Rooted in the Sivananda tradition and Vedanta. Teaching yoga as a complete science of the mind.
Mani Raman has been teaching yogic science since 1998. His formation was in the Sivananda tradition – one of the most complete classical yoga lineages – and his teaching has been shaped over decades by the study of Vedanta, the direct encounter with texts, and the demands of serious personal practice.
He does not teach yoga as fitness. He teaches it as a systematic inquiry into the nature of the mind – using asana, pranayama, meditation, philosophy, and the conditions of daily life as instruments of that inquiry.
Years of teaching and learning across very different continents and cultural contexts sharpened his understanding of what in yoga is essential – and what any teacher tends to mistake for the teaching itself. That discernment shapes how he works now.
Vana Farm in Kambam Valley is where he lives, practises, and teaches. The farm is not a venue he visits. It is the environment in which his teaching has taken its present form.
The Sivananda tradition holds that yoga is not a single technique but a fourfold path – karma, bhakti, raja, and jnana – each approach addressing a different dimension of the human being. This breadth is what drew Mani Raman to it, and it is what shapes the structure of his retreats.
Vedanta – the philosophical culmination of the Upanishads – provides the theoretical ground. It asks what the self is, what consciousness is, and how practice changes the one who practises. These are not abstract questions at Vana Farm. They are what the day is organised around.
The teaching is traditional in its roots and direct in its language. Students are expected to think, not merely to follow.
Classical hatha yoga posture and pranayama practices. Taught precisely, with attention to alignment, breathing, relaxation, and the yama and niyama in every movement.
Understanding and applying meditation alongside text-based philosophy. The Yoga Sutras, the Upanishads, the Bhagavad Gita – read as living documents.
How to build a practice – guna and dosha based – for every individual need that holds across a lifetime – not as a programme, but as a way of being.
Mani Raman travels to teach when invited by yoga schools, teacher training programmes, retreat centres, and studios whose work is rooted in earnest practice. These engagements are an extension of what happens at Yoga Vana Forest Academy, the same classical yoga and Vedantic tradition, the same unhurried approach to the body, breath and mind, brought into a new setting and offered to students who may encounter it for the first time.
He is available to contribute to residential teacher trainings as a guest faculty member, to lead or co-lead yoga retreats, to offer intensive practice days and workshops for yoga studios, and to bring focused modules on classical Hatha yoga, pranayama, Vedanta philosophy, or traditional asana lineage to schools that wish to deepen their curriculum. Each engagement is approached with care for the community it serves and the students who will be present.
Mani Raman is based in South India and open to travel worldwide. If your school or centre is looking for a teacher whose practice has been held in one place and one tradition for nearly three decades, he would be glad to hear from you.
Schools and retreat centres whose work is grounded in practice, those who wish to offer the unique richness of yoga to their students just beyond the fitness and relaxation approaches, are welcome to write: mani@yogavana.in
For students who want to go beyond retreats into a sustained, structured relationship with the teaching. A small number of mentorship places are available each year.
Vana Farm, Kambam Valley
Melagudalur, Tamilnadu – 625516. India