Sadhguru

What is Sadhguru?

Sadhguru is the teaching name of Jagadish Vasudev (b. 1957 in Mysore, Karnataka), an Indian yogi, mystic and founder of the Isha Foundation. He began teaching publicly in 1982 and established the Foundation in 1992 near Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu. His core transmission is the Shambhavi Mahamudra§ kriyā, a structured yogic practice taught through his Inner Engineering programme to several million participants worldwide. His lineage draws on classical Shaivism§ and tantra§, though he rarely frames it in those terms.

The reported awakening

Sadhguru has described, consistently across decades of telling, a particular afternoon in his mid-twenties. He was sitting on a rock at Chamundi Hill in Mysore when the felt boundary of his body dissolved into the surrounding landscape. The experience returned several times over the following weeks and then became continuous. He stepped away from the businesses he had been running to spend years in solitary practice. He began teaching publicly in 1982 and founded the Isha Foundation a decade later.

What's distinctive

Most contemporary teachers do one of two things. They soften their delivery for the mainstream, or they remain explicitly within a single Indian lineage. Sadhguru does neither. He keeps the technical apparatus of yoga§: specific kriyās, structured initiations, and a focus on energy as something to cultivate and channel. He delivers all of it in a sharply contemporary register that draws on engineering, geopolitics and frequent provocation. That combination has produced unusual reach, and genuine disagreement about whether the provocations clarify or distract.

Sadhguru vs other contemporary teachers

Sadhguru is often placed alongside Paramahansa Yogananda§ as a figure who brought structured yogic practice to large audiences. The comparison has limits. Yogananda worked within the Kriya Yoga lineage of Babaji§ and framed his teaching devotionally, drawing heavily on scripture. Sadhguru's delivery is more confrontational and draws more on personal experience and contemporary culture than on scriptural authority. The contrast with guru§ culture in the classical sense is also worth noting. Traditional guru-disciple relationships involved long-term personal transmission between teacher and a small circle of committed students. Sadhguru's reach is built on weekend programmes attended by hundreds of thousands. He does not claim to replicate the classical bond. The Isha model is explicitly graduated, beginning with a publicly accessible course and progressing through further initiations.

In the index

His index contributions span short-form Q&As, including How to Handle Hard Times and The Power of Being Alone, as well as long-form conversations with Mike Tyson, R. Madhavan, and DJ Alok at Tomorrowland. In 2025 he undertook a motorcycle pilgrimage to Mount Kailash while still recovering from two brain surgeries. He framed that journey not as personal achievement but as initiation. That framing is a useful entry point into how he treats his own life as teaching.