Bhakti Yoga Rishikesh
A spiritual home in Rishikesh
Where you can joyfully learn, practice, and belong.
We are a community of yogis drawn to bhakti — gathering every week to sing, sit with wisdom, and share what we love.
who we are
A family that sings together
Bhakti Yoga Rishikesh began the way most good things in Rishikesh begin — a few friends, a harmonium, and an evening nobody wanted to end.
Today we gather every week at the MVT hall in Upper Tapovan — longtime residents and first-time travellers, sadhakas of forty years and seekers of forty minutes. You come, you sit, you sing — and somewhere along the way it starts to feel like family.
Everything we host is offered freely — kirtan and wisdom evenings every week, a five-night festival of song each October, and prasad — food made with love, shared after we sing.
what is bhakti
The yoga of the heart
Bhakti is devotion — the oldest and simplest of the yogas. Where other paths begin with the body or the mind, bhakti begins with the heart. The practices are wonderfully simple.
Sing
Kirtan
The divine names sung together — call and response, harmonium and mridanga, until the room is one voice.
Repeat
Japa
A quiet, personal meditation — the maha-mantra repeated softly on beads, one name at a time.
Listen
Satsang
Sitting with wisdom — readings and talks from the Bhagavad-gita and the bhakti tradition, honest questions welcome.
Share
Prasad & seva
Food cooked with love and offered first, then shared — and the simple joy of being useful to others.
“If one offers Me with love and devotion a leaf, a flower, a fruit or water, I will accept it.”
Bhagavad-gita 9.26
our roots
An ancient, living lineage
Radhanath Swami at Radha-kund · photo: Vrajacandrika, CC BY 2.0
What we practise is not new. Kirtan as we know it flows from the Gaudiya Vaishnava tradition — the bhakti lineage of Chaitanya Mahaprabhu, the fifteenth-century saint of Bengal who taught that in this age the simplest way to the divine is to sing its names.
That lineage has been carried across five centuries, teacher to student, to the present day. Our community draws inspiration from modern teachers of this line — among them Radhanath Swami, whose books and talks first brought many of us to bhakti.
We hold this lineage with love, and we share it the same way. Whoever you are and wherever you begin, there is a seat for you beside us. Come as you are — the chant meets you there.
the family
Faces from our evenings
Some of the smiles you’ll meet — come add yours.
Come meet us in person
The best introduction to bhakti isn’t a page about it — it’s an evening of it. Message us and we’ll tell you what’s on this week.