In Kathmandu since 2015 — and wherever we are asked to go
हिमालयन वेलनेस फाउण्डेशन — a registered Nepali foundation offering Himalayan sound healing, yoga, meditation, wellness courses and retreats into the mountains. We have been asked to bring this work to ministries, police offices, army barracks, rural municipalities and schools across Nepal, and to guests who came a long way to find it.
What the Foundation is
Himalayan Wellness Foundation is a registered Nepali spiritual and cultural wellness organisation based at Naksal in Kathmandu. It was incorporated on 23 July 2015 with the Office of the Company Registrar, Government of Nepal, and has been affiliated with the Social Welfare Council since 2016.
Our registered objectives are plain ones: to teach and practise yoga, meditation and sound healing; to care for guests travelling in Nepal for spiritual and adventure reasons; to bring wellness programmes to institutions; and to carry Nepal's spiritual tradition to people beyond our borders who are looking for it.
The work is done by a few people who know each other well, and most of it is given free. That is deliberate. It means the person who answers your message is the person who will sit with you, and that an invitation from a school in Gorkha is answered exactly the way one from a ministry in Kathmandu is.
Ashok Sharma Bhatta — Yogi Ji
अशोक शर्मा भट्ट. Director of the Foundation, teacher, and the person who will most likely be sitting with you.
Yogi Ji is devoted to the Nath tradition — to Guru Gorakhnath, to Shiva, to Pashupatinath. That devotion is not a background detail to the work; it is the work. What is offered in a session comes out of a daily practice that began long before any certificate was issued for it.
He wears his own traditional dress while giving treatment. Guests sometimes ask about it, and the answer is simple: this is how he practises, and how he was taught. It is not presented as performance for visitors.
He speaks Nepali and English. He is unhurried with people who are nervous, and he is completely straightforward about what sound and breath can and cannot do — which is, in our view, the most important qualification of all.
Plenty of people in Nepal can teach yoga. Fewer can teach yoga and also read the weather on a high pass and know when to turn a group around.
The practice, done in public
One morning in the temple grounds, on a day the temple was full. The practice is not kept for a studio — it is done where people already are, and everyone who was there that morning watched it happen.
Photographed at Pashupatinath, Kathmandu. All the photographs and video
Where the practice was learned
- Certified International Yoga Teacher — 200-hour teacher training Maha Yoga Global College Australia, recognised by Yoga Alliance International and Yoga Alliance Australia (RYS 200), August 2025
- Sound Healing Natural Soundhealing International School, Thamel, Kathmandu (IAOTH-accredited), March 2023
- Traditional Hatha Yoga Sadhana Shree Sawar Meditation Yoga Center, Thamel, April–May 2024
- Certified Trekking Guide Nepal Academy of Tourism & Hotel Management (NATHM), Ministry of Culture, Tourism & Civil Aviation, 94th training, 2024
- Mountaineering Certificate — Mt. Ganchenpo, 6,378 m Department of Tourism, Government of Nepal. Summited 11 November 2022.
Honours received
- National Youth Talent Award 2078 Ministry of Youth & Sports, Government of Nepal, Singha Durbar
- Letter of Appreciation — Kathmandu Valley Police Office Ministry of Home Affairs, Ranipokhari. For yoga and meditation training given to police personnel, signed by the Deputy Inspector General and the Additional Inspector General of Police.
- Appreciation — Panchpokhari Thangpal Rural Municipality Sindhupalchok. For being first to summit Gangchempo by the Panchpokhari route, and for the contribution to tourism there.
- Honour — Aarughat Rural Municipality Gorkha, Gandaki Province. As yoga instructor for a municipal healthy-living and mental wellbeing programme.
- Appreciation — Newa Chhe Yoga Sadhana Kendra Tokha Municipality Ward 5, Kathmandu. For a five-day sound therapy programme delivered.
- Appreciation — Kashyap Academy Kalanki, Kathmandu. As yoga instructor, countersigned by the Mayor of Kirtipur Municipality and the Minister for Youth & Sports.
Honoured by the Kathmandu Valley Police Office (Ministry of Home Affairs), with wellness programmes offered to the Nepal Army, Kathmandu Metropolitan City and schools across the valley.
“These are set down as a record of service given. It has been our blessing to be called, and that is the whole of it.”
Institutions that have asked us
Each of these corresponds to a document the Foundation holds, or to a programme it was invited to deliver and can show you photographs of.
You should be able to check us
Wellness attracts a certain amount of invention, and Nepal gets more of it than most places. If you are booking a retreat from the other side of the world with someone you have never met, the least we can do is be checkable. Every certificate and letter named on this page, and every registration number in the footer below, exists on paper and can be shown to you if you ask.
Equally, we have not listed anything we cannot show. Where a programme was delivered but no letter was issued, we say the programme was delivered, and we leave it there. Where an institution's crest belongs to the state rather than to us, we write its name rather than borrow its emblem.
If anything on this site is unclear, or you would like to see a document before booking, please write. We will send it gladly.