New Delhi: The Vivekananda Yoga
University (VAYU), the world’s first yoga university outside India, is all set
to start its post-graduation course later this year in the US.

“The programs will roll out from
August 2020, for which the admissions will be starting from April 2020 for the
Master’s program in yoga under the leadership of Sree Sreenath as the founding
President,” the university said in a statement.

VAYU has been established in Los
Angeles with an initial budget of USD five million which also facilitates
research in the ancient Indian practice. Sree Sreenath, a Professor from Case
Western University, has been named its president and Indian yoga guru H R
Nagendra as its chairman.

The university received official
recognition from the Bureau for Private Post secondary Education, California, to
offer yoga-based higher education programs in November 2019. VAYU will
facilitate collaborative research, credit transfers and joint programs with
multiple premier universities across the world.

“The aim is to create a global
university for yoga-based higher education combining the best of the East with
the best of the West. The university will help thousands of yoga teachers in
the US whose yoga education was limited to 200 or 500 hours of certificate
programs to progress further into university-based higher education,” said
Nagendra, who started S-VYASA, the first yoga university in India, in 2002.

Nagendra is a former scientist from
NASA, who has been working on converting yoga into a socially relevant science
for the last four decades.