The Transnational King of Yoga: the story of Harijs Dīkmanis (1895-1979)

• In Event: Historical Perspectives on Baltic Leisure and Recreation

Abstract

The Transnational King of Yoga: the story of Harijs Dīkmanis (1895-1979)

The life and work of Harijs Dīkmanis is the story of a passion for yoga that ranges from Talsi and Riga to Rishikesh to Los Angeles. In 2019, Dr. Baņuta Rubess discovered two dozen letters addressed to Harijs Dīkmanis from Paramhansa Yogananda hidden in the archives of Latvian poet Mirdza Bendrupe. Dīkmanis was an autodidact who taught himself Hatha Yoga in the 1920s and 30s via correspondence with Indian yoga masters like Swami Sivananda in the Himalayas, and Yogananda in the United States, arguably the most famous yogi in the world. It was Sivananda who crowned Dīkmanis a yogiraj – a king of yoga – never having met him. In this paper, Rubess will discuss how a boy from Talsi became a revered yogi with many followers in Riga until he was hounded by the Soviets and then practiced secretly during the Nazi occupation. While at a DP camp, Dīkmanis wrote a book in English about the teachings of Swami Sivananda. He emigrated to the States with the assistance of Yogananda. He taught his last student while living on charity in Los Angeles. Unknown to him, his writings on yoga were disseminated by samizdat and ultimately his mystic philosophy inspired celebrated Latvian poets such as Imants Ziedonis.

Short Bio

Dr. Baņuta Rubess pioneered feminist theatre, diaspora theatre, and contemporary opera to national renown in Canada and Latvia. She has lived in four countries and writes in two languages. She has written plays, musicals, libretti, essays, opinion columns, radio plays, screenplays, a YA novel, and two memoirs. She has been nominated for many awards and has won Best Play, Best Director, Best Short Story. Most recently she won a lifetime achievement award for her work in Latvian culture and literature from the Anšlavs Eglītis and Veronika Janelsiņa Foundation.

A Rhodes Scholar with a doctorate in history from the University of Oxford, she went back to school recently to get an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Guelph. As her thesis, she wrote a memoir about her teenage father, who belonged to the yoga club run by Harijs Dīkmanis in Mirdza Bendrupe's apartment. Titled Bruno Slept Here, the book will be published in Latvian translation in the fall of 2024. www.banuta.com

Author

• Baņuta Nora Rubess, University of Toronto