It was founded in 1971, and has since 1973 held an annual congress at Zinal, Switzerland where yoga teachers and practitioners can meet in a multi-lingual, cross-cultural environment and hear from invited Indian yoga teachers.[2][3] In 1973, the first UEFNY Congress was held at Blitz's Club Mediterranee in Zinal, Switzerland, at the suggestion of Claude Peltier.[5] The multilingual Zinal Congress, attended by hundreds of yoga teachers and practitioners, is held annually.[6][7][8] It seeks to network across cultures with invited Indian teachers such as T. K. V. Desikachar, who came to influence the British Wheel of Yoga through the Congress.The EUY in his view is not a neo-Hindu faith community, but it does draw on traditional yoga literature from India; postural yoga and meditation are practised, while devotional practices are largely absent.
Panel discussion participants (from left) Swami Maitreyi (Sweden), Siddhartha Krishna (India), moderator Dimitrios Danilidis (Ukraine/Greece) and participant Francois Lorin (France) at the Zinal Yoga Congress of the European Union of Yoga in 2024