Swami Sivananda was born in a Saivite family in 1877 at Pattamadai in Tamilnadu. His original name was Kuppuswami. He studied medicine and worked in Malaysia for sometime as a doctor before he turned to spiritual life. He met his spiritual guru in the holy town of Rishikesh, who initiated him into spiritual life and gave him the name of Swami Siviananda Saraswathi. He spent the next ten years practicing various yogas and exploring the inner worlds of consciousness, rarely leaving the small town of Rishikesh. He became an adept in the science of yoga and wrote several books on yoga and philosophy. He started the Divine Life Society in 1936 for the dissemination of spiritual knowledge and rendering selfless service to the humanity. He passed away on the 14th of July 1963, on the bank of the Ganges, in Shivanandanagar.