Indra Devi
Yoga Teacher
Died when: 102 years 348 days (1235 months)Star Sign: Taurus
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Eugenie Peterson (Latvian: Eiženija Petersone, Russian: ??????? ?????????? ????????; 22 May, 1899 – 25 April 2002), known as Indra Devi, was a pioneering teacher of yoga as exercise, and an early disciple of the "father of modern yoga", Tirumalai Krishnamacharya.
She went to India in her twenties, becoming a film star there and acquiring the stage name Indra Devi. She was the first woman to study under the yoga guru Krishnamacharya at the Mysore Palace, alongside B.K.S Iyengar and K.
Pattabhi Jois who went on to become yoga gurus. Moving to China, she taught the first yoga classes in that country at Madame Chiang Kai-shek's house.
Her popularization of yoga in America through her many celebrity pupils in Hollywood, and her books advocating yoga for stress relief, earned her the nickname "first lady of yoga".
Her biographer, Michelle Goldberg, wrote that Devi "planted the seeds for the yoga boom of the 1990s".