Yoga in Russia

Later, Indra Devi, who left Russia during the Russian Revolution, studied under the pioneer of modern yoga Tirumalai Krishnamacharya in India, and popularised it in America; she visited the Soviet Union in 1960.

Victor Skumin, influenced by Agni Yoga, in 1968 proposed the "culture of health", encompassing physical, mental, and spiritual well-being.

[a][8][9][10] Stanislavski was thus, note the scholars Dorinda Hulton and Maria Kapsali, making use of traditional yoga, not its modern posture-based form, which had not yet been created.

She helped to make yoga popular as exercise in America, especially amongst women, and in 1960 visited the Soviet Union, seeing St Petersburg (then Leningrad) for the first time in 40 years, and meeting the government ministers Andrei Gromyko and Alexei Kosygin at the Indian ambassador's reception at the Sovetskaya Hotel.

The human organism, though seemingly small, is a powerful repository of energy, and truly dominates its earthly environment.From this, Skumin approaches the solution of tasks related to culture of health.

[24][25] Yoga has become increasingly popular in Russia since the 1980s, particularly in major cities, mainly due to its reputation for health benefits.

It also mentioned two men, Yuri Nicolaiovich Polkovnikov and Genadiy Gregorievich Stasenko, who "took the risk" of teaching yoga in Russian gymnasiums in the 1960s, describing it as "gymnastics or health therapy".

The president, Vladimir Putin, met the prime minister of India, Narendra Modi at the BRICS summit that year, and promised to try yoga alongside his other sporting activities.

[31] In 2018, two entrepreneurs who made their money in knitting, Mikhail Galaev and Dmitry Demin, founded Prana, a yoga business in Moscow with 23 practice rooms, said to be the largest in Europe.