Rama Jyoti Vernon (January 4, 1941 – November 23, 2020) was a

yoga Yoga (UK: , US: ; 'yoga' ; ) is a group of physical, mental, and spiritual practices or disciplines that originated with its own philosophy in ancient India, aimed at controlling body and mind to attain various salvation goals, as pra ...

teacher and peace activist. She was a co-founder of ''

Yoga Journal ''Yoga Journal'' is a website and digital journal, formerly a print magazine, on yoga as exercise founded in California in 1975 with the goal of combining the essence of traditional yoga with scientific understanding. It has produced live events ...

'', and of the California Yoga Teachers Association. She is considered one of America's yoga pioneers and was one of the first yoga teachers in the USA. Her mother, a student of Yogananda took her to her first yoga class at age 15. As an adult, Vernon was one of the early students of

B.K.S. Iyengar Bellur Krishnamachar Sundararaja Iyengar (14 December 1918 – 20 August 2014) was an Indian teacher of yoga and author. He is the founder of the style of yoga as exercise, known as "Iyengar Yoga", and was considered one of the foremost Modern ...

in North America and hosted him on his first visit to California in 1973. Vernon founded the American Yoga College. She also founded the organization Unity in Yoga International, which eventually evolved into the

Yoga Alliance The Yoga Alliance is a U.S.-based nonprofit membership trade and professional organization for yoga teachers, headquartered in Arlington Virginia. The organization created the title of Registered Yoga Teacher in the United States to refer to teac ...

and which sponsored seven national and three international conferences under Vernon's direction, including the Soviet-American Yoga Conference in Moscow in October 1990. The founders of The International Association of Yoga Therapists, Richard Miller and Larry Payne, acknowledged Vernon's contribution to the creation of the association though the connections she fostered at the Unity in Yoga conferences. Vernon established the Center for Soviet-American Dialogue in 1984 to help connect the citizens of the United States with those of the

Soviet Union The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR), commonly known as the Soviet Union, was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until Dissolution of the Soviet ...

during the

Cold War The Cold War was a period of global Geopolitics, geopolitical rivalry between the United States (US) and the Soviet Union (USSR) and their respective allies, the capitalist Western Bloc and communist Eastern Bloc, which lasted from 1947 unt ...

. She served as a citizen diplomat, bringing groups of ordinary people to dialogue across borders, and even appeared on a Soviet morning show. She later simplified the name of her organization to the Center for International Dialogue and expanded its reach into the Middle East, visiting Jordan, the West Bank and Gaza with American citizens.

References

External links

Rama Jyoti Vernon Official website

American Yoga College aka International Yoga College

Vernon speaking at The Inside Edge Foundation
{{DEFAULTSORT:Vernon, Rama Jyoti Living people American yoga teachers 1941 births