Ghantali Mitra Mandal a unique cultural and social organization was formed by on 26th January 1965. It started off its new inning with the formation of the Yoga Department under the able guidance and leadership of Sahasrabudhe Guruji
Yogacharya Sahasrabudhe Guruji as he was fondly called by many was born on 12th December 1912. He was a fitness freak, dynamic, fearless and had social inclination right from his childhood days. He was interested in outdoor sports like Football and was an expert practitioner of Mallakhamb and Surya Namaskar.
Sahasrabudhe Guruji was inspired into Yoga by Nagpur based Janardan Swami in 1953. Later he took formal education of Yoga from Swami Satyananda Saraswati of Bihar School of Yoga, Munger in 1959 and at a later stage from Kaivalyadham Lonavala. Since then he has been practicing and preaching Yoga maintaining a perfect balance between his jobs as a signal inspector with Calcutta based B.N. Railway and a yoga teacher.
On 11th November 1968 he was awarded the title Yogacharya by Satyananda Saraswati of Bihar School of Yoga.
In 1969 he was on the committee of Maharashtra State Yoga Council which was appointed to teach Yoga to 40 School teachers
On his retirement in 1970 from the B.N. Railways he relocated to Thane Maharashtra and dedicated rest of his life to preaching Yoga from Door to Door and Shore to Shore as instructed by his Guru Swami Satyananda Saraswati.
He was one of the key members of the novel project undertaken by Ghantali Mitra Mandal to teach Yoga to the Jail Inmates of Thane Central Jail in 1976. The team successfully completed the First of its Kind project by teaching 80 jail inmates and thereby reforming them. 13 of these Jail inmates successfully completed the Yoga Teachers Diploma and were transferred to teach yoga at the jails elsewhere.
He was also one of the key members of the team which went to Kingdom of Nepal to teach Yoga to the then Prime Minister of Nepal and other dignitaries.
He along with Ghantali Mitra Mandal successfully organized All India Yoga Conferences at Thane Maharashtra in 1978 & 1982.
In 1983 along with Yogiraj Datir from Pune and Yogiraj Ghatage from Dadar he undertook Yoga Prachar Dindi to preach yoga, which covered 50 villages from 12 districts of Maharashtra and thereby taught 3000 people.
He was felicitated on a number of occasions. In 1985 Thane Municipal corporation and other prestigious organization conferred the title “Yoga Maharishi”.
In 1986 Kaivalyadham Lonavala conferred “Swami Kuvalyananda Puraskar”
. In 1987 Swami Satyananda Saraswati of Bihar School of Yoga gave him Karma sanyasa diksha and named him “Yogarajananda Saraswati”.
He was not only a highly acclaimed yoga teacher, therapist and a practitioner but also contributed to the field of yoga by writing articles on regular basis in many leading newspaper and magazines. He also penned a book called “Shastriya Yogabhyas” in 1987. The main goal of his life was preaching Yoga till he breathed his last on 12th May 1996.
