It was no sheer accident which pushed Srimati Sitadevi on the path of Yoga through painful and prolonged experience of the futility and bitterness of worldly life as happen to be the case with many who seek refuge in Yoga after their hectic life. On the contrary, it was a deliberate choice to make the worldly life compatible with the teachings of Yoga for, in the prime of her youth, with all amenities of modern life within her reach, she decided to dedicate her life to Yoga.

Barely eighteen years of age, soon after her marriage in 1927, she joined The Yoga Institute. After four years of intense study, she offered her honorary service to the Institute and was trusted to conduct the ladies section. In 1933, she was appointed to the responsible post of Secretary to the Institute which post she still holds. She became the Associate-Editor of the official journal Yoga in 1934. During the same year, for the first time in modern history of Yoga, a special text for guiding women in their study of practical Yoga was published under her authorship. The cumulative effect of her pioneer activities, during these years, is evident from the fact that yoga practices have, by slow degrees, become popular with the fair sex in educational, health, medical, and cultural institutions both in India and abroad. In recognition of this unique service as a valuable contribution to public health—especially in relation to women—the Women’s’ Health Federation of America which held the Health Welfare Congress at the New York World Fair in 1939 appointed and invited her as the official Delegate from India to the Congress. In 1940 she received further distinction of having her book preserved in the Crypt of Civilization to be

read after 6000 years. Moreover, she is a registered medical practitioner (1941) quite conversant with health, hygiene, and therapeutic problems.

A further point has to be noted also, namely that, in spite of her many-sided yoga angularities-for steadfast yoga behavior, by its very contrast, certainly does not appear so very smooth to those in majority leading a highly materialistic existence-she lives a scrupulously faithful civic, social, and domestic life even unto the minutest details. At no stage, has there been any desire on her part to skip mutual human responsibilities under the pretext of Yoga, as the pseudo-yogins prefer to do. To those who know her private life intimately, she is a symbol of an ideal wife. And, above all, she is the mother of two devoted sons and lives the very ideal she preaches, viz; that a married life is in no way incompatible with Yoga studies.