Shirley Telles completed M.B.B.S. from Goa Medical College (Goa) and subsequently M.Phil. in Neurophysiology and Ph.D. in Neurophysiology from the National Institute of Mental Health & Neurosciences [NIMHANS], Bangalore, India. She is the Director of research at Patanjali Yogpeeth, Haridwar, India and Head of the Indian Council of Medical Research Center for Advanced Research in Yoga and Neurophysiology at Bangalore.

She has 104 research publications related to yoga research in journals indexed in international bibliographic databases [e.g., Medline], 12 chapters in books and 3 published books. She received an award from The Indian Council of Medical Research (for excellence in biomedical research), from the John Templeton Foundation (www.templeton.org), U.S.A. (January, 2002), for an essay on ‘Creative research ideas in neurobiology’ and a Fulbright Fellowship (J. William Fulbright Foundation, U.S.A) to study “Functional magnetic resonance imaging in meditators” at the Dept. of Radiology, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL., U.S.A.