About Us

WELCOME to the website of the Trevor Leggett Adhyatma Yoga Trust (‘TLAYT’)

Trevor Leggett studied Vedanta and the traditional Yoga of the Self for over sixty years until his death and for eighteen years was a pupil of Hari Prasad Shastri (1882-1956). Trevor lived for a number of years in Japan where he learnt Japanese and studied Judo and Zen.

He was the first foreigner to hold 6^th Dan from the Kodokan in Tokyo and he held 4^th Dan in Shogi, the fascinating Japanese version of Chess. From 1946 until his retirement in 1970 he was head of the Japanese Service of the BBC. In 1985 he received the award of the Order of the Sacred Treasure from the Japanese Government in recognition of his services to Japanese culture and in 1989 he was invited to give a paper on ‘The Complete Commentary by Shankara on the Yoga Sutras’ to the International Seminar on Shankara held in New Delhi.

Trevor Leggett was the author and translator of marvellous books on Yoga, Zen, Judo and Shogi and for many years he gave talks and wrote articles on these subjects. The copyright to all of his works was left to TLAYT in his will  and the Trust has steadily worked, in partnership with the Buddhist Society Trust and with M-Y Books Ltd, to bring them all back in print at affordable prices both in high quality softback editions and in a number of cases as eBooks and audiobooks.

Trevor Leggett made provision in his will for the establishment of a charitable trust to promote the knowledge of Adhyatma Yoga, Vedanta, Buddhism, Zen, Judo and Shogi. He died on 2^nd August 2000 in his 86^th year and on 8^th March 2001 TLAYT was formed and subsequently registered with the Charity Commission (No: 1086172).

Details and extracts from all of Trevor’s books can be found here in the TPL Books section of this site and a number of his recorded talks with transcriptions are available in the Stories and Talks section.