Swami Kuvalayananda (born Jagannatha Ganesa Gune, 30 August 1883 – 18 April 1966) was a yoga guru, researcher, and educator primarily known for his pioneering research into the scientific foundations of yoga. He started research on yoga in 1920, and published the first journal specifically devoted to studying yoga, Yoga Mimamsa, in 1924. Most of his research took place at the Kaivalyadhama Health and Yoga Research Center at Lonavla which he founded in 1924. He has had a profound influence on the development of yoga as exercise.

Swami Kuvalayananda was born Jagannatha Ganesa Gune in a traditional Karhade Brahmin family in the village Dhaboi in Gujarat state, India. Kuvalayananda's father, Sri Ganesa Gune, was a teacher and his mother, Srimati Saraswati, a housewife. The family was not rich and had to depend for some time on public and private charity. Being from a poor family, Kuvalayananda had to struggle hard for his education. Nevertheless, at his matriculation in 1903, he was awarded the Jagannath Shankarsheth Sanskrit Scholarship to study at Baroda College where he graduated in 1910.

During his student days, he was influenced by political leaders like Sri Aurobindo, who was working as a young lecturer at the university, and Lokmanya Tilak's Indian Home Rule Movement. His national idealism and patriotic fervour prompted him to devote his life to the service of humanity. During this time, he took up a vow of lifelong celibacy.

Coming into contact with the Indian masses, many of whom were illiterate and superstitious, he realized the value of education, and this influenced him to help organize the Khandesh Education Society at Amalner, where ultimately he became the Principal of the National College, in 1916. The National College was closed down by the British Government in 1920 due to the spirit of Indian nationalism prevalent at the institution. From 1916 to 1923, he taught Indian culture studies to high school and college students.

Kuvalayananda's first guru was Rajaratna Manikrao, a professor at the Jummadada Vyayamshala in Baroda. From 1907 to 1910, Manikrao trained Kuvalayananda in the Indian System of Physical Education which Kuvalayananda advocated throughout his life.

In 1919, he met the Bengali yogin, Paramahamsa Madhavdas, who had settled at Malsar, near Baroda, on the banks of the Narmada river. The insight into Yogic discipline, under Madhavdasji's guidance, greatly affected Kuvalayananda's career. He became a pioneer of a new style of yoga influenced by physical culture.

Though Kuvalayananda was spiritually inclined and idealistic, he was, at the same time, a strict rationalist. So, he sought scientific explanations for the various psychophysical effects of Yoga he experienced. In 1920–21, he investigated the effects of the Yogic practices of uddiyana bandha and nauli on the human body with the help of some of his students in a laboratory at the State Hospital, Baroda. His subjective experience, coupled with the results of these scientific experiments, convinced him that the ancient system of Yoga, if understood through the modern scientific experimental system, could help society. The idea of discovering the scientific basis behind these yogic processes became his life's work.

As early as the 1930s, Kuvalayananda trained large groups of yoga teachers as a way to spread physical education in India.