Swami Sivananda (1887 β 1963) was a yoga guru, a Hindu spiritual teacher, and a proponent of Vedanta Β He was the founder of the Divine Life Society (DLS) in 1936, Yoga-Vedanta Forest Academy (1948) and author of over 200 books on yoga, Vedanta, and a variety of subjects. He established Sivananda Ashram, the headquarters of the DLS, on the bank of the Ganges at Sivanandanagar, near Rishikesh.