Emerging From the Shadows

The yoga world Krishnamacharya inherited at his birth in 1888 looked very different from that
of today. Under the pressure of British colonial rule, hatha yoga had fallen by the wayside.
Just a small circle of Indian practitioners remained. But in the mid-nineteenth and early
twentieth centuries, a Hindu revivalist movement breathed new life into India’s heritage. As a
young man, Krishnamacharya immersed himself in this pursuit, learning many classical Indian
disciplines, including Sanskrit, logic, ritual, law, and the basics of Indian medicine. In time, he
would channel this broad background into the study of yoga, where he synthesized the
wisdom of these traditions.
According to biographical notes Krishnamacharya made near the end of his life, his father
initiated him into yoga at age five, when he began to teach him Patanjali’s sutras and told
him that their family had descended from a revered ninth-century yogi, Nathamuni.
Although his father died before Krishnamacharya reached puberty, he instilled in his son a
general thirst for knowledge and a specific desire to study yoga. In another manuscript,
Krishnamacharya wrote that “while still an urchin,” he learned 24 asanas from a swami of the
Sringeri Math, the same temple that gave birth to Sivananda Yogananda’s lineage. Then, at
age 16, he made a pilgrimage to Nathamuni’s shrine at Alvar Tirunagari, where he
encountered his legendary forefather during an extraordinary vision.
See also Yoga Around the World
As Krishnamacharya always told the story, he found an old man at the temple’s gate who
pointed him toward a nearby mango grove. Krishnamacharya walked to the grove, where
he collapsed, exhausted. When he got up, he noticed three yogis had gathered. His
ancestor Nathamuni sat in the middle. Krishnamacharya prostrated himself and asked for
instruction. For hours, Nathamuni sang verses to him from the Yogarahasya (The Essence of
Yoga), a text lost more than one thousand years before. Krishnamacharya memorized and
later transcribed these verses.
The seeds of many elements of Krishnamacharya’s innovative teachings can be found in this
text, which is available in an English translation (Yogarahasya, translated by T.K.V.
Desikachar, Krishnamacharya Yoga Mandiram, 1998). Though the tale of its authorship may
seem fanciful, it points to an important trait in Krishnamacharya’s personality: He never
claimed originality. In his view, yoga belonged to God. All of his ideas, original or not, he
attributed to ancient texts or to his guru.
After his experience at Nathamuni’s shrine, Krishnamacharya continued his exploration of a
panoply of Indian classical disciplines, obtaining degrees in philology, logic, divinity, and
music. He practiced yoga from rudiments he learned through texts and the occasional
interview with a yogi, but he longed to study yoga more deeply, as his father had
recommended. A university teacher saw Krishnamacharya practicing his asanas and
advised him to seek out a master called Sri Ramamohan Brahmachari, one of the few
remaining hatha yoga masters.
We know little about Brahmachari except that he lived with his spouse and three children in
a remote cave. By Krishnamacharya’s account, he spent seven years with this teacher,
memorizing the Yoga Sutra of Patanjali, learning asanas and pranayama, and studying the
therapeutic aspects of yoga. During his apprenticeship, Krishnamacharya claimed, he
mastered 3,000 asanas and developed some of his most remarkable skills, such as stopping
his pulse. In exchange for instruction, Brahmachari asked his loyal student to return to his
homeland to teach yoga and establish a household.
See also Intro to Yoga Philosophy: Cultivate Your Garden
Krishnamacharya’s education had prepared him for a position at any number of prestigious
institutions, but he renounced this opportunity, choosing to honor his guru’s parting request.
Despite all his training, Krishnamacharya returned home to poverty. In the 1920s, teaching
yoga wasn’t profitable. Students were few, and Krishnamacharya was forced to take a job
as a foreman at a coffee plantation. But on his days off, he traveled throughout the province
giving lectures and yoga demonstrations. Krishnamacharya sought to popularize yoga by
demonstrating the siddhis, the supranormal abilities of the yogic body. These demonstrations,
designed to stimulate interest in a dying tradition, included suspending his pulse, stopping
cars with his bare hands, performing difficult asanas, and lifting heavy objects with his teeth.
To teach people about yoga, Krishnamacharya felt, he first had to get their attention.
Through an arranged marriage, Krishnamacharya honored his guru’s second request.
Ancient yogis were renunciates, who lived in the forest without homes or families. But
Krishnamacharya’s guru wanted him to learn about family life and teach a yoga that
benefited the modern householder. At first, this proved a difficult pathway. The couple lived
in such deep poverty that Krishnamacharya wore a loincloth sewn of fabric torn from his
spouse’s sari. He would later recall this period as the hardest time of his life, but the hardships
only steeled Krishnamacharya’s boundless determination to teach yoga.
Developing Ashtanga Vinyasa
Krishnamacharya’s fortunes improved in 1931 when he received an invitation to teach at the
Sanskrit College in Mysore. There he received a good salary and the chance to devote
himself to teaching yoga full time. The ruling family of Mysore had long championed all
manner of indigenous arts, supporting the reinvigoration of Indian culture. They had already
patronized hatha yoga for more than a century, and their library housed one of the oldest
illustrated asana compilations now known, the Sritattvanidhi (translated into English by
Sanskrit scholar Norman E. Sjoman in The Yoga Tradition of the Mysore Palace.
For the next two decades, the Maharaja of Mysore helped Krishnamacharya promote yoga
throughout India, financing demonstrations and publications. A diabetic, the Maharaja felt
especially drawn to the connection between yoga and healing, and Krishnamacharya
devoted much of his time to developing this link. But Krishnamacharya’s post at the Sanskrit
College didn’t last. He was far too strict a disciplinarian, his students complained. Since the
Maharaja liked Krishnamacharya and didn’t want to lose his friendship and counsel, he
proposed a solution; he offered Krishnamacharya the palace’s gymnastics hall as his own
yogashala, or yoga school.
See also Finding Balance and Healing in Yoga
Thus began one of Krishnamacharya’s most fertile periods, during which he developed what
is now known as Ashtanga Vinyasa Yoga. As Krishnamacharya’s pupils were primarily active
young boys, he drew on many disciplines—including yoga, gymnastics, and Indian
wrestling—to develop dynamically-performed asana sequences aimed at building physical
fitness. This vinyasa style uses the movements of Surya Namaskar (Sun Salutation) to lead into
each asana and then out again. Each movement is coordinated with prescribed breathing
and drishti, “gaze points” that focus the eyes and instill meditative concentration. Eventually,
Krishnamacharya standardized the pose sequences into three series consisting of primary,
intermediate, and advanced asanas. Students were grouped in order of experience and
ability, memorizing and mastering each sequence before advancing to the next.
Though Krishnamacharya developed this manner of performing yoga during the 1930s, it
remained virtually unknown in the West for almost 40 years. Recently, it’s become one of the
most popular styles of yoga, mostly due to the work of one of Krishnamacharya’s most
faithful and famous students, K. Pattabhi Jois.
Pattabhi Jois met Krishnamacharya in the hard times before the Mysore years. As a robust
boy of 12, Jois attended one of Krishnamacharya’s lectures. Intrigued by the asana
demonstration, Jois asked Krishnamacharya to teach him yoga. Lessons started the next
day, hours before the school bell rang, and continued every morning for three years until Jois
left home to attend the Sanskrit College. When Krishnamacharya received his teaching
appointment at the college less than two years later, an overjoyed Pattabhi Jois resumed his
yoga lessons.
Jois retained a wealth of detail from his years of study with Krishnamacharya. For decades,
he has preserved that work with great devotion, refining and inflecting the asana sequences
without significant modification, much as a classical violinist might nuance the phrasing of a
Mozart concerto without ever changing a note. Jois has often said that the concept of
vinyasa came from an ancient text called the Yoga Kuruntha. Unfortunately, the text has
disappeared; no one now living has seen it. So many stories exist of its discovery and
content—I’ve heard at least five conflicting accounts—that some question its authenticity.
When I asked Jois if he’d ever read the text, he answered, “No, only Krishnamacharya.” Jois
then downplayed the importance of this scripture, indicating several other texts that also
shaped the yoga he learned from Krishnamacharya, including the Hatha Yoga Pradipika,
the Yoga Sutra, and the Bhagavad Gita.
See also Virtual Vinyasa
Whatever the roots of Ashtanga Vinyasa, today it’s one of the most influential components
of Krishnamacharya’s legacy. Perhaps this method, originally designed for youngsters,
provides our high-energy, outwardly-focused culture with an approachable gateway to a
path of deeper spirituality. Over the last three decades a steadily increasing number of yogis
have been drawn to its precision and intensity. Many of them have made the pilgrimage to
Mysore, where Jois, himself, offered instruction until his death in May, 2009.
Shattering a Tradition
Even as Krishnamacharya taught the young men and boys at the Mysore Palace, his public
demonstrations attracted a more diverse audience. He enjoyed the challenge of presenting
yoga to people of different backgrounds. On the frequent tours he called “propaganda
trips,” he introduced yoga to British soldiers, Muslim maharajas, and Indians of all religious
beliefs. Krishnamacharya stressed that yoga could serve any creed and adjusted his
approach to respect each student’s faith. But while he bridged cultural, religious, and class
differences, Krishnamacharya’s attitude toward women remained patriarchal. Fate,
however, played a trick on him: The first student to bring his yoga onto the world stage
applied for instruction in a sari. And she was a Westerner to boot!
The woman, who became known as Indra Devi (she was born Zhenia Labunskaia, in pre-
Soviet Latvia), was a friend of the Mysore royal family. After seeing one of Krishnamacharya’s
demonstrations, she asked for instruction. At first, Krishnamacharya refused to teach her. He
told her that his school accepted neither foreigners nor women. But Devi persisted,
persuading the Maharaja to prevail on his Brahmin. Reluctantly, Krishnamacharya started her
lessons, subjecting her to strict dietary guidelines and a difficult schedule aimed at breaking
her resolve. She met every challenge Krishnamacharya imposed, eventually becoming his
good friend as well as an exemplary pupil.
After a year-long apprenticeship, Krishnamacharya instructed Devi to become a yoga
teacher. He asked her to bring a notebook, then spent several days dictating lessons on
yoga instruction, diet, and pranayama. Drawing from this teaching, Devi eventually wrote
the first best-selling book on hatha yoga, Forever Young, Forever Healthy. Over the years
after her studies with Krishnamacharya, Devi founded the first school of yoga in Shanghai,
China, where Madame Chiang Kai-Shek became her student. Eventually, by convincing
Soviet leaders that yoga was not a religion, she even opened the doors to yoga in the Soviet
Union, where it had been illegal. In 1947 she moved to the United States. Living in Hollywood,
she became known as the “First Lady of Yoga,” attracting celebrity students like Marilyn
Monroe, Elizabeth Arden, Greta Garbo, and Gloria Swanson. Thanks to Devi,
Krishnamacharya’s yoga enjoyed its first international vogue.
See also Is Yoga a Religion?
Although she studied with Krishnamacharya during the Mysore period, the yoga Indra Devi
came to teach bears little resemblance to Jois’s Ashtanga Vinyasa. Foreshadowing the
highly individualized yoga he would further develop in later years, Krishnamacharya taught
Devi in a gentler fashion, accommodating but challenging her physical limitations.
Devi retained this gentle tone in her teaching. Though her style didn’t employ vinyasa, she
used Krishnamacharya’s principles of sequencing so that her classes expressed a deliberate
journey, beginning with standing postures, progressing toward a central asana followed by
complementary poses, then concluding with relaxation. As with Jois, Krishnamacharya
taught her to combine pranayama and asana. Students in her lineage still perform each
posture with prescribed breathing techniques.
Devi added a devotional aspect to her work, which she calls Sai Yoga. The main pose of
each class includes an invocation, so that the fulcrum of each practice involves a
meditation in the form of an ecumenical prayer. Although she developed this concept on
her own, it may have been present in embryonic form in the teachings she received from
Krishnamacharya. In his later life, Krishnamacharya also recommended devotional chanting
within asana practice.
Though Devi died in April, 2002 at the age of 102, her six yoga schools are still active in
Buenos Aires, Argentina. Until three years ago, she still taught asanas. Well into her nineties,
she continued touring the world, bringing Krishnamacharya’s influence to a large following
throughout North and South America. Her impact in the United States waned when she
moved to Argentina in 1985, but her prestige in Latin America extends well beyond the yoga
community.
See also 3 Steps to Form a Yoga Circle: How to Build a Stronger Community
You might be hard-pressed to find someone in Buenos Aires who doesn’t know of her. She’s
touched every level of Latin society: The taxi driver who brought me to her house for an
interview described her as “a very wise woman”; the next day, Argentina’s President Menem
came for her blessings and advice. Devi’s six yoga schools deliver 15 asana classes daily,
and graduates from the four-year teacher-training program receive an internationally
recognized college-level degree.
Instructing Iyengar
During the period when he was instructing Devi and Jois, Krishnamacharya also briefly taught
a boy named B.K.S. Iyengar, who would grow up to play perhaps the most significant role of
anyone in bringing hatha yoga to the West. It’s hard to imagine how our yoga would look
without Iyengar’s contributions, especially his precisely detailed, systematic articulation of
each asana, his research into therapeutic applications, and his multi-tiered, rigorous training
system which has produced so many influential teachers.
It’s also hard to know just how much Krishnamacharya’s training affected Iyengar’s later
development. Though intense, Iyengar’s tenure with his teacher lasted barely a year. Along
with the burning devotion to yoga he evoked in Iyengar, perhaps Krishnamacharya planted
the seeds which were later to germinate into Iyengar’s mature yoga. (Some of the
characteristics for which Iyengar’s yoga is noted—particularly, pose modifications and using
yoga to heal—are quite similar to those Krishnamacharya developed in his later work.)
Perhaps any deep inquiry into hatha yoga tends to produce parallel results. At any rate,
Iyengar has always revered his childhood guru. He still says, “I’m a small model in yoga; my
guruji was a great man.”
Iyengar’s destiny wasn’t apparent at first. When Krishnamacharya invited Iyengar into his
household—Krishnamacharya’s wife was Iyengar’s sister—he predicted the stiff, sickly
teenager would achieve no success in yoga. In fact, Iyengar’s account of his life with
Krishnamacharya sounds like a Dickens novel. Krishnamacharya could be an extremely harsh
taskmaster. At first, he barely bothered to teach Iyengar, who spent his days watering the
gardens and performing other chores. Iyengar’s only friendship came from his roommate, a
boy named Keshavamurthy, who happened to be Krishnamacharya’s favorite protégé. In a
strange twist of fate, Keshavamurthy disappeared one morning and never returned.
Krishnamacharya was only days away from an important demonstration at the yogashala
and was relying on his star pupil to perform asanas. Faced with this crisis, Krishnamacharya
quickly began teaching Iyengar a series of difficult postures.
Iyengar practiced diligently and, on the day of the demonstration, surprised
Krishnamacharya by performing exceptionally. After this, Krishnamacharya began instructing
his determined pupil in earnest. Iyengar progressed rapidly, beginning to assist classes at the
yogashala and accompanying Krishnamacharya on yoga demonstration tours. But
Krishnamacharya continued his authoritarian style of instruction. Once, when
Krishnamacharya asked him to demonstrate Hanumanasana (a full split), Iyengar
complained that he had never learned the pose. “Do it!” Krishnamacharya commanded.
Iyengar complied, tearing his hamstrings.
See also Yoga Community Pays Tribute to B.K.S. Iyengar
Iyengar’s brief apprenticeship ended abruptly. After a yoga demonstration in northern
Karnataka Province, a group of women asked Krishnamacharya for instruction.
Krishnamacharya chose Iyengar, the youngest student with him, to lead the women in a
segregated class, since men and women didn’t study together in those days. Iyengar’s
teaching impressed them. At their request, Krishnamacharya assigned Iyengar to remain as
their instructor.
Teaching represented a promotion for Iyengar, but it did little to improve his situation. Yoga
teaching was still a marginal profession. At times, recalls Iyengar, he ate only one plate of
rice in three days, sustaining himself mostly on tap water. But he single-mindedly devoted
himself to yoga. In fact, Iyengar says, he was so obsessed that some neighbors and family
considered him mad. He would practice for hours, using heavy cobblestones to force his legs
into Baddha Konasana (Bound Angle Pose) and bending backward over a steam roller
parked in the street to improve his Urdhva Dhanurasana (Upward-Facing Bow Pose). Out of
concern for his well-being, Iyengar’s brother arranged his marriage to a 16-year-old named
Ramamani. Fortunately for Iyengar, Ramamani respected his work and became an
important partner in his investigation of the asanas.
Several hundred miles away from his guru, Iyengar’s only way to learn more about asanas
was to explore poses with his own body and analyze their effects. With Ramamani’s help,
Iyengar refined and advanced the asanas he learned from Krishnamacharya.
Like Krishnamacharya, as Iyengar slowly gained pupils he modified and adapted postures to
meet his students’ needs. And, like Krishnamacharya, Iyengar never hesitated to innovate.
He largely abandoned his mentor’s vinyasa style of practice. Instead, he constantly
researched the nature of internal alignment, considering the effect of every body part, even
the skin, in developing each pose. Since many people less fit than Krishnamacharya’s young
students came to Iyengar for instruction, he learned to use props to help them. And since
some of his students were sick, Iyengar began to develop asana as a healing practice,
creating specific therapeutic programs. In addition, Iyengar came to see the body as a
temple and asana as prayer. Iyengar’s emphasis on asana didn’t always please his former
teacher. Although Krishnamacharya praised Iyengar’s skill at asana practice at Iyengar’s
60th birthday celebration, he also suggested that it was time for Iyengar to relinquish asana
and focus on meditation.
Through the 1930s, ’40s, and ’50s, Iyengar’s reputation as both a teacher and a healer grew.
He acquired well-known, respected students like philosopher-sage Jiddhu Krishnamurti and
violinist Yehudi Menuhim, who helped draw Western students to his teachings. By the 1960s,
yoga was becoming a part of world culture, and Iyengar was recognized as one of its chief
ambassadors.
Surviving the Lean Years
Even as his students prospered and spread his yoga gospel, Krishnamacharya himself again
encountered hard times. By 1947, enrollment had dwindled at the yogashala. According to
Jois, only three students remained. Government patronage ended; India gained their
independence and the politicians who replaced the royal family of Mysore had little interest
in yoga. Krishnamacharya struggled to maintain the school, but in 1950 it closed. A 60-year-
old yoga teacher, Krishnamacharya found himself in the difficult position of having to start
over.
Unlike some of his protégés, Krishnamacharya didn’t enjoy the perks of yoga’s growing
popularity. He continued to study, teach, and evolve his yoga in near obscurity. Iyengar
speculates that this lonely period changed Krishnamacharya’s disposition. As Iyengar sees it,
Krishnamacharya could remain aloof under the protection of the Maharaja. But on his own,
having to find private students, Krishnamacharya had more motivation to adapt to society
and to develop greater compassion.
See also The Roots of Yoga: Ancient + Modern
As in the 1920s, Krishnamacharya struggled to find work, eventually leaving Mysore and
accepting a teaching position at Vivekananda College in Chennai. New students slowly
appeared, including people from all walks of life and in varying states of health, and
Krishnamacharya discovered new ways to teach them. As students with less physical
aptitude came, including some with disabilities, Krishnamacharya focused on adapting
postures to each student’s capacity.
For example, he would instruct one student to perform Paschimottanasana (Seated Forward
Bend) with knees straight to stretch the hamstrings, while a stiffer student might learn the
same posture with knees bent. Similarly, he’d vary the breath to meet a student’s needs,
sometimes strengthening the abdomen by emphasizing exhalation, other times supporting
the back by emphasizing inhalation. Krishnamacharya varied the length, frequency, and
sequencing of asanas to help students achieve specific short-term goals, like recovering
from a disease. As a student’s practice advanced, he would help them refine asanas
toward the ideal form. In his own individual way, Krishnamacharya helped his students move
from a yoga that adapted to their limitations to a yoga that stretched their abilities. This
approach, which is now usually referred to as Viniyoga, became the hallmark of
Krishnamacharya’s teaching during his final decades.
Krishnamacharya seemed willing to apply such techniques to almost any health challenge.
Once, a doctor asked him to help a stroke victim. Krishnamacharya manipulated the
patient’s lifeless limbs into various postures, a kind of yogic physical therapy. As with so many
of Krishnamacharya’s students, the man’s health improved—and so did Krishnamacharya’s
fame as a healer.
It was this reputation as a healer that would attract Krishnamacharya’s last major disciple.
But at the time, no one—least of all Krishnamacharya—would have guessed that his son,
T.K.V. Desikachar, would become a renowned yogi who would convey the entire scope of
Krishnamacharya’s career, and especially his later teachings, to the Western yoga world.
Keeping the Flame Alive
Although born into a family of yogis, Desikachar felt no desire to pursue the vocation. As a
child, he ran away when his father asked him to do asanas. Krishnamacharya caught him
once, tied his hands and feet into Baddha Padmasana (Bound Lotus Pose), and left him tied
up for half an hour. Pedagogy like this didn’t motivate Desikachar to study yoga, but
eventually inspiration came by other means.
After graduating from college with a degree in engineering, Desikachar joined his family for
a short visit. He was en route to Delhi, where he’d been offered a good job with a European
firm. One morning, as Desikachar sat on the front step reading a newspaper, he spotted a
hulking American car motoring up the narrow street in front of his father’s home. Just then,
Krishnamacharya stepped out of the house, wearing only a dhoti and the sacred markings
that signified his lifelong devotion to the god Vishnu. The car stopped and a middle-aged,
European-looking woman sprang from the backseat, shouting “Professor, Professor!” She
dashed up to Krishnamacharya, threw her arms around him, and hugged him.
The blood must have drained from Desikachar’s face as his father hugged her right back. In
those days, Western ladies and Brahmins just did not hug—especially not in the middle of the
street, and especially not a Brahmin as observant as Krishnamacharya. When the woman
left, “Why?!?” was all Desikachar could stammer. Krishnamacharya explained that the
woman had been studying yoga with him. Thanks to Krishnamacharya’s help, she had
managed to fall asleep the previous evening without drugs for the first time in 20 years.
Perhaps Desikachar’s reaction to this revelation was providence or karma; certainly, this
evidence of the power of yoga provided a curious epiphany that changed his life forever. In
an instant, he resolved to learn what his father knew.
See also Inspiration: What’s Your Yoga Jingle?
Krishnamacharya didn’t welcome his son’s newfound interest in yoga. He told Desikachar to
pursue his engineering career and leave yoga alone. Desikachar refused to listen. He
rejected the Delhi job, found work at a local firm, and pestered his father for lessons.
Eventually, Krishnamacharya relented. But to assure himself of his son’s earnestness—or
perhaps to discourage him—Krishnamacharya required Desikachar to begin lessons at 3:30
every morning. Desikachar agreed to submit to his father’s requirements but insisted on one
condition of his own: No God. A hard-nosed engineer, Desikachar thought he had no need
for religion. Krishnamacharya respected this wish, and they began their lessons with asanas
and chanting Patanjali’s Yoga Sutra. Since they lived in a one-room apartment, the whole
family was forced to join them, albeit half asleep. The lessons were to go on for 28 years,
though not always quite so early.
During the years of tutoring his son, Krishnamacharya continued to refine the Viniyoga
approach, tailoring yoga methods for the sick, pregnant women, young children—and, of
course, those seeking spiritual enlightenment. He came to divide yoga practice into three
stages representing youth, middle, and old age: First, develop muscular power and flexibility;
second, maintain health during the years of working and raising a family; finally, go beyond
the physical practice to focus on God.
Desikachar observed that, as students progressed, Krishnamacharya began stressing not just
more advanced asanas but also the spiritual aspects of yoga. Desikachar realized that his
father felt that every action should be an act of devotion, that every asana should lead
toward inner calm. Similarly, Krishnamacharya’s emphasis on the breath was meant to
convey spiritual implications along with physiological benefits.
According to Desikachar, Krishnamacharya described the cycle of breath as an act of
surrender: “Inhale, and God approaches you. Hold the inhalation, and God remains with
you. Exhale, and you approach God. Hold the exhalation, and surrender to God.”
During the last years of his life, Krishnamacharya introduced Vedic chanting into yoga
practice, always adjusting the number of verses to match the time the student should hold
the pose. This technique can help students maintain focus, and it also provides them with a
step toward meditation.
See also A Morning Meditation to Start Your Day Mindfully
When moving into the spiritual aspects of yoga, Krishnamacharya respected each student’s
cultural background. One of his longtime students, Patricia Miller, who now teaches in
Washington, D.C., recalls him leading a meditation by offering alternatives. He instructed
students to close their eyes and observe the space between the brows, and then said, “Think
of God. If not God, the sun. If not the sun, your parents.” Krishnamacharya set only one
condition, explains Miller: “That we acknowledge a power greater than ourselves.”
Preserving a Legacy
Today Desikachar extends his father’s legacy by overseeing the Krishnamacharya Yoga
Mandiram in Chennai, India, where all of Krishnamacharya’s contrasting approaches to
yoga are being taught and his writings are translated and published. Over time, Desikachar
embraced the full breadth of his father’s teaching, including his veneration of God. But
Desikachar also understands Western skepticism and stresses the need to strip yoga of its
Hindu trappings so that it remains a vehicle for all people.
Krishnamacharya’s worldview was rooted in Vedic philosophy; the modern West’s is rooted
in science. Informed by both, Desikachar sees his role as translator, conveying his father’s
ancient wisdom to modern ears. The main focus of both Desikachar and his son, Kausthub, is
sharing this ancient yoga wisdom with the next
generation. “We owe children a better future,” he says. His organization provides yoga
classes for children, including the disabled. In addition to publishing age-appropriate stories
and spiritual guides, Kausthub is developing videos to demonstrate techniques for teaching
yoga to youngsters using methods inspired by his grandfather’s work in Mysore.
Although Desikachar spent nearly three decades as Krishnamacharya’s pupil, he claims to
have gleaned only the basics of his father’s teachings. Both Krishnamacharya’s interests and
personality resembled a kaleidoscope; yoga was just a small part of what he knew.
Krishnamacharya also pursued disciplines like philology, astrology, and music too. In his own
Ayurvedic laboratory, he prepared herbal recipes.
In India, he’s still better known as a healer than as a yogi. He was also a gourmet cook, a
horticulturist, and shrewd card player. But the encyclopedic learning that made him
sometimes seem aloof or even arrogant in his youth—”intellectually intoxicated,” as Iyengar
politely characterizes him—eventually gave way to a yearning for communication.
Krishnamacharya realized that much of the traditional Indian learning he treasured was
disappearing, so he opened his storehouse of knowledge to anyone with a healthy interest
and sufficient discipline. He felt that yoga had to adapt to the modern world or vanish.
See also A Yogi’s Travel Guide to India
An Indian maxim holds that every three centuries someone is born to re-energize a tradition.
Perhaps Krishnamacharya was such an avatar. While he had enormous respect for the past,
he also didn’t hesitate to experiment and innovate. By developing and refining different
approaches, he made yoga accessible to millions. That, in the end, is his greatest legacy.
As diverse as the practices in Krishnamacharya’s different lineages have become, passion
and faith in yoga remain their common heritage. The tacit message his teaching provides is
that yoga is not a static tradition; it’s a living, breathing art that grows constantly through
each practitioner’s experiments and deepening
experience.