Nayaswami Shivani is a pioneer, a founding member of Ananda World Brotherhood Community. She arrived on June 22, 1969, and, as predicted by the community’s founder, Swami Kriyananda, she remained for the rest of her life, up until the present. In 1985, Kriyananda invited Shivani and her husband, Arjuna, to help develop the European branch of Ananda in Italy. They have lived there ever since. Shivani was the executive producer for the full-length docu-drama about Ananda, Finding Happiness. 

She has earned a worldwide reputation as one of the foremost teachers of meditation, specifically Kriya Yoga, and of Yogananda’s teachings and techniques of self-healing. She established the Life Therapy School for Self-Healing, the Ananda Raja Yoga School, and co-founded the Yogananda Academy of Europe. She travels widely across Europe and India, giving programs and seminars on the art of self-healing and the science of Self-realization, as well as training programs for meditation teachers.