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Subject area: Modern yoga
This paper discusses the hitherto understudied Suddha Dharma Mandalam (SDM), allegedly the first Yoga school in Chile. The SDM was established in India in 1915 and subsequently in Chile in 1927, where it then took a hybrid form of its own. Based on documental research and interviews, the paper sets out to probe into, and contextualize, the first audience of this particular yogic school, as well as to discuss the dynamics of dissemination and teaching that the SDM developed in its first 20 years. Noteworthy is that the leader of the SDM, the Chilean guru Váyera, received teachings and initiation directly from an Indian guru, but completely remotely through correspondence. Thus, this distance instruction and initiation represent a particular cultural exchange between India and South America, and then from Chile to the Spanish-speaking world.
Macarena González has been an Iyengar Yoga teacher for more than 10 years. She has a bachelor degree in Art from the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile and is an independent researcher, in addition to being a student of Sanskrit. Macarena is studying for a Master's degree in History at the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, with a research project on the circulation of Indian-inspired metaphysical ideas in Chile at the beginning of the 20th century. She has completed the Advanced Certificate Program of the Yogic Studies platform, with a research guided by Seth Powell on the version of the Bhagavad Gītā used by the Suddha Dharma Mandalam, the first school of Yoga in Chile. She is also part of an ongoing publication on Yoga in Latin America, led by Adrián Muñoz and Borayin Larios, framed in the YoLa Project. Her research is centered on the history of yoga in Chile, focusing on the first decades of the 20th century.
