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.