About Us
History
In 1971, some Americans went to India to study Yoga and found their way to a teacher, Baba Hari Dass. They asked him to come to the U.S. to teach, and he agreed. Slowly, by word of mouth, a group grew of people who came to study and practice Yoga with him. In 1974, that group formed the Hanuman Fellowship, taking the name of an ancient Indian deity representing service and devotion. In 1978, the fellowship founded Mount Madonna Center, a 355-acre mountaintop property dedicated to the study and practice of Yoga as taught by Baba Hari Dass, and to many pathways of personal growth and development.
In 1978, there wasn’t much on the property – a dirt road, a 75-year-old farmhouse, a barn, and a ranch house. Our vision, laid out in an ambitious site plan, now mostly realized, included a substantial conference center, staff housing, a children’s school, and a health and healing center. From the very beginning, Baba Hari Dass taught not only Yoga, but also Ayurveda – and the first programs we offered, in the summer of 1978, 33 years ago, included Ayurveda – at the time a science of health and healing little known in the West.
In the years that followed, a series of pioneers presented Ayurveda programs at Mount Madonna Center – first Babaji, then Dr. Trivedi, Dr. Svoboda, Dr. Lad, Dr. Singh, and Dr. Shrestha. One of the students in one of those first programs (1982) was Cynthia Ambika Copple, who went on to be an Ayurvedic Practitioner in Santa Cruz ever since, and now is Dean of the College of Ayurveda. As the Center proved successful and grew, others also obtained Ayurveda training, and slowly a group came together of people deeply interested in starting a School of Ayurveda.
By 2005, that group’s vision and energy were strong enough that the decision was made to form a new Institute, featuring a College of Ayurveda. Approvals were obtained, a substantial loan was borrowed, space was set aside for classes, and intense work began on developing curriculum, faculty, administration, logistics, a website, marketing, and an application to the State of California for approval to operate the Institute and its College of Ayurveda.
We did receive that approval from the State of California, and, in January 2007, Mount Madonna Institute admitted students to its first College of Ayurveda Diploma Program. The students then and since have proved to be a different kind of student body than we ever experienced before the Institute came into being – a student body of highly motivated, experienced, mature people who bring a new level of intensity, discrimination, and focus to programs on this mountaintop. They really have intense desire to learn, and then to practice, Ayurveda. Bringing together such a student body with the finest Ayurveda faculty anywhere in the West has brought about a further miracle: a real, vital, energized educational process that has proven to be all we could have hoped for. The dream and vision of long ago, has been transformed into reality because the students have added the magic ingredient: a truly energized student body.
Since that first class entered in 2007, we have graduated many classes of Diploma, Certificate (Practitioner), and Masters Degree students. In graduation after graduation, students have expressed their deep appreciation of the extraordinary faculty from which they have learned the art and science of Ayurveda, and of the Institute’s unique setting in the context of a spiritual community with an inspiring teacher. Graduates have started their own practices of Ayurveda, or have joined with others in group practices. They return to tell us how much their education at Mount Madonna Institute’s College of Ayurveda has meant in their lives.
And the future? Online offerings. Trainings in India. Unique courses in pancha karma and other Ayurveda specialties. There are many frontiers ahead.