating yoga teacher in Switzerland . He was one of the first to teach yoga in Europe and, together with Elisabeth Haich , founded several yoga schools in Switzerland.

Life

Madras

Selvarajan Yesudian was born on February 25, 1916 in Sholinghur, north of Madras, in what is now the Indian state of Tamil Nadu . His parents were successful doctors in Madras. As a boy he was very weak and went through several serious childhood illnesses. After pneumonia at the age of fifteen, he was so weak that he could no longer play with his colleagues. He found books on yoga in his father's library and secretly began to practice hatha yoga , which made his body even sicker. When he met a yoga class a little later on a foray in the country in a mango grove, he spoke to the teacher and was accepted as a student. Under the guidance of Teacher, he recovered quickly and Selvarajan Yesudian developed a healthy, athletic body.

Hungary

Shortly after his father's death in 1936, Selvarajan Yesudian went to Budapest to study European medicine. He has been asked to give lectures on Indian health systems and yoga at the university. Thereupon he met the Hungarian artist Elisabeth Haich, who was very well read in Indian philosophy. The two got together and in 1939 a yoga school was opened in Elisabeth Haich's studio. In 1941 Selvarajan Yesudian published his book “Sport és jóga” [Sport and Yoga], after which his school began to flourish.

Switzerland

After the communist regime closed the yoga school in Budapest in 1948, Selvarajan Yesudian and Elisabeth Haich managed to flee to Zurich with the aim of going to California . At the request of former students living in Switzerland, they decided to stay in Switzerland and opened yoga schools in several Swiss cities between 1949 and 1955, including a yoga summer school in Ponte Tresa in Ticino and in Diano Marina in Liguria.

In 1990 Selvarajan Yesudian began to retire and handed over the management of his yoga school in St. Gallen to his long-time student Rolf Heim. Selvarajan Yesudian died on October 26, 1998 in Zurich.

plant

Selvarajan Yesudian and Elisabeth Haich were instrumental in spreading and popularizing yoga in Europe. They founded several yoga schools, for example in Budapest (from 1939 to 1948) and in Switzerland from 1948 in Aarau , Basel , Bern , Geneva , Lucerne , Ponte Tresa , St. Gallen and in Zurich ; there is also a yoga summer school in Diano Marina , Liguria. Selvarajan Yesudian not only gave yoga classes, but also gave several lectures and offered counseling. He published several books on yoga, which are published again and again today. Yesudian's spiritual role models were Ramana Maharshi and Vivekananda .

Yesudians yoga

Selvarajan Yesudian's yoga classes were well structured. A short meditation in a sitting posture was followed by a short lecture on yoga philosophy. Then came breathing exercises ( pranayama ) and then yoga postures ( asana ). After a short recovery, there was another meditation and at the end a deep relaxation . The exercises were carried out as possible relaxing with closed eyes to the concentration to increase the awareness to sharpen and Prana to improve. Autosuggestion and reinforcement formulas were used to advance students' progress and develop positive thinking. After the lesson, the students were given exercises to do at home.

Books by Selvarajan Yesudian

Selvarajan Yesudian published most of the books together with Elisabeth Haich as co-author:

• Selvarajan Yesudian: Sport és jóga ; Budapest (in Hungarian)
• Selvarajan Yesudian: Sport + Yoga ; Thielle 1949
• Selvarajan Yesudian: Yoga in the two worlds ; Thielle 1951
• Selvarajan Yesudian: Yoga in today's struggle for life ; Thielle 1954
• Selvarajan Yesudian: The day with yoga ; Stuttgart 1959
• Selvarajan Yesudian: Self-education through yoga ; Thielle 1961
• Selvarajan Yesudian: Yoga and Fate ; Stuttgart 1962
• Selvarajan Yesudian: Raja Yoga ; Thielle 1966
• Selvarajan Yesudian: Hatha Yoga ; Munich, Engelberg 1971
• Selvarajan Yesudian: Get up and be free: thoughts and conversations about yoga ; Ergolding 1989

Secondary literature

• Mathias Tietke: The family tree of yoga . Stuttgart 2007. ISBN 978-3-89620-199-7 .
• Wilfried Huchzermeyer : The yoga dictionary . Karlsruhe 2007. ISBN 978-3-931172-25-1 .
• Susy Heim: Yoga lessons and practice: Yoga according to Yesudian-Haich . Rorschacherberg 2009. ISBN 3-9520918-5-5 .

Web links

• Selvarajan Yesudian's CV