Dr. Katy Jane

Named one of the “Top 75 Yogis Who Are Shifting the Planet” by Origin, Dr. Katy Jane is a Sanskrit and Vedic scholar, spiritual facilitator, and author. Her guiding vision is rooted in the ancient Veda of India—a system of transformational wisdom—that’s at the heart of enlightened living. Its aim is to advance the human soul toward greater happiness and fulfillment and is available to everyone regardless of culture, religion or beliefs. It is sanatana dharma, the eternal way of universal truth.

While earning her doctorate in Religious Studies from the University of California, Santa Barbara, Dr. Katy spent five years studying Vedic Sanskrit under the guidance of traditional pandits. With the boon of American Institute of Indian Studies and Ford Foundation grants, Katy studied the Sanskrit, Hindi and Bengali languages in Calcutta as a scholar-in-residence at the Ramakrishna Institute of Culture. With the aid of Fulbright-Hayes and University of California Presidential grants for her doctoral research, she traveled the length and breadth of India recording the life stories and teachings of yogis, saints and religious adepts to gain insight into Hindu concepts and methods of spiritual enlightenment.

Upon completing her degree, she served as an assistant professor of world religions and Sanskrit at Simpson College, California Polytechnic University, the University of Colorado and Naropa University before stepping in to fill a gap in the growing western yoga community. Few yoga teachers were including Sanskrit in their yoga teaching and practice as it was traditionally embraced in its Indian context.

To offer sincere yoga teachers and practitioners access to the traditional Vedic approach to learning Sanskrit, Dr. Katy created Sanskrit for Yogis in 2006. Her goal was to provide non-academic beginners an easy—and yet profoundly transformative—introduction to Sanskrit as a technology of consciousness, and not a “dead” academic language.

For over a decade, Katy’s shared the Vedic method of learning Sanskrit to many aspiring yoga teachers and students worldwide through live and online trainings. Today she resides in the Himalayas of India where she serves as director of yoga studies at Dunagiri Retreat, where she leads in-depth immersions in traditional Vedic Sanskrit, women’s kriya yoga and meditation. As an expert Vedic astrologer, she also serves as a life insight advisor, offering personal consultations based on the ancient art and science of Jyotisha (Vedic Astrology).