Indra Devi | |
|---|---|
.jpg) | |
| Born | Eugenie Peterson 12 May 1899 |
| Died | 25 April 2002 (aged 102) Buenos Aires, Argentina |
| Occupation | yoga teacher |
| Known for | Bringing yoga toHollywood Yoga for stress relief |
| Spouse(s) | Jan Strakaty (1930–1946; his death) Sigfrid Knauer (1953–1984; his death) |
| Website | Official webpage (in Spanish) |
Eugenie Peterson (Latvian:Eiženija Pētersone,Russian:Евгения Васильевна Петерсон; 12 May 1899 – 25 April 2002),[2] known asIndra Devi, was a pioneering teacher ofyoga as exercise, and an early disciple of the "father of modern yoga",[3]Tirumalai Krishnamacharya.
She went to India in her twenties, becoming a film star there and acquiring the stage name Indra Devi. She was the first woman to study under the yogaguruKrishnamacharya at the Mysore Palace, alongsideB.K.S Iyengar andK. Pattabhi Jois who went on to becomeyoga gurus. Moving to China, she taught the first yoga classes in that country at the house ofSoong Mei-ling, wife ofChiang Kai-shek.
Her popularization ofyoga in America through her many celebrity pupils inHollywood, and her books advocating yoga for stress relief, earned her the nickname "first lady of yoga". Her biographer,Michelle Goldberg, wrote that Devi "planted the seeds for the yoga boom of the 1990s".[4]
Eugenie "Zhenya" Peterson was born on 12 May 1899 inRiga in theRussian Empire (now Latvia), to Vasili Peterson, aSwedish bank director, and Aleksandra Labunskaya, aRussian noblewoman who acted at the Nezlobina Theatre. Eugenie was given aRussian Orthodox baptism. She went to high school inSaint Petersburg, graduating with a gold medal in 1917. She briefly attended drama school inMoscow. In theRussian Revolution, her father served as an army officer and wentmissing in action in the civil war. Eugenie and her mother escaped to Latvia as theBolsheviks came to power in 1917, losing the family fortune; in 1920 they moved to Poland, and in 1921 to Berlin, where she became an actress and dancer.[5][6][7][8][9]
In 1926, attracted by a notice in a bookshop inTallinn, she went to hearJiddu Krishnamurti at aTheosophical Society meeting in the Netherlands;[9] his chanting of Sanskritmantras around a campfire had a powerful effect on her. She later said "It seemed to me, I was hearing a forgotten call, familiar, but distant. From that day everything in me turned upside down."[8]
Devi's fascination with India began at 15 when she read a book by poet-philosopherRabindranath Tagore and a yoga instruction book byYogi Ramacharaka. In Berlin, she worked as an actor inThe Blue Bird, touring Europe, and accepted a proposal of marriage from the banker Herman Bolm, on condition she could first go to India; he agreed and paid for the trip. She set off on 17 November 1927, crossing India from south to north, wearing asari for the first time, sitting on the floor and eating with her fingers. She came back three months later, a changed woman, speaking only of India, and returned Bolm's engagement ring. She soon went back to India, selling her valuables to pay for the trip. At theTheosophical Society in Adyar (Madras, nowChennai), dancing "an Indian temple dance", she metJawaharlal Nehru, starting a long-term friendship, and theIndian film director Bhagwati Mishra, who gave her a part inSher-e-Arab (Arabian Knight): the 1930 premiere made her a film star in India, under a new stage name, Indra Devi.[9][10][11] In 1930, she married Jan Strakaty, a commercial attache to theCzechoslovak consulate inBombay, and for some years lived as a society hostess there.[6][12]
She became interested in yoga, Nepal's prince Mussoorie showing her some asanas,[12][13] and she was impressed by the yogaguruKrishnamacharya's demonstration of apparently stopping his heart.[12] She asked to study with him; in 1938, he reluctantly accepted her as a student after his employer, theMaharaja of Mysore, spoke on her behalf. She was obliged to keep to the strict vegetarian diet and the monastic hours, with lights out at 9pm. She was the first foreign woman among his students in the yogasala in the Mysore Palace, studying alongsideB.K.S Iyengar andK. Pattabhi Jois who went on to become world-famous yoga teachers.[6][9][14] When she was leaving India to follow her husband to China, Krishnamacharya asked her to work as a yoga teacher there.[6]
In 1939, she held what are believed to be the first yoga classes in China and opened a school in Shanghai at the house ofSoong Mei-ling, wife of the nationalist leaderChiang Kai-shek, and ayoga as exercise enthusiast.[6][15] The classes began with 20 minutes of relaxation inshavasana, followed bybridge,shoulderstand, gentle backbends such ascobra pose,lotus position (including leaning right forward intoYogamudrasana), andheadstand, against a wall for beginners.[16] There were many Americans and Russians among her pupils; she also taught free classes in orphanages. More and more people began to call herMataji, which means "respected mother".[9][17]
Her husband died unexpectedly in 1946,[6] and Devi returned to India, arriving in Bombay as theBritish Raj was coming to an end. She was hosted by themaharajah ofTehri Garhwal athis palace in the Himalayas. She was hoping to stay inKashmir to teach yoga in a centre to be run by the Cambodian monkBellong Mahathera, but her mother called her back to Shanghai, where Devi's house was being requisitioned by the army in theChinese Civil War. Devi arrived there in time to sell many of her possessions before the house was taken over. She claimed later that she had wanted to return to India, but she obtained a United States visa, and sailed on the troopshipUSSGeneral W. H. Gordon to San Francisco at the end of 1947.[18]
In California, assisted by her experience as a diplomat's wife with a patrician manner and the natural confidence of the wealthy, she met the author and philosopherAldous Huxley and Krishnamurti, giving her access to spiritually-inclined Americans; an especially valuable contact was the diet and health guruPaul Bragg, who advised film and stage stars. In 1948 she opened a yoga studio at 8806Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood, the first in Los Angeles; she had a distinctive style and appearance, as she normally wore a sari.[6][19][20][9] Her friends Magaña and Walt Baptiste opened a yoga school in San Francisco in 1952; she became godmother to their son Baron Baptiste, who went on to foundBaron Baptiste Power Yoga.[21]
Devi taught her own form ofhatha yoga, withasanas (postures) andpranayama (breath control); she avoided spiritual teaching, which she preferred to leave to yoga gurus.[22] Her teaching style was inStefanie Syman's words "gentle and even relaxing".[23] She was almost immediately successful in attracting leading stars, including men as well as women; Syman notes that "she could charm the pants off men".[23][24] Elliott Goldberg gives a different explanation for her success, attributing it to her packaging ofyoga for women as a "beauty secret, youth elixir, and health tonic".[25] More generally, in his view, Devi sawyoga as a remedy for anxiety and stress, noting that thistransformed yoga from something that dissolved the ego to something that strengthened it, because, he commented, Americans did want to change "but not all that much".[26] Devi's advocacy of yoga for stress relief contributed, in Goldberg's view, to the widespread acceptance ofyoga in America, and earned her the nickname "first lady of yoga".[27]
She taught yoga to many celebrities includingGreta Garbo,Eva Gabor, andGloria Swanson.[a] Also among her students wereRamon Novarro,Robert Ryan,Yul Brynner,Jennifer Jones, and the violinistYehudi Menuhin, who brought Iyengar to the West.[6][9]
Her books, including the 1953Forever Young, Forever Healthy and the 1959Yoga for Americans described a gentle, relaxing style of yoga using a small number of asanas,[b] practised slowly.[31] Devi's biographer,Michelle Goldberg, describesYoga for Americans as having "a chipper, secular practicality perfectly calibrated forEisenhower's America."[32] Devi introduced the book as of value to artists, "businessmen and sportsmen, models and housewives"[32] and office workers. Menuhin wrote the foreword. The two books were "an enormous success",[32] and were translated into languages including French, German, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese, and Spanish.[32]
In 1953 Devi married the Germananthroposophical physician Sigfrid Knauer. In the mid-1950s she was granted American citizenship and changed her legal name to Indra Devi.[6][33] In 1960 she visited the USSR, seeing Saint Petersburg (then Leningrad) for the first time in 40 years, and meeting the government ministersAndrei Gromyko andAlexei Kosygin at the Indian ambassador's reception at the Sovetskaya Hotel.[9] Devi released several vinyl records, includingYoga for Americans (1965) andIndra Devi presents Concentration & Meditation (1965).[34] She later recorded several instructional talks on yoga, including "Renew Your Life with Yoga."[35]
In 1961, Knauer bought Devi a largeranch nearTecate in Mexico; she opened the Indra Devi Foundation there. From 1966, she became close to the Hindu guruSathya Sai Baba,[36] and she travelled often from Tecate toBangalore andPuttaparthi. She closed the Tecate operation in 1977 and moved with her very ill husband to Bangalore. In 1984 she and Knauer made a trip to Sri Lanka, where he died.[37][9]
In 1985 she moved toArgentina. In 1987 she was elected president of honour of the International Yoga Federation, and of the Latin American Union of Yoga under the presidency of Swami Maitreyananda atMontevideo,Uruguay.[38] She died inBuenos Aires in 2002.[6]
Biographer Michelle Goldberg comments that for most of her life, Devi's "only goal" was to bring yoga to the West, and when it became "a ubiquitous part of cosmopolitan urban culture, signifier of a lifestyle at once wholesome and sexy"[39] in the 1990s, she had certainly succeeded, even if the new yoga is "much more vigorous than the style she taught".[39]
Yoga remains, Goldberg writes, as Devi had made it,a predominantly female pursuit, despite the energetic workouts ofPower Yoga; she created the link in the Western mind between yoga andorganic food, "holistic spas, and biodynamic beauty products".[40] Goldberg also notes thatyoga in the West is "a hybrid culture", with "an immense gulf between the limber young women inLululemon yoga gear ... and the ash-smeared half-naked yogins .. on the banks of the Ganges".[41]
| Topics |
|  | |||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| History |
| ||||||||||||
| Schools (Gurus) |
| ||||||||||||
| Related | |||||||||||||
_LACMA_M.2011.156.4_(1_of_2).jpg)
