About Us

Sanjeev is a free-spirit, an intuitive soul and a natural troublemaker. As the founder and guiding force behind YogaLife and Antastha Yoga, he shares his expertise as teacher and leader through our Yoga Teacher Training Courses and Workshops. He teaches in order to bring awareness, wellbeing and freedom.

Over years of spiritual practice, Sanjeev has developed an insight that goes beyond his knowledge of science and psychology. He can connect with each person as an individual, opening hearts to the potential of Antastha Yoga, his signature style, which is practised blindfolded. Sanjeev recognises that when we remove our outer vision, we refocus on our inner vision. This profound self-awareness ultimately leads to transformative growth.

Sanjeev combines spirituality with his scientific background in physiology and naturopathy.
Embarking on his spiritual path as a young boy, he befriended the sadhus around the corner from his school in Dungargarh, India. His yearning for yoga was driven by a natural curiosity about the human body and mind.

In 1992, Sanjeev started teaching yoga, and he established Yogalife a few years later in 1999. He is honored to have trained more than 1000 teachers from 30 countries around the world, leading workshops and retreats on 3 continents.

Sanjeev’s drive to share his expertise has brought him opportunities to work with an esteemed range of organizations, including the United Nations, the World Bank, Microsoft and Nokia/Siemens. Working with Deepak Chopra, he trained teachers at the Chopra Center in California and, along with his sister Poonam, he coached Julia Roberts during the filming of “Eat, Pray, Love”. In a recent project, he trained the "Solar Impulse" pilot André Borschberg, implementing Antastha Yoga tools and techniques. In this way, Sanjeev has pioneered the combining of ancient yogic wisdom with modern psychology and scientific knowledge in order to move humankind forward.

For Sanjeev, teaching means connecting with hearts and giving students the tools to uncover their own innate potential.

Poonam is our calm and inspiringly positive yoga guru. She balances conscientious professionalism with compassion and warmth. Poonam’s yoga combines ancient tradition with modern learning about functional movement and physical training. She is the main contributor for the educational content of our training manual.

Poonam brings a calm focus to her yoga classes. She is known for intuiting people’s feelings and needs, sometimes before they recognise them themselves. With skilful coaching, she helps students to develop deep self-awareness. Through understanding and encouragement, Poonam helps her students achieve their highest potential, often exceeding their own expectations. She believes students come to yoga needing to connect positively with their physical bodies, their spiritual selves and each other. Relentlessly humble, Poonam says she takes her own inspiration from her students, and the practice of yoga allows her to uncover the wonder that everyone person carries within themselves.

Born into a family of Yoga teachers, Poonam found following the yogic path was a natural choice. After completing a Masters Degree in Sociology, she enrolled in course at the world's first yoga university, Bihar Yoga Bharati. She followed this four month residential course with a one-year residential postgraduate Diploma in Yogic Studies.

Since 2001, Poonam has been teaching yoga in India and Switzerland. She has taught yoga to professionals in UN organisations, large corporations such as P&G, and the students and teachers at Webster University, Geneva. Together with her brother Sanjeev Bhanot, Poonam was Julia Roberts’ yoga advisor in the film Eat Pray Love. She has also been featured in many yoga programs on Indian television.

In 2011, Poonam co-founded Sanapurna, the Center for Yoga & Naturopathy Medicine in Zurich. She currently leads the Yogalife Teacher Training in Zurich at Sanapurna.

A lovable and grounded yoga teacher, Manoj is charismatic, and effortlessly cool. The YogaLife team joke that Manoj doesn’t have students, he has fans. He has the natural ability to relate to others through his intuition, sensitivity and sense of humour.

Manoj is an expert in the yogic systems of prana, chakras and nadis. Born into a lineage of spiritual teachers, Manoj showed a natural inclination towards the yogic path from a young age. He grew up hearing stories from the Bhagavad Gita and he lived and breathed Hindu and yoga philosophy. His grounding in yoga has been enhanced by his academic education in anatomy, biochemistry and physiology. The depth of his knowledge, on spiritual and physical levels, is clear to all who experience his inspiring yoga classes.

Manoj was educated at a range of esteemed institutions, including the Bihar School of Yoga, Sivananda Vedanta Ashram and our very own YogaLife Foundation. Through his education, he was bestowed the titles of Yoga Shiroimani and Yoga Acharya.

Manoj is the founder of Yogalife Belgium, and he is currently based in Ghent. He pioneered the segmented TTC as opposed to our traditional residential programmes. He leads our Teacher Training Courses in Ghent and Brussels. He also founded the not-for-profit YogaLife Festival in Belgium. Manoj is a lead teacher of the Antastha Yatra Yoga Process and the Hatha Yoga Foundation Retreat, both 10 day retreats which take place in India, Goa.

Born in Mexico from a long lineage of teachers, Diana is the warm heart and soul of Yogalife Belgium. Living in Belgium for over two decades, she runs a Yogastudio in her hometown of Zottegem and Oudenaarde and teaches for the Sport Department in Zottegem.

Her mission in life is to contribute deeply to her student’s path of self-discovery, transformation and acceptance. Specialized in Hinduism throughout the scriptures by HarvardX, the Science of Happiness at Berkeley University and First Aid for Sports.

Diana also develops workshops around Yoga and anxiety, sleeping disorders, Yoga for kids, teens and families and pregnancy yoga. Additionally she is specialized in Yin Yoga and Anatomy, Fascia Release and Relaxing massage.

Diana has an ever growing understanding of anatomy and yoga teaching techniques due to her hungry and curious mind. As an experienced Yogalife teacher, Diana teaches sequencing, the development and refinement of teaching skills, use of props, meditation and the understanding of yoga tradition.

Born in the Himalayan region of North India, Pankaj started his journey of Yoga to find the true purpose of life. In the year 2013-2014, Pankaj followed yoga sadhana courses in Delhi and Rishikesh, India. Later he completed the course from Morarji Desai National Institute of Yoga, Delhi.

During his bioscience engineering studies in Belgium, he continued yoga learning from Yogalife and thus became a part of the family. Pankaj is now teaching Hatha Yoga, Yoga for the back and spine, Yin yoga and Yoga Nidra classes full-time. He connects science and yoga to live a happy and healthy, medicine free life.

Pankaj loves to bring understanding of the scientific links to yogic practices. With his warm humor and peaceful personality, everybody loves to connect to Pankaj during the Yogalife Teacher Trainings.

Cathy is the “mother” of our Yoga Teacher Training in Geneva. She has been practicing yoga for more than 25 years.

Yoga was her tool to deal with stress in a multinational company. After her 200hrs TTC, she decided to guide people to well-being.

Open hearted and kind, her yoga sessions moves in harmony with the flow of life. She studied biology and is trained as a therapist in foot reflexology.

She followed the Advanced Teacher Training "the body" (100 hrs) in Geneva, is trained in Yoga Nidra, has a big interest in energetic healing and loves guiding meditation and relaxation sessions. Cathy lives in Switzerland coordinating the Geneva Yogalife trainings.

Anne McNabb has been there since the beginning of Yogalife’s Teacher Training in Geneva. She is one of our lead trainers, Certified Yoga Instructor (E-RYT 500, YACEP) and a Health Coach specializing in corporate health and well-being initiatives.

Anne has collaborated with prominent international organizations and corporations, including WHO, WMO, IFRC, ITC, WTO, HSBC, P&G, DHL, and many others.