Manish Pole

Manish Pole has been a yoga and meditation educator since 2003. He graduated in Psychology, Literature and Journalism in 2002. From 2003 to 2010 he lived, trained and taught with Bharat Thakur, whom the site describes as "the Living Himalayan Master" per TIME Magazine. From 2010 to 2020 he was a co-founder of Total Yoga, which operated in India, the USA, the UK, the UAE, Singapore and New Zealand. Since 2023 he has been co-founder of the Awaken School, together with Rana Abihayla. He describes himself as a philosopher and meditation guide, and a teacher of Indian wisdom traditions. He has given keynotes at World Expo 2020 and at wellness conferences.

His teaching rests on the view that there is more to yoga than a studio class offers. In 2020 he noticed that most of the yogis he had taught since 2003 took teacher training to go deeper, to learn why the practices work, and nearly 90% did not come to teach. That led him to design Beyond Asana, an online course on yoga philosophy, anatomy and energetic practices. Its name comes from the fact that only 3 of the 196 Yoga Sutras speak about asana.

At Awaken he also leads Yoga Alliance–certified 200-hour and 300-hour teacher training that combines online study with a residential stay. He teaches retreats and offers life coaching, corporate wellness work and speaking. He is lead teacher of the Kahlil Gibran Meditation course, a series of daily guided meditations and reflections inspired by the poems of The Prophet. It is open to beginners and experienced meditators alike.