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Organization
Founder and Lineage
Acharya Shunya Pratichi Mathur
Founder and Spiritual Director, Vedika Global
Acharya Shunya Pratichi Mathur is a widely respected and sought after tradition-based scholar, master healer, and powerful teacher of Ayurveda. Through her life and words, she powerfully articulates how it is possible to discover the truth of the healthy Self within and to be true to that discovery via Ayurveda and the allied Vedic sciences of Yoga and Vedanta. Acharya Shunya’s comprehensive understanding stems from direct experience of the essential and sacred teachings of Ayurveda drawn from 14 years of rigorous Gurukula training in the holy city of Ayodhya, Uttar Pradesh, India. She is considered an authority on the living tradition of authentic Ayurveda medicine and Gurukula education.
Shunya is based in California where she has run a successful Ayurveda practice for the last fifteen years. In 2007 she founded Vedika Global, Inc, a Berkeley-based not-for-profit foundation dedicated to promoting conscious education, community action and selfless service in Ayurveda world wide. At Vedika Global, Shunya heads Vedika Gurukula, an Ayurveda college offering up to five years of in-depth study with a distinguished faculty from India. Acharya Shunya’s pioneering vision has reconnected studentship and the healing journey in Ayurvedic medicine to a deeper spiritual process of personal and global transformation. Her insightful work of building an institute that embodies Ayurveda’s spiritual fullness as well as its scientific accuracy is supporting a renaissance of this ancient science of life.
Awards and Recognition:
Vedika Global was honored in 2010 with the Nalanda Award for Excellence in Ayurvedic Education in North America by the Association of Ayurveda Practitioners of North America (AAPNA). Shunya was also honored for her groundbreaking achievements with the prestigious Mother Padmavati International Ayurveda Award by the Indian Institute of Medicine, Pune, India, in the same year.
Shunya has been featured in the San Francisco Chronicle, Tathaastu Magazine, and Yoga Journal, and is frequently invited to lecture on Ayurveda at public venues, conferences and university campuses including Stanford and San Francisco State University.
Additional Service to Professional Ayurveda Organizations:
In California, Shunya serves as President of the Board of Directors of the California Association of Ayurvedic Medicine (CAAM) and is working towards promoting Ayurveda’s licensed status.
In 2010, Shunya was invited to represent the Ayurveda community of North America as the key delegate at the prestigious International Ayurveda Delegates Meet held at the World Ayurveda Conference, organized by Vijnan Bharati and the Government of India.
In December, 2012, Shunya has been invited to co-chair the International Delegates meeting in Bhopal, India where 400 delegates from over 40 countries will collect to deliberate upon issues that face Ayurveda internationally.
In an advisory capacity she also serves the Boards of Directors of the international mind-body-soul magazine Tathaastu, and Yoga Bharati, the US affiliate of SYASA (Swami Vivekananda Yoga Anusandhana Samsthana) Yoga University in Bengaluru, India.
Educational Lineage and Inspiration
Vedika Global has emerged in California in the 21st century, inspired by the organizations Shunya Pratichi Mathur’s ancestors founded in Ayodhya, Uttar Pradesh, India in the early 1900's; and the knowledge of a living Gurukula Parampara that she has articulated in contemporary contexts, as she was trained to become the inheritor and documenter of her family’s tradition.
Alongside pursuing conventional education, having a deep affinity for helping, health, healing and spirituality from a young age, for over 15 years Shunya Pratichi Mathur consciously and rigorously observed, apprenticed and studied important core texts and health promoting practices with her grandfather, Baba Ayodhya Nath Sinha.
Baba Ayodhya Nath, a scholar of shastras, utilized his extensive knowledge of Ayurveda, Yoga and Vedanta to serve his local community as his dharma and selfless seva to society. He had himself carried forward the knowledge, work and humanitarian vision of his own father, Sant Shanti Prakash, who had founded community organizations in Ayodhya to preserve the Gurukula element in education. He inspired dharmic living in the society through mentoring of youth, grihastas and eager seekers via elders, visiting scholars, local vaidyas and renowned sadhus and promoted multi-dimensional health of the community. He taught people daily and esoteric practices from the traditions of Ayurveda, Yoga and Vedic Achara Dharma – the mental and spiritual attitudes and ways of living that form the foundation of true health. The Sadharan Dharma Sabha with Arogya Mandal that he founded in 1915, incorporated the benefits of healing vidyas for everyday people, and was a hub of charitable activities and selfless service through Ayurveda and Vedic Dharma for several decades thereafter.
Shunya, therefore, brings the passion and dedication of this lineage into her teaching, writing and vision for education. At a time when education in Ayurveda is being explored and re-examined both in the USA and in India, Vedika Gurukula has developed a rich alternate model. It is facilitating a paradigm shift in enlivening the traditional Gurukula elements of experiential learning and personal healing (sadhana), action for community welfare (sangha) and spirit of selfless service to humanity through Ayurveda (seva). Vedika is thus reconnecting studentship in Ayurvedic medicine in the modern era, not only to a perfect and exacting science of Ayurveda, but also to a deeper spiritual process of personal healing, evolution of consciousness and potential for global transformation.
Contact:
shunya@vedikaglobal.org
925.915.1369
