Yoga might have had originated in India, but its transfiguration and growth into the form we’re more familiar with took place in the West.

The West first took notice of yoga thanks to Swami Vivekananda’s famous speech in Chicago on September 11, 1893. His book Raja Yoga, written in 1896 and delineating methods of concentration, ways to liberate the soul from the body will become hugely influential in the West. Modern yoga began spreading its roots from America and Europe to the rest of the world. And it was three individuals—Indra Devi, BKS Iyengar and Bikram Choudhury—who popularised yoga in America.

Indra Devi

Russian-born Devi was perhaps the first to give yoga a foothold in American popular culture. Born Eugenie Peterson to a Russian mother and Swedish father, Devi’s fascination with India is said to have begun after read a book by Rabindranath Tagore at 15. In 1927, she left for India and at a time when yoga in India was male-dominated, she was one of the first women to be taught by Sri Tirumalai Krishnamacharya. But that wasn’t easy.

A New York Times article published after her death spoke of how she was quite a star in Indian films in 1930 and was married to Jan Strakaty, a commercial attaché to the Czechoslovak Consulate in Bombay.  She met the Maharaja and Maharini of Mysore through him and the couple had a yoga school at their palace where Krishnamacharya taught. When Devi sought lessons, she was rebuffed because she was a woman and wasn’t Indian. But the royal couple convinced him to overlook these concerns.