Indra Devi — The First Lady Of Yoga

Indra Devi

The First Lady of Yoga

In honor of Women’s History Month, allow me to introduce you to Indra Devi, known as the First Lady of Yoga and the Mother of Western Yoga.

Back in 2008, when I learned of Indra Devi during my first Yoga Teacher Training, I found her story fascinating and incredibly inspiring. It spoke to me both as woman and a yogini.

Common sense would tell you that the First Lady of Yoga would naturally be an Indian woman, right? Wrong! The First Lady of Yoga was actually a Russian aristocrat, born Eugenie Peterson on May 12, 1899, in Riga, Latvia.

Devi, an actress and dancer by trade, had been enchanted by India since age 15 when she read her first book on Yoga by Yogi Ramacharaka. At 28, while touring Europe as an actress, she got engaged. Her engagement however, came with one stipulation: she wouldn’t marry until after she had the opportunity to visit India. Her fiancé agreed and paid for her first trip to India.

Devi took her maiden voyage to India in November 1927, crossing the subcontinent from south to north, and this three month pilgrimage changed her life. When she returned home, she also returned her fiancé’s engagement ring, sold all of her valuables, and headed back to India to live.

Upon her return, she landed some film roles and became a movie star under her new stage name, Indra Devi. Shortly thereafter, she married and lived as a society hostess in Bombay.

Over the next eight years she grew more and more interested in the study of Yoga, particularly fascinated by the guru Sri T. Krishnamacharya (The Father of Modern Yoga), who was teaching yoga in a shala in Mysore.

At this point in time, yoga was exclusively a male pursuit. Women were not taught the studies of yoga, and they definitely were not allowed inside a yogashala or ashram. Krishnamacharya was very adamant about this!

Nevertheless, Devi officially requested that Krishnamacharya accept her as his student. He refused. It is said that he told her, “It would be impossible for me to take on a woman, especially a foreign one. It cannot be done.”.

Fortunately for Devi, her diplomatic and aristocratic connections in India included the Maharaja of Mysore, who happened to be Krishnamacharya’s employer and who owned the palace that was home to the yogashala as well.

The Maharaja intervened and spoke on Devi’s behalf, essentially insisting Krishnamacharya accept her as his student. He reluctantly agreed, and in 1938 Indra Devi became the first woman, and the first foreigner to study yoga under Krishnamacharya.

Krishnamacharya did not make it easy for her. He did whatever he could to dissuade her from pursuing a studentship with him. He set a grueling schedule, a very strict vegetarian diet for her; for weeks he made her sit and wait on the steps outside the palace without ever allowing her inside all in the hopes that she would give up and disappear. She didn’t, and every morning before sunrise, she’d return to the palace steps and wait for the day he’d allow her in. Devi met every challenge Krishnamacharya could possibly give her, and he finally allowed her into the yogashala to learn.

Despite Krishnamacharya’s original plans to only teach her cursory lessons in yoga, once he realized her humility, discipline, dedication and aptitude for the practice, he taught her the way she deserved to be taught for one whole year. While under his teaching in Mysore, Devi studied alongside future world-renowned yoga masters Pattabhi Jois and B.K.S. Iyengar, who are also credited for yoga’s global popularity today. Devi was so successful in her studies and practices that Krishnamacharya personally oversaw her pranamaya and asana practices and began to train her as a teacher.

When Krishnamacharya learned that Devi would be moving to China with her husband, he encouragingly asked her to teach yoga there and she did. She opened a yoga school in Shanghai and taught there from 1939 to 1946. After the death of her husband, she briefly returned to India and then set sail to the United States.

In 1947 Devi arrived in San Francisco, and one year later she opened a yoga studio on Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood. She knew early on that for yoga to gain popularity in the United States, she’d have to restructure the Eastern spiritual discipline to appeal to Western sensibilities. So with her charismatic and noble disposition, Devi packaged yoga as a relaxing practice that promoted health and beauty while curing anxiety and stress, thus appealing to the pressures and vanity of Westerners. It worked, and in no time Hollywood stars and starlets were flocking to her studio to experience the ancient practices for themselves.

Devi quickly became “the yoga teacher to the stars,” teaching such celebrities as Greta Garbo, Gloria Swanson, Eva Gabor, and Yul Brenner to name a few; she even taught yoga classes at Elizabeth Arden spas across the U.S.

In 1953 she became a U.S. citizen and legally changed her name to Indra Devi. During the 1950’s she wrote two extremely successful books, Forever Young, Forever Healthy (1953) and Yoga for Americans (1959). It was rumored that Marilyn Monroe was also her student at some point; though this was never confirmed, Marilyn did own copies of both of Devi’s books.

In 1960 she returned to the USSR to speak with government officials about the benefits of yoga, convince them that it was not a religion, and have it legalized in Russia. She succeeded.

Devi moved to Tecate, Mexico in 1961 and opened the Indra Devi Foundation there. After relocating she traveled frequently between Tecate, Puttaparthi, and Bangalore until the death of her second husband in 1984.

Indra Devi finally settled down in Argentina in 1984. After one television appearance, her popularity exploded (I mean, Evita level fame), and she formed Fundatíon Indra Devi which opened multiple yoga studios throughout Buenos Aires that are still operating to this day.

Indra Devi, or Mataji (Hindi for “Mother”) as she was lovingly referred to by her students, peacefully passed away in Buenos Aires on April 25, 2002 at the age of 102.

T.K.V. Desikachar, creator of Viniyoga and the son and student of Guru Sri T. Krishnamacharya, was quoted as saying that Indra Devi changed his father’s view on women in yoga. Krishnamacharya told his son: “If we do not encourage women, the great Indian tradition will die… in difficult times rules have to be modified because in difficult times every rule has an exception.” Desikachar continued, “This has been my father’s transformation from a very strict anti-women [in yoga] point of view, to pro-women. He always said women are the future [in yoga] and for [yoga] in the West.”