About Us
Wise Living Yoga Academy is an ashram which offers Yoga Teacher Training Courses based in the peaceful countryside of northern Thailand in Chiang Mai, located in Doi Saket.
ABOUT US
For more than 10 years, Daniel and Jeenal, co-founders of WLYA, ran teacher training courses in various locations around the globe (India, Indonesia, Brazil, Thailand, Austria, & Germany). In 2013 they found a cozy home nestled in rural Chiang Mai and Wise Living Yoga Academy’s Thailand center was born.
At Wise Living Yoga Academy, We offer residential yoga teacher training courses as 200h, 300h and advanced 500h throughout the year that focus on classical yoga as practiced in India. Students will experience an authentic approach in a serene setting of a traditional ashram, engaging classroom, lectures, discussions and are served delicious organic home-cooked vegan meals freshly prepared onsite from ingredients harvested from the ashram’s garden. We strive to promote an eco-friendly and sustainable lifestyle, while providing students with all the comforts needed to feel at home and fully immerse themselves in yoga.
Our Tradition
Wise Living Yoga Academy is an educational body affiliated to The Yoga Institute of Santacruz, Mumbai – India, the world’s oldest organized Yoga institution founded in 1918 by Shri Yogendraji , which imparts yoga education and lifestyle principles of classical yoga, following the lineage of the late Shri Yogendraji – the father of Modern Yoga Renaissance and direct disciple of Guru Pujya Paramahamsa Madhavadasji.
Our Teacher
Jeenal Mehta Fonseca and Daniel Fonseca are the founders of Wise Living Yoga Academy in Thailand. Jeenal is our head master and has studied in India under the direct guidance of her Gurus Smt. Hansaji Yogendra and Dr. Jayadeva Yogendra. Having her roots in India and in traditional Yoga, she has been spreading this precious wisdom of higher living in its holistic approach in various countries. After several years of learning and teaching in India within different programs, workshops, yoga therapy and teacher training courses, Jeenal has taught and certified several hundred Yoga students from around the globe. Wise Living Yoga Academy has conducted over 40 International Yoga Teacher Training courses in destinations that include Bali and Brazil and now mainly in Chiang Mai, Thailand which is the permanent location of the “ Ashram” of Wise Living Yoga Academy. In the Ashram they teach Yoga beyond the mat where it is experienced as a lifestyle to positively transform the mental, intellectual, emotional, and spiritual aspects of the human personality. Wise Living Yoga trainings have real life elements enabling the students for deeper yet very practical learning.
Click here to know more about Jeenal Mehta
Our Gurus
Shri Yogendraji as a young college student became an ardent believer in Yoga when he met his Guru Pujya Shri Paramahamsa Madhavdasaji.
Shri Yogendraji studied Yoga at Paramahamsa Madhavadasaji’s ashram in Malsar, Gujrat. From the beginning, he was a non-conformist and a very close bond developed between the Master and the student. The Guru taught him many things by direct experience. With a broader vision of becoming a householder to propagate the message of Yoga, he left the ashram on completion of his training as he felt that the benefits of Yoga could be given to all instead of keeping it a secret for very few.
Thus Shri Yogendra became known as the “Father of Modern Yoga Renaissance”.
Paramahamsa Madhavadasji
His Holiness Paramahamsa Madhavadasaji was born in 1798 to a Mukhopadhyaya family in Bengal in a small village near Shantipur in Nadia district. He renounced the mundane life and made efforts to learn different traditions and by going around Assam, Tibet, Himalayas and various other places in India, he got opportunities to get first-hand knowledge of technical Yoga. He was also a follower of the Bhakti-path earlier of Chaitanya Mahaprabhu and later of the Order of Vaisnavisam influenced by Gauranga. He acquired various “Siddhis” (perfections or supernatural powers) during this long period of over 60 to 70 years but these only made him more humble. Paramahamsa Madhavadasaji took a voluntary Samadhi in 1921 at the age of 123 years.
Shri Yogendraji
Shri Yogendraji kept very clear records of all the work he has done in Yoga right from the beginning and many more people came to him mainly for solution of their physical and emotional problems. He wrote books and did a great deal of research and slowly the Institute grew in stature. Shri Yogendraji felt that many people came to Yoga for solution to their health problems and slowly could then be guided on to spirituality. He insisted that Yoga was a way of life and removing obstacles in one’s personality would gradually lead people on to a better way of living.
Dr. Jayadeva Yogendra
Our Guru Dr. Jayadeva Yogendra (M.A., PhD.) took up the Directorship of The Yoga Institute, Santacruz in 1985. Ever since he has been involved with the activities of the Institute, he has been introducing several courses, pioneering work in Yoga Education and Therapeutics. He was initiated into Yoga from the beginning by Shri Yogendraji and grew up with hard work and with sterling yogic qualities of perseverance, humility, detachment and deep integrity.
Hansaji J. Yogendra
Our Guru Smt. Hansaji Jayadeva is at present the Director of The Yoga Institute and the President of The International Board of Yoga. She is perhaps best known throughout the nation (India) as the charming lady who is the Yoga expert in the popular television series ‘Yoga for Better Living’, first televised in 1980 which was judged the best programme of this time. But unlike many ‘stars’ she just does not act the part on the screen but lives what she preaches.
To see more pictures, please check our galleries
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