Recent renewed interest in Sasakian manifolds is due mainly to the fact that they can provide examples of generalized Einstein manifolds, manifolds which are of great interest in mathematical models of various aspects of physical phenomena. Sasakian manifolds are odd dimensional counterparts of Kählerian manifolds to which they are closely related. The paper presents a foliated approach to Sasakian manifolds on which the author gave several lectures. The paper concentrates on cohomological properties of Sasakian manifolds and of transversely holomorphic and Kählerian foliations. These properties permit to formulate obstructions to the existence of Sasakian structures on compact manifolds.