Swami Venkatesananda

Swami Venkatesananda gave many public talks in North America, many of them recorded for posterity. Sadly, these recordings predated the digital technology. The analog tape they were recorded on has been subject to over 40 years of weather and many recordings have been lost. The Yasodhara Talks, a recorded lecture series that was uploaded to this site several years ago, represents the majority of North American talks that have survived. However, we are pleased that all of the remaining recordings will eventually be uploaded.

The first recordings of Venkatesananda in North America began in 1970 when, twelve months after the Woodstock festival, Swami Vishnu-Devananda decided to host a large yoga peace festival and invited the senior disciples of his own guru Swami Sivananda. After the festival, Vishnu-Devananda requested that Swami Venkatesananda visit all of Swami Vishnu's yoga centres in North America. After that first tour, there were no shortage of invitations for return visits. As he accepted an increasing number invitations, there evolved a life of continuous travel. While he wasn't recorded everywhere he spoke, a number of recordings were made in California, and we hope to post as many as possible. If you know of existing recordings given in North America that we have not posted, please share them with us, so that we can share them here with others.

Some recordings below have recently been restored, and we filling in missing talks, where possible to recover the older reel to reel tapes and cassettes. That process is ongoing. New files should be added in 2016 and 2017. Thank you for your patience.

As for the talks given in 1972, all of them have been reprocessed during the month of October (2013) in order to lesson unwanted noise including removing much of the print-through pre and post echo. If you are using these recordings for group study, you may wish to download these newer "cleaner" versions. We only ask that if you download the 1972 recordings for study groups (or any of the other recordings on this site), that you refrain from editing them or lifting passages out of context so that you maintain the original full length versions of each recording.

1970 Talks

1971 Tallks

1972 Tallks