The son of a Sindhi father and an Irish mother, he went to England at the age of sixteen and spent most of his professional life as a physician in the West, holding many posts with the World Health Organization.

Upon returning to India in 1968, he founded Ananda Ashram in Pondicherry, Tamil Nadu, which now has seventy-five centers around the world.

Apart from training thousands of Western Yoga students, he was also a leading cultural figure in South India. The Kambliswamy Yoga and Cultural Arts Program launched by him has provided training in Yoga and classical dance and music for over 20,000 village children. Swami Gitananda Giri also wrote twenty-five books and published the monthly magazine "Yoga Life" for a quarter of a century.

(Excerpted from Pg 105-106, The Shambhala Encyclopedia of Yoga by Georg Feuerstein, Ph. D., published from Boston, Massachussetts, USA, 1997)

Yogamaharishi Dr. Swami Gitananda Giri Guru Maharaj had spent most of his eighty-seven years in the propagation of Classical Rishiculture Ashtanga Yoga. The Paramparai (tradition) that he inherited is a fusion of Classical Ashtanga Yoga Promulgated by Yogamaharishi Swami Kanakananda Brighu of Bengal, and the South Indian Siddha Yoga tradition as exemplified by the Shakti, life and teachings of the great South Indian Siddha-Yogi, Srila Sri Kambali Gnananda Desiga Swamigal of Pondicherry.

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