• Swami Kuvalayananda or Jagannatha Ganesa Gune 
• The spirit of the early years
• The Kaivalyadhama Health and Yoga Research Center
• Yoga Mimamsa

Swami Kuvalayananda or Jagannatha Ganesa Gune 

Born in 1883, a time when many other great yogis came out of secret and initiatory traditions to start working in the sunlight and giving knowledge to humanity, before acquiring the spiritual name Swami Kuvalayananda , he was called by his parents Jagannatha Ganesa Gune , and saw the light in present day Gujarat. 

Coming from a Brahmin caste family not at all wealthy, Jagannatha was particularly influenced by the figure of Sri Aurobindo , returning to India from the United Kingdom, who embodied in a single personality a great yogi and a great patriot, with a vast knowledge of the Western world. , however, based on a typically Indian spirit and character.

The spirit of the early years

However, Swami Kuvalayananda’s interest in yoga went hand in hand with his experience of the profound lack of education of the Indian masses , which generated a supertitious and insensitive attitude that chained them to poverty and ignorance. And it was starting from this experience that he started, with a pioneering spirit, the application of scientific research methods to yogic practice , thus making it a suitable subject for study and education. 

The Kaivalyadhama Health and Yoga Research Center

It was in fact in 1924 that it was decided to found the first medical laboratory for yogic research , still existing and functioning in Lonavla, Maharashtra. 

Here, in the Kaivalyadhama Health and Yoga Research Center , still one of the most visited ashrams in India today , scientific research is carried out on the effects of yogic asanas, pranayana, mudras, kriyas, and other classical yoga techniques. During yogic practices, data have been collected for decades on oxygen consumption , changes in systolic pressure , heart rate , cardiovascular endurance , and consequently on all the various short and long-term effects on disorders such as excess cholesterol, asthma . , obesity, cancer, diabetes , sinusitis ,anxiety  and panic attacks , stomach acid and many others.

Yoga Mimamsa

Swami Kuvalayananda embodied the spirit of one of the classic pillars of Hinduism, not too famous in the West, called mimamsa . The term mimamsa can be translated into Italian with “critical research”, “analytical reflection”, and is a philosophical-scientific approach to the knowledge provided by the Vedas , which analyzes the results of research, and which is based on a correct perception of the world. 

Yoga Mimamsa was also the title of Swami Kuvalyadhama’s publication, in which the results of his research were exposed, because its purpose was to demonstrate that the effects of yoga were based on universal laws and not on otherworldly powers or on legends and superstitions.