It was in 2008 that Jennifer Prugh made her first trip to India. She was on a pilgrimage and put up at Swami Rama’s Ashram in Rishikesh, Uttarakhand. After completing a three-day silence retreat, the teachers took Prugh and the others down to the Ganga. She says when she laid eyes on the majestic river, she was captivated. “There was no going back from here,” remembers Prugh, founder of Breathe Together Yoga Studio in Los Gatos, California.

She was drawn to yoga when she was a child. In February 1968, the Beatles had travelled to Rishikesh to take part in a Transcendental Meditation (TM) training course at an ashram. This journey resulted in a movement in America, and also changed the course of Prugh’s life. “It had a big impact on me. Meditation and yoga became fascinating for me. But I think I started practicing it seriously only when I was in my 20s. And then in 2000, I began teaching. But there came a point when I wanted to understand the root of it. Every American yoga teacher, at some point, arrives in India looking for answers.” This was only the first of a dozen trips she would make to the country.