The Sivananda Yoga Vedanta Center, located in San Francisco, promotes the teachings of Swami Vishnu-devananda (1927-1993.)

For many people, the path of yoga has led to dramatic and long lasting improvement in health. Swami Vishnu-devananda, author of The Complete Illustrated Book of Yoga and founder of the Sivananda Yoga Vedanta Centers, outlined Five Points for Perfect Health which formed the basis of his teachings. These points can benefit anyone interested in improving physical, mental, and spiritual health.

Proper Exercise refers to physical practices that enhance the functions and long-term health of the body. Yoga postures, or asanas, are ideal because they simultaneously work on numerous systems of the physical body while also benefiting the energy or astral body.

Proper Breathing means taking full advantage of our respiratory capacity to enhance our physical energy, mental function, and spiritual awareness.

Proper Relaxation is more than simply slouching onto a couch with a can of beer in one hand after a long day of work. In yoga, we address the tension held in all our aspects of being – physical, mental, and spiritual. Savasana, or relaxation pose, is used between asanas and at the end of the sequence of asanas. 'Tense and release' exercises are also used to release residual tension being unconsciously held in the muscles.

Proper Diet may be the most challenging of the Five Points for many people. A balanced vegetarian diet is advocated, not only because it is healthier for the person eating it, but also because it reduces the amount of violence and environmental damage involved in procuring the food.

Positive Thinking and Meditation is the final point.. Yogic philosophy, or Vedanta, teaches that the cause of unhappiness and ill health is wrong thinking and wrong understanding – forgetting our true nature as spirit. The practice of positive thinking involves recognizing the falseness of our negative thoughts, transmuting them into positive thoughts... leading to a state of peace and freedom from fear.