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BUENOS AIRES, ARGENTINA, April 30, 2002: Indra Devi, the daughter of European nobility who introduced the ancient discipline of yoga to the Kremlin leadership and Hollywood stars, passed away on Thursday in Buenos Aires. She was 102. Known to her followers as Mataji, she was a student of Sri Tirumalai Krishnamacharya, the legendary guru who gained worldwide attention for stopping his heartbeat for two minutes. She was his first female student. She was born Eugenie Peterson in Riga, Latvia, on May 12, 1899. She attended drama school in Moscow as a girl, and escaped to Berlin with her mother in 1917. Her fascination with India began at 15, when she read a book by the poet Rabindranath Tagore. In 1927 she sailed for India. Here, the Maharaj and Maharini of Mysore introduced her to Sri Krishnamacharya. After being trained as a yoga teacher she traveled to Shanghai with her husband. There she held five classes a day in the bedroom of Madame Chiang Kaishek, wife of the nationalist leader and a new yoga enthusiast. She found her way to Hollywood in 1947 and discovered ready students among movie stars, who found yoga’s breathing and relaxation techniques useful to their work. Her students included Gloria Swanson, Greta Garbo, Jennifer Jones and the violinist Yehudi Menuhin. In 1960, India’s ambassador to Moscow arranged for her to meet the top soviet leaders, including Aleksei Kosygin, the premier, and Andrei Gromyko, the foreign minister. After she spoke to them of the benefits of yoga, it was legalized in Russia. In 1982 she visited Argentina, where she formed a foundation to spread her yoga methods.

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