Founders & Leadership
The visionary minds whose dedication, scholarship, and compassion gave birth to India's most respected integrative medicine institution.
Arogyadhama was born from the confluence of two extraordinary minds — a scientist-sage and a physician-healer — united by a shared conviction that ancient India's healing wisdom deserved rigorous scientific validation. Their partnership has produced an institution unlike any other in the world.
Dr. H. R. Nagendra
B.E., M.Tech (IIT), PhD
President
S-VYASA, Bengaluru
Yoga is not a religion. It is a science — a science of well-being, of youthfulness, of integrating body, mind, and soul. The ancient sages were our first scientists.
Dr. H. R. Nagendra is the founding father of Arogyadhama and the architect of S-VYASA University. An aerospace engineer by training — with degrees from IIT Bombay — Dr. Nagendra's encounter with Swami Vivekananda's teachings redirected his extraordinary intellect from machines to the human body and mind.
In 1981, he co-founded the organisation that would become S-VYASA, with a singular conviction: that Yoga could be subjected to scientific scrutiny and, validated thus, could heal conditions that conventional medicine struggled with. Forty years later, that conviction has produced over 400 peer-reviewed papers.
Dr. Nagendra's role in the establishment of International Yoga Day was seminal. When Prime Minister Modi proposed the concept to the UN in 2014, it was Dr. Nagendra's team at S-VYASA that designed the evidence-based yoga protocols adopted globally. In 2016, the Government of India recognised his life's work with the Padma Shri.
Today, as President of S-VYASA, Dr. Nagendra continues to lead with the rare combination of scientific rigor and spiritual depth that defines Arogyadhama.
Dr. R. Nagarathna
MBBS, MD, FRCP (London, UK)
Chief Medical Director
Arogyadhama, S-VYASA
When a patient arrives with diabetes and leaves having transformed their lifestyle, their stress response, their relationship with their body — that is not just medicine. That is true healing.
Dr. R. Nagarathna is the clinical heart of Arogyadhama. As Chief Medical Director, she has, for over four decades, translated the institution's research excellence into real-world healing for tens of thousands of patients. Her qualifications span both worlds: an MBBS and MD from conventional medicine, and a Fellowship from the Royal College of Physicians in London — among the most prestigious medical credentials in the world.
Dr. Nagarathna co-founded the institution alongside Dr. Nagendra in 1981, but where he provided the scientific framework, she provided the clinical vision. Her specialisation in integrative approaches to Non-Communicable Diseases — particularly diabetes, hypertension, and respiratory disorders — has produced some of Arogyadhama's most cited research.
Her landmark work demonstrating Yoga's measurable effects on blood glucose in Type 2 diabetes — published in peer-reviewed journals — has been cited worldwide and influenced clinical guidelines. She is one of the few clinicians globally to have conducted large-scale, randomised controlled trials on Yoga therapy.
In 2019, the Government of Karnataka honoured her with the Kannada Rajyotsava Award for distinguished contributions to medicine. Under her clinical leadership, Arogyadhama's treatment protocols have maintained an exceptional safety record while pioneering a new paradigm of evidence-based integrative care.
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