Seetharaman Sundaram
InHalasana, Plough Pose, 1928
Born	25 February 1901
Died	26 December 1994(1994-12-26) (aged 93)
Occupations	Lawyer,Yogacharya
Known for	Yogic Physical Culture

Seetharaman Sundaram (25 February 1901 – 26 December 1994^[1]) was a lawyer and pioneer ofyoga as exercise, often known asYogacharya Sundaram, and the first person to publish a handbook of yogaasanas in English, his 1928Yogic Physical Culture. This was also the first yoga book to be illustrated with photographs.^[2] He travelled India with the bodybuilderK. V. Iyer, helping to popularise the new blend ofhatha yoga andphysical culture.

Seetharaman Sundaram was born inMathurai, Tamil Nadu in aBrahmin family.^[3] He trained as a lawyer and worked in law throughout his career.^[4][5] He ran the Yogic School of Physical Culture (also called the Sri Sundara Yoga Shala^[6]) inBangalore in the 1930s, and travelled around India with the bodybuilderK. V. Iyer doing lecture/demonstrations, Iyer on muscles, Sundaram on yoga.^[7] His legal colleagues did not know that he was revered as a yoga guru; in 1949, a retiredhigh court judge was astonished to see Sundaram being seen off at Madras's Central Railway Station by a crowd of wealthy and powerful people, prostrating before the garlanded figure of the man he knew as a lawyer.^[5]

In 1928 he publishedYogic Physical Culture, describing a modernisedhatha yoga reworked as a combination of gymnastics,bodybuilding, and hygiene, illustrated with photographs. It explicitly references contemporary Westernphysical culture as well as traditional Indian philosophy; and it goes along withIndian nationalism by stating that the "sons of India" will need to combine yogaasanas with bodybuilding to "obtain super-strength to make theirMother [India] an equal sister among Nations!"^[7] The language of the book, with phrases like "Physical Culture Religion", also echoes the bodybuilderEugen Sandow's idea of making the body holy through physical fitness. In Sundaram's view, argues the yoga scholarMark Singleton, the "tinge of religion" (Sundaram's phrase) makes yoga different from and superior to the purely material Western forms of exercise.^[8]

The book describes just 13 asanas: the eleven^[a] covered byKuvalayananda in his 1926 book, plusTrikonasana andPadahastasana. Sundaram stated that these provided a complete workout for "an average man of health". Kuvalayananda also included in his selection from hatha yoga's techniques onebandha, onemudra, onekriya, and twopranayama exercises. The format, essentially afield guide with the name of each item, a description in text, and a photograph, was adopted by all later yoga manuals includingLight on Yoga.^[9] It introduces a procedural innovation, too, creating stages in the adoption of each asana, something entirely missing from medieval texts like theHatha Yoga Pradipika. The photographs are all of Sundaram himself, presented not as a new system like that of Sandow and the other bodybuilders likeBernarr Macfadden (whom Sundaram references), but as of Sundaram's way of practising an age-old system. The effect was to demystify the asanas: they turned from difficult, strange, even repulsive spiritual practices into mere exercises.^[10]

InElliott Goldberg's view, Sundaram's detailed instructions moved the practice of asanas from what had "in all likelihood" been perfunctory and haphazard towards the precision ofmodern yoga, in which close attention is paid to the tensions in individual muscles. This approach, Goldberg argues, led to executing the asanas slowly and under control, observing one's body and making necessary adjustments accordingly to achieve correct alignment. All of this facilitated total absorption in the task of performing each asana properly, which in turn allowed the practitioner to go beyond pain or pleasure to the absolute.^[11]

Dr. Asana Andiappan, founder of the Sundara Yoga and Natural Living Trust and the monthlyAsana International Yoga Journal, studied yoga under Sundaram as a child.^[12][13]

• 1928Yogic Physical Culture or the Secret of Happiness. Bangalore: Brahmacharya Publishing.

• Yogasopana, an earlier yoga manual, written in Marathi and illustrated with halftone plates

• Goldberg, Elliott (2016).The Path of Modern Yoga : the history of an embodied spiritual practice. Rochester, Vermont: Inner Traditions.ISBN 978-1-62055-567-5.OCLC 926062252.
• Singleton, Mark (2010).Yoga body : the origins of modern posture practice. Oxford University Press.ISBN 978-0-19-539534-1.OCLC 318191988.

• 1901 births
• 1994 deaths
• 20th-century Indian lawyers
• Modern yoga pioneers
• People associated with physical culture
• Modern Indian yoga gurus

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