THE FOUNDER
Master Shivachittam
Yoga and Meditation Expert · Spiritual Healer · Author · Founder & CEO, Anandabodh Institute of Yoga · Gurgaon, India · Est. 2003
For two and half decades, Master Shivachittam has explored the deeper dimensions of Yoga, Meditation, Consciousness and Human Potential.
His approach is rooted in ancient wisdom, refined through years of practice, and translated into practical pathways for modern life — helping individuals live with greater clarity, vitality, balance and inner freedom.
Where It All Began
I grew up in a home where spirituality was not a concept but a daily practice. My father was a deeply spiritual man — someone who had spent years in his own inner search. He believed, without any doubt, that meditation was the most powerful force available to a human being. Not therapy. Not medicine. Not philosophy. Meditation.
From the time I was very young, I would sit with him and practice. I would read from the books in our home library — yoga texts, health magazines, the writings of the great sages. I was not forced into this. I was drawn to it. It felt like the most natural thing in the world.
I have a faint but vivid memory: I am six years old. My father sits me down in meditation one afternoon. I close my eyes. When I open them — three to four hours have passed. I had no sense of time. No sense of the body. Just an extraordinary stillness.
I did not understand what that was then. I understand it now. That was my first glimpse of what yoga, at its deepest, is capable of.
Sit quietly. Look within. Connect to your real self. And experience true bliss.
Meeting a Master
In 1983, something happened that I would only fully appreciate much later.
Swami Satyananda Saraswati — one of the pioneering and greatest yoga masters of the 20th century, the founder of the Bihar School of Yoga — came to my hometown for the inauguration of a yoga centre. He held a three-day workshop. My parents took me along.
I was young. But I remember everything about those three days with a clarity that has never faded. I experienced something in that workshop that I had never felt before.
My first practice of Yoga Nidra was in that workshop — guided by Swami Satyananda himself. I didn't have the language for what I felt. But something was planted in me that day that has never stopped growing.
I began following the Bihar School of Yoga tradition in earnest. I was in and out of the Ashram through my study and academic years — attending short courses, sitting in programmes, learning. Always learning. Meanwhile, in my ordinary life, I was quietly healing the people around me. Friends who were stressed. Neighbours with health problems. Family members going through difficult periods. I would sit with them, guide them through practice, and offer what I had learned. And I would feel — every single time — a deep contentment. A rightness. A sense that this was what I was here for.
Unless we work on our mind, we remain a slave of the mind.
The Corporate Life That Never Fit
In 1997, I completed my MBA. And I did what most people do after an MBA — I joined a company.
The job was decent. The pay was fair. I was a Sales Manager, covering distributors across Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, and Chhattisgarh. By most external measures, I was on the right path.
But I could not feel it. The late-night parties that came with the territory were not my world. I could not maintain my sadhana — my personal practice — alongside the demands of corporate life. Something essential was being squeezed out. Not gradually. Every single day.
Then, during a work trip to Madhya Pradesh, I fell seriously ill. I was alone — away from home, away from my family. It was the peak of summer. For weeks, my health did not improve. No one close to me was nearby.
One afternoon, returning from a phone booth after speaking with my parents, I found a library. I went in. I pulled out some spiritual books and sat with them. By the time I put them down, something had clarified inside me with absolute certainty.
This was not the life I wanted. And I was not willing to live it any longer.
I returned to Delhi. I walked into my Head Office. I submitted my resignation letter. And I made a private promise to myself that I would never again work for someone else's vision at the cost of my own.
Yoga is the golden key that unlocks the door to peace, tranquillity, joy, and bliss.”
