Sivananda Radha Saraswati

Sivananda Radha Saraswati (1911–1995) was a German yogini who emigrated to Canada and founded Yasodhara Ashram in British Columbia. She established a Western-based lineage in the tradition of the Saraswati Order and published books on several branches of Yoga, including Kundalini Yoga for the West and Mantras; Words of Power. She was a member of the California Institute of Transpersonal Psychology and developed transpersonal psychology workshops to help students prepare for intense spiritual practice. Teachers trained at Yasodhara Ashram can now be found across North America and in Europe, the Caribbean, Japan, Australia and New Zealand.

Sivananda Radha (formerly known as Sylvia Hellman) was born in Germany in 1911. She became a creative writer, photographer and a solo concert dancer early in life. She lived through both wars in Berlin but learned from her experiences that life can be cruel and came to question the existence of God.

Her first marriage ended when her husband, Wolfgang, was executed at Buchenwald for helping Jewish friends leave Germany. She married again in 1947. Albert Hellman was a composer and violinist, but he died after one year of marriage. She also lost both parents in the war. ‘Thoroughly sick at heart with the brutality and stupidity of the world’, she survived and, in 1951, emigrated to Canada settling in Montreal, finding work in the advertising department of a chemical firm, and becoming a Canadian citizen. A search for the meaning of life through yoga and meditation took her to India to Sivananda Saraswati of Rishikesh.

Sivananda challenged her to think deeply about the purpose of life. ‘He used every moment to teach you something’. His commitment to selfless service made a deep impression on her and Karma Yoga became a key practice in her own life and subsequently in the running of her Ashram. Sylvia was initiated into sanyas, and given the name Sivananda Radha Saraswati, on 2 February 1956. In her publications she has described extraordinary events that followed her initiation and involved meeting the legendary yogi Babaji, the deathless avatar described by Paramahansa Yogananda in Autobiography of a Yogi, and first encountered by Sivananda Radha in a visionary experience when in Montreal a year earlier.

Upon return to Canada, interpreting her initiation into sanyas as a commitment to abstain ‘from all actions which arise from ambition and selfish desire … giving up mental and emotional attachment to life in this world’ she began a new life in Montreal with no money or employment, learning to live on the charity of others. However, she quickly attracted attention in her orange sari, with her unconventional life-style, and through her willingness to speak publicly about her experiences in India. Within a few months, she was offering yoga classes, had been interviewed on CBC radio, travelled to Ottawa to speak, and been sponsored by the Canadian-India Association to fly to Vancouver to lecture on Indian philosophy.

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