Advisory Team
Pandit Vamadeva Shastri
Pandit Vamadeva Shastri (Dr. David Frawley) is a rare combination of a yogi, Vedic scholar, Ayurvedic practitioner, Vedic astrologer and teacher of Hindu Dharma. He is the Founder and Director of the internationally recognized American Institute for Vedic Studies. Vamadeva Shastri presents authentic Vedic knowledge in the Western world in a lucid form that is recognized by the tradition itself. For over thirty years he has worked extensively teaching, writing, lecturing, conducting research and helping establish schools and associations in related Vedic fields.
In India, Vamadeva Shastri is considered an extraordinary Western born knowledge-holder in the Vedic tradition. He has traveled widely into India's many hidden enclaves of traditional knowledge and become an expert in many special Vedic ways of knowledge (vidyas), being recognized as a Vedacharya (Vedic teacher), a Vaidya (Ayurvedic practitioner), Jyotishi (Vedic astrologer), Puranic (Vedic historian) and Yogi. In America, Shastriji is best known as a teacher, author and practitioner of Ayurveda and Vedic astrology, and has done tremendous pioneering work in these fields in the West.
In each field, Shastriji's primary studies have been with outstanding traditional pandits and yogis. Shastriji studied Ayurveda with Dr. B. L. Vashta of Mumbai and Pune, and with Dr. Vasant Lad in New Mexico, at whose school Shastriji is still a visiting faculty member. He studied Vedic astrology with Dr. B. N. Raman, who was considered the greatest Vedic astrologer of modern India, under whose guidance Shastriji became one of the first Americans to be awarded the Jyotish Vachaspati degree by the Indian Council of Astrological studies. For nearly 40 years, Shastriji has been a devotee of Ramana Maharshi, the great early 20th century sage of South India. In collaboration with K. Natesan of Ramanashram, Shastriji carries on the work of one of Ramana Maharishi's chief disciples, Ganapati Muni, whose work on Yoga and Tantra Shastriji has played a key role in preserving, translating, publishing and expounding. In addition, Shastriji has collaborated with numerous leading exponents of Ayurveda, Vedic astrology, Vedanta and Tantra, and received the blessings and teachings of many of the great saints of our times.
Shastriji's publications include:
Yoga and the Sacred Fire: Self-Healing and Planetary Transformation (2005), Ayurvedic Astrology: Self-Healing Through the Stars (2005), Yoga of Herbs (with Dr. Vasant Lad, 1986), Yoga and Ayurveda (1999), Ayurveda, Nature's Medicine (with Dr. Subhash Ranade, 2001), Yoga for Your Type (with Sandra Kozak, 2001), Ayurveda and Marma Therapy (with Drs. Ranade and Lele, 2003) and Astrology of the Seers (1990)
Vamadeva sees his role as helping to revive Vedic knowledge in an interdisciplinary approach for the planetary age. His mission is to help empower people to use Vedic systems to enhance their lives and aid in their own Self-realization. He sees Vedic wisdom as a means of communing with the conscious universe and learning to embody it in our own life and perception.
