 The school was founded by Sadguru Sadafaldeo Ji Maharaj in 1924 and has some 50,000,000 members.The Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) of the United Nations awarded "special consultative status" to Sadguru Sadafaldeo Vihangam Yoga Sansthan in Allahabad in 2013, among 160 other organisations.A controlled trial on the effects of Vihangam Yoga meditation in 15 practitioners with at least ten years' experience, compared to matched control subjects, showed that the yogis performed better on average on each test of attention, namely attention span, processing speed, attention alternation ability, and performance in interference tests.