I became interested in local history from a young age in New Jersey. My parents were keen on history and our holidays usually were to historic sites. I was an avid reader and my father used to take me to the big libraries to use the giant old wooden card files then dig in the archives to find old and original references. Later, I majored in art history and worked in publishing, first in New York, then in Los Angeles.

After a couple of exciting years in the music business, I refocused and took a master’s degree in professional writing and developed a freelance career in publishing and business communications. I loved writing about a range of topics, from selling diamonds to engineering, healthcare and medical technology, as well editing a book series of histories of towns and regions throughout the U.S.

Parallel to this, I’ve been involved with meditation and yoga since the mid-1970s and have been teaching for many years. I was drawn to the lineage of Bhagawan Nityananda of Ganeshpuri, in India, and the mystical path of yoga. Many of my magazine and newsletter articles through the years have been about introspection, drawing on the wisdom of great teachers. I had the privilege of writing for Australian Yoga Life magazine for 20 years. Some of the articles are in this website.

I received the title Swami Dayananda in 2006 and began the Adelaide Yoga Meditation Centre in Semaphore that year, where I taught courses and workshops in yoga, meditation and Eastern philosophy. In 2010 I opened the Lokananda Yoga Meditation Retreat Centre in Point Pass, in the country of the Mid North. The retreat centre operated for more than a dozen years and hosted over 70 retreats. On Worlds End Highway, is a memoir of transforming a heritage 1870s property, the people who lived there in the nineteenth and early twentieth century, and the history of South Australia.