Amrit Desai


Amrit Desai is a pioneer of yoga in the West, and one of the few remaining living yoga masters who originally brought over the authentic teachings of yoga in the early 1960s. He is the creator of two brands of yoga, Kripalu Yoga and I AM Yoga, and is the founder of five yoga and health centers in the US. His yoga training programs have reached more than 40 countries worldwide and over 8,000 teachers have been certified.
Homegrown Gurus states: "Although Desai has not received scholarly attention, he has arguably been one of the most influential and sought-after figures in the development of Hatha Yoga in America over the last 40 years."

Biography

Early life

Born on October 16, 1932, Amrit Desai is the second son of Chimanlal and Buribhen Desai. A member of the merchant class, Chimanlal supported his family by bartering goods in his storefront, literally a veranda in front of their home in the tiny village of Pratappura in the western state of Gujarat, India. Later, when Amrit was ten, the family moved to Halol. Although Amrit preferred sports over study, his heart ached for spiritual growth, even at an early age. But he was not attracted to the rituals in the Vaishnav temple to which his parents belonged. He wanted to learn from a living master rather than from rituals and dogma. At age 15, he got his wish when he met his guru, Swami Kripalvananda, a wandering sadhu who was offering free talks on the deeper meaning of the Bhagavad Gita in Halol. Bapuji's guru, Dadaji, is said to be Lord Lakulish, the 28th incarnation of Shiva.
Young Amrit taught himself the practice of yoga asana from a chart he had found tacked to the wall of the local gym. Such was his enthusiasm that he started teaching others outside the goshala where his guru lived. After the swami observed him teaching one day, he offered him a rare demonstration of his private sadhana. During the fifteen minutes that Amrit was permitted to observe, the swami went into a trance-like state and began to perform movements unlike anything he had seen on the asana charts. Amrit recalls: “The pranic energy became so strong his body was hurled across the room with tremendous force. As I watched in awe, he was dancing, weaving in and out of complicated asanas.”
After a brief period studying engineering and training with the Indian Air Force in Madras, Amrit returned to Halol and took a job teaching art at the local high school. He married his betrothed, Urmila Shah, in January 1955. The couple moved to Ahmedabad a year later where Amrit earned his art diploma over the next four years. Their first son, Pragnesh, was born in 1959. The couple had two more children, Malay and Kamini. On a teacher’s salary of $30 a month, Amrit supported his wife and son, and even sent some money to his parents but, little by little, was able to collect twelve hundred dollars to fulfill his dream of going to America. In February 1960, he came to the US to study at the Philadelphia College of Art with only enough money in his pocket to cover his first semester’s tuition and rent. After a year and a half of working around the clock, teaching fashion design classes and yoga on the weekends, and washing dishes at the college cafeteria, he was able to save enough money to bring his wife and infant son to the US.

Art career

Desai's creative life had started early when he made clay figures of animals as his mother washed clothes by the river bank. As a teenager, he sketched scenes of his village life and got his first job as a poster designer for a movie theater.
Graduating in 1964 with a degree in fine arts and design from the Philadelphia College of Art, he took a job with a textile firm. During this time, he also began to see success with his unique style of watercolor paintings, earning awards at a number of art shows, including a show at the prestigious Philadelphia Museum of Art. Experimenting with unusual tools, he created distinct textures and patterns with razor blades and eye-droppers. Desai's talents were not limited to painting - while still an art student, he played the flute in a "Music of India" concert at the Commercial Museum in 1961.
His short but prolific professional career as an artist spanned only four years from 1962 to 1966. Desai abruptly abandoned the promise of his artistic pursuits to dedicate his life to the inner journey of yoga.

Yoga pioneer

Desai had started teaching yoga in the early 1960s in the Philadelphia area while still an art student. 1966 marked a turning point when, during his first visit back to India since coming to the US, Swami Kripalvananda gave him initiation and further instruction in kundalini yoga. Returning to the US, with his guru's blessing and the support of his family, he left his job with the textile firm to form The Yoga Society of Pennsylvania and dedicate himself full-time to teaching yoga. In 1970, he had a Kundalini awakening experience in which his body automatically moved through a series of flowing yoga postures without his direction. It was the movement of his body that directed his attention inward, and expanded his consciousness into the stillness and ecstasy of deep meditation. This experience revealed to him that Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras are a manual for the practice of Ashtanga Yoga rather than mere philosophy. Out of this experience Desai created a form of hatha yoga called Kripalu Yoga, named in honor of his guru. His Meditation in Motion approach is based on the practical application of Patanjali's Ashtanga Yoga in daily life. The unique system he developed combines two traditional paths of yoga: the rigorous discipline of Ashtanga yoga with the path of initiation and surrender that is Kundalini yoga. In this system, the student begins with the practice of willful discipline and gradually moves on to the more advanced practice of surrender to prana.
To date, Desai is the founder of five yoga and health centers in the US, and co-founder of a university of Ayurvedic sciences.
Yogi Desai was initiated into the secrets of Shaivite kundalini yoga by his guru, Swami Kripalu, a master of tantric sadhana. There are numerous documented accounts of energetic transmission or shaktipat experienced in his presence.
D. R. Butler describes a meditation led by Desai at a week-long retreat with about 200 attendees at the 1973 ICSA Yoga Convocation, where Desai was an unannounced guest:
Dr David Frawley stated:
In the afterward to Ancient Wisdom, Modern Master, Mickey Singer described a meeting with Desai during which his heart chakra was "permanently opened" by "the simple touch of Amrit's hand."

Controversy

The Kripalu Center for Yoga and Health was an Ashram. One of the spiritual practices that the single residents were expected to practice was celibacy. Although sex within marriage was condoned at the ashram, after his third child was born in 1968, Desai declared that he would now practice celibacy too. A large celebration was held for this event. So important was this practice of celibacy that occasionally meetings were held and residents were asked to divulge anyone they thought might have violated that sacred practice. As a result, some residents were kicked out of the community. The irony was that the two most senior members of the community, including Desai, were practicing adultery. After years of infidelity with numerous people, in 1994, it was revealed and admitted that Desai had had sexual contact with at least three female resident disciples and was forced to resign his position as Spiritual Director.
Then in an open letter to the Kripalu community, Desai stated, "More than anything I want Kripalu to remain a spiritual home for many. I want you to know that we came to this decision together… I deeply regret any suffering I have caused to the people directly involved and to the entire Kripalu family."

Post-Kripalu years and the Amrit Yoga Institute

When Mickey Singer, a long-time supporter and host of Desai's seminars, heard that Desai had left the Kripalu community, he invited him and his wife to spend some quiet time living with the Temple of the Universe community in Alachua, Florida. The Desais arrived in December 1994 and stayed on the property for the better part of three years.
Desai resumed teaching in 1996 at the original Kripalu Ashram in Sumneytown, PA. After a couple of years, mostly in PA, the Desai family relocated to Salt Springs, Florida in 2002, where Yogi Desai currently teaches at the Amrit Yoga Institute, a beautiful lakeside retreat on the banks of Lake Kerr in the Ocala National Forest. Amrit Yoga Institute is an ashram where the guru-disciple relationship continues to flourish and residents enjoy the benefits of a traditional yogic lifestyle. Programs of varying length are offered for yoga teacher training, ayurveda, and recovery.
Kripalu, while no longer an ashram, continues to operate and is presently one of the largest yoga and health centers in North America, offering a wide range of programs and professional trainings in health, spirituality, yoga, and more.

Humanitarian work

Paul Harris Fellow – In 2011, Yogi Amrit Desai received this award from the Rotary Foundation of Rotary International, in Naples, Florida, "in appreciation of tangible and significant assistance given for the furtherance of better understanding and friendly relations among peoples of the world."
Bhuriben Trust – The Yug Prabha newspaper, Halol, India stated in a 2007 article, “Yogishri Amrit Desai was honored in his home town of Halol for his humanitarian works known to offer scholarships to the poor and approximately 5,000 women are helped financially through the Bhuriben Trust he established... Helpless and poor patients receive free medicines and medical treatment... e has financed the building of the new children’s school in Halol.”

Awards

;Post-Kripalu

Books