S V Venkateshaiah
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S V Venkateshaiah
Sri Venkateshaiah is a senior Ashtanga yoga teacher, a national-level yoga champion, and a disciple of B.N.S. Iyengar. He is also the father of shala founder M.V. Chidananda, whom he personally initiated into yoga practice. Today, the two teach side by side at Sachidananda Yoga Shala, carrying the same lineage across two generations. Beyond that family connection, he has taught yoga for many decades on his own, with deep grounding in both the theory and the daily practice of Ashtanga yoga.
That grounding comes from 20 years of training under B.N.S. Iyengar — Yogavisharada, Yogaratnakara, and one of the last living students of T. Krishnamacharya, principal of Sri Patanjala Yogashala and one of India’s most respected living yoga philosophers. This direct lineage now runs through everything Sri Venkateshaiah teaches: Asana across all three stages (Primary, Intermediate, and Advanced Series A & B), Pranayama, Hatha Yoga Kriya, and the therapeutic applications of asana practice.
Sri Venkateshaiah has won gold, silver, and bronze medals at national-level yoga competitions held in Punjab, West Bengal, Gujarat, Uttar Pradesh, and Karnataka. In 1989, he won the silver medal at the International Yoga Competition and Declamation Test in Pondicherry.
Sri Venkateshaiah served as Secretary of the Karnataka State Yoga Association for five years and has since been invited to judge several yogasana competitions. In recognition of his contributions to yoga, he was honored by Mysore’s Department of Health and Family Welfare Services and the Medical Education Employees Association. Alongside this work in yoga, he holds a Master’s degree in Sociology from the University of Mysore.
Beyond the shala, his teaching has reached far into the wider community: public yoga classes at Ramakrishna Ashram, yoga camps for prisoners at Mysore’s Central Jail, and sessions at Anandamarga Ashram in Saraswathipuram, Mysore. Through all of it, yoga philosophy and spirituality are never separate from his teaching, they run through it.
That teaching has, in turn, drawn students from around the world: Brazil, Australia, France, Germany, South Africa, the United Kingdom, Hawaii, Canada, South Korea, and the United States have all sent students to study under him.
