Dream Team

Viji Vasu

Viji Vasu has been a trainer of Yoga for over 30 years now. She learnt yoga under the well-known Shri T K V Desikachar (the son and a direct disciple of Shri Krishnamacharya) at the Krishnamacharya Yoga Mandiram, Chennai, where she was a Senior Yoga Consultant. Subsequently, she co-founded Yoga Raksanam fifteen years back, and is the Director of Academics there. Viji is certified by the International Yoga Alliance and has trained thousands students on the 200 hour Diploma Course in Yoga accredited by the International Yoga Alliance.

She has the experience of training students of different nationalities and background of Yoga. She has also traveled abroad to offer the Diploma program to candidates in Europe. In the tradition of Krishnamacharya, her style has 2 unique features – taking a holistic lens to Ashtanga Yoga beyond Asana practice and personalizing or customizing practices to the needs of individuals. By education, she completed her post-graduate (M.Ed) in Education. She lives in Chennai with family. More importantly, she has been a practitioner of Heartfulness for 20 years now and a Heartfulness meditation trainer for the last five years.

Dr. Véronique Nicolaï

Véronique Nicolaï is a French Pediatrician (MD), meditation trainer and Yoga instructor (RYT200 – RYPT) settled in India with her family since 1999. She started her journey with Heartfulness meditation in France as a medical student. Convinced that meditation is one of the simple lifestyle adjustments that can bring about significant change in the field of health, she currently drives events around wellness and Yoga.

These programs offer Yoga and meditation as additional tools for prevention and recovery with a particular attention to cancer patients. Since 2002, she has been driving the International Heartfulness Training Programs in India that teaches meditators from around the world to become Heartfulness meditation trainers themselves. She is the current director of the Heartfulness Yoga School.

Marion Marceau

Marion Marceau believes that yoga can transform human beings and create a more joyful and peaceful world. Prior to being a yoga teacher, Marion had a strong experience as an educator in France and abroad. Her love for Indian culture pushed her to settle down in India for many years where she learned Heartfulness meditation under the guidance of her Master and expanded her knowledge and experience in the realm of Yoga. Marion has a teaching degree from France, and has been certified as a yoga teacher from the Sivananda Yoga Vedanta organisation in India.

Marion is a Registered Yoga Teacher (RYT 500) with Yoga Alliance. Her strong experience in yoga and teaching is lovingly shared with her students through the Heartfulness Yoga School where she serves as one of the Lead teachers for their Teachers Training Course. She has been involved from the inception of the Heartfulness Yoga School, sharing her experience as a teacher and inspiring the team and is constantly looking for improvement of current programs and works in developing new programs. Marion believes that evolution is a never-ending process and she makes a point to challenge herself and her students to discover and explore new dimensions of their being through yoga.

Amar Srividya

Amar Srividya is currently a Yoga Teacher working as freelancer in Bangalore. His passion for yoga lead him to explore different styles of yoga: in Hatha Yoga E-RYT500 hrs, Ashtanga Yoga (Mysore) and Prenatal Yoga from established Yoga Training Institutes. He has undergone Pranayama course from the Bihar School of Yoga. He completed his Master of Yogic Science (MSC) from S-VYASA (Swami Vivekananda Yoga Anusandhana Samsthana) – Bangalore.

Amar has been training people of different age groups in India and abroad (Norway, Europe). Prior to this, Amar has six years of work experience in the Human Resource Departments in the corporate sector. However he quit his corporate job to follow his passion with an objective to motivate and inspire people to connect with their inner self to explore one’s true potential. He is closely associated with Heartfulness since 2018 as a Lead Trainer, continuous improvement, training the team members and developing new programs.

Penelope Baudoin Arkilovitch

Penelope lives in Paris and is involved in Heartfulness yoga for 2 years now. She fell in love with Yoga in India in 2009 where she started a life-long journey. Yoga entered her everyday life, as a student first and very soon trained as a yoga teacher in 2011 in Sivananda School (E-RYT200). She started meditation with Heartfulness in 2012 and became a meditation trainer in 2017. After learning about the body practice, she discovered the mind process and explored positive psychology in USA. That’s how her vision of yoga was developed by learning, teaching and sharing, and now she can say YOGA IS LIFE.

In order to build a bridge between traditional ways of teaching yoga and western ways of life, she has been working with the Heartfulness Wellness team, as a Lead trainer and as a coach, supporting the team and helping the TTC to evolve into a program influenced by collective intelligence and creativity. Her ability of teaching and creating conditions for learning pushed her to work on the online TTC which is about to be launched in 2020. This new format is a huge step to offer Heartfulness Yoga to the world and she is really excited to be part of it.

Ankit Pandey

I left my family early to grow up in a yoga environment. Since the age of 12, I have been studying yoga and Indian philosophy in Indian traditional schools called Gurukuls. There I was attending classes on Asanas, Pranayama, Mudra, Bandhas, meditation, self-healing techniques and philosophy. As my goal was to become a professional yoga teacher, I continued my studies at the Gurukul Kangari University, Haridwar, where I have graduated and I did my Master Degree in Yoga from Annamalai University, Chennai.

As I was always interested in developing myself more and discovering different approaches to this wide and fascinating subject, and I had the wonderful opportunity to be the part of the Heartfulness Yoga Team, and I conducted 8 TTCs with students from all over the world, various age groups, and very different backgrounds. I am also a certified Ashtanga Vinyasa yoga teacher from Mysore. Moreover, I have just returned from Egypt where I conducted a 4-month Yoga Detox Program, in a 5 star hotel. I would like to travel the world and spread awareness about yoga.

Ankur Naik

Ankur is a fun-loving engineer from Bits Pilani. He started Heartfulness Meditation at Ashoka University. Intrigued by it, he took the opportunity of doing a fellowship with the Heartfulness Institute. He has worked in Heartfulness Wellness and Yoga team at Manapakkam, Chennai and Kanha Shanti Vanam, Hyderabad. Teaching and learning went hand on hand during this time. He got certified as a yoga teacher on the way (RYT200) and enthusiastically organized many Yoga programs.

With his joyful and energetic attitude, connecting with new people came naturally to him. Exposed to a creative environment full of opportunities and talented people, and with his avidity to learn everything that crosses his path, Ankur has developed multiple skills that make him a well-rounded multi-talented Yoga Engineer. He is currently a key element in developing the Online Yoga TTC program and has his day filled with Yoga as the Manager of Heartfulness Yoga programs.

Margery Anderson

Margery Anderson lives in Vermont, a state in northeastern USA. After being certified as a Kripalu Yoga teacher and a Phoenix Rising Yoga therapist, Margery was introduced to Svaroopa™ yoga in 1996. She trained for over 11 years with its originator, Swami Nirmalananda Saraswati (then known as Rama Berch). She has been teaching Svaroopa™ yoga and practicing Svaroopa™ yoga therapy since 1997 and 1998, respectively, earning multiple advanced certifications in the following years. Margery began Heartfulness Meditation in 2003 and took the Heartfulness Yoga teacher training in Chennai in February, 2019. She is currently volunteering to help bring Heartfulness Yoga and Meditation training to the United States.

TG Vishnu

Even though I graduated as a Heartfulness Fellow on 19th of July 2019, I like to introduce myself as a Heartfulness Fellow and we all say “Once a Fellow, always a Fellow”. Deciding to be a fellow of Heartfulness was the life changing decision I have made in my life. For years I worked as a Computer Technician, which helped me to interact with people with very different backgrounds, and took me to think about my role to make this world a more joyful and peaceful place. These thoughts lead me to become a Brighter Minds facilitator where I started interacting with a lot of kids. I never felt bored in these BM classes and was always amazed about how the time flew when I was with kids.

To widen the reach of Brighter Minds and to develop my qualities as a computer person, as a presenter, as a facilitator, as a meditator, as a Heartfulness meditation trainer, I decided to join the Heartfulness Fellowship program. I worked for six months under School initiatives and joined the Yoga team for what was let of the year. As a fellow, teaching and learning were combined and I became a certified yoga trainer (RYT200) during that time. Our Yoga ‘Dream Team’ works harmoniously and joyously to organize various Yoga Programs and Retreat Programs in Chennai and Hyderabad and soon around the world. My new focus and challenge is to teach Yoga to the children of the Heartfulness Learning Center, Kanha. My inner goal is to help people integrate yoga as a part of their daily life.