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39-458: The vinyasa forms of yoga used as exercise, including Pattabhi Jois 's 1948 Ashtanga Vinyasa Yoga and its spin-off schools such as Beryl Bender Birch 's 1995 Power Yoga and others like Baptiste Yoga, Jivamukti Yoga , Vinyasa Flow Yoga, Power Vinyasa Yoga, and Core Strength Vinyasa Yoga , derive from Krishnamacharya 's development of a flowing aerobic style of yoga in the Mysore Palace in

78-409: A focus on personal salvation to public altruism. A further radical shift was from spiritual to physical in yoga as exercise , as pioneered by Yogendra , Kuvalayananda , and Krishnamacharya . The transformed role of the guru can be seen in the case of one of these pioneers, Yogendra , who explicitly rejected the role of traditional guru for a single pupil or shishya . The physical context, too,

117-515: A home in the section of town called Lakshmipuram. According to Tim Miller , Jois continued to practice asanas until his son Ramesh committed suicide when Jois was in his early 60s. According to B.K.S. Iyengar , Jois was assigned to teach asana at the Sanskrit Pathshala when Krishnamacharya's yogaśala was opened in 1933, and was "never a regular student". Jois claimed he was B. K. S. Iyengar 's teacher, although Iyengar has denied this, and

156-666: A salary, scholarship to the college and room and board. Jois held a yoga teaching position at the Sanskrit College from 1937 to 1973, becoming vidwan (professor) in 1956, as well as being Honorary Professor of Yoga at the Government College of Indian Medicine from 1976 to 1978. In 1948, Jois established the Ashtanga Yoga Research Institute at their home in Lakshmipuram. In 1964 he built an extension in

195-451: A tradition. Many such gurus, but not all, teach a form of yoga as exercise ; others teach forms which are more devotional or meditational; many teach a combination. Some have been affected by scandals of various kinds. Before the creation of modern yoga , hatha yoga was practised in secret by solitary, ascetic yogins, learning the tradition as a long-term pupil or shishya apprenticed to their master or guru. The ancient relationship

234-496: A vinyasa, is used repeatedly in Ashtanga Vinyasa Yoga classes; it involves Chaturanga Dandasana (Low Staff Pose), Urdhva Mukha Svanasana (Upward Dog Pose) and Adho Mukha Svanasana (Downward Dog Pose) to link other asanas. Sharath Jois defines vinyasa as a system of breathing and movement. Pattabhi Jois K. Pattabhi Jois (26 July 1915 – 18 May 2009) was an Indian yoga guru who developed and popularized

273-455: A yoga school in Mysore and travel the world on teaching tours. A student, David Life, co-founder of Jivamukti Yoga , has said of Jois, "He was not a monk or a renunciate; he was fearless about combining the path of yogi with the path of participant. He never saw it as separate from our lives. He thought that anyone could attain to yoga if they had the desire and the enthusiasm." A 2006 film Guru

312-460: A yogaśala for him at the Jaganmohan Palace . Jois often accompanied Krishnamacharya in demonstrations, and occasionally assisted Krishnamacharya in class and taught in his absence. Jois studied with Krishnamacharya from 1927 to 1929 in his own village, and then in Mysore from 1932 to 1953. He studied texts such as Patañjali's Yoga Sūtra , Haṭha Yoga Pradīpikā , Yoga Yajñavalkya and

351-585: Is standard training for Hindu boys. No one else in his family learned yoga. In 1927, at the age of 12, Jois attended a lecture and demonstration at the Jubilee Hall in Hassan, Karnataka by T. Krishnamacharya and became his student the next day. He stayed in Kowshika for two years and practiced with Krishnamacharya every day. In 1930, Jois ran away from home to Mysore to study Sanskrit , with 2 rupees. Around

390-452: Is the asana sthiti [the actual pose]." In contrast, Pattabhi Jois used "vinyasa" in a narrower sense to mean "the repetitious linking movements" between the asanas of Ashtanga Vinyasa Yoga. The Ashtanga yoga teacher Gregor Maehle explains that this flowing style "creates a movement meditation". The vinyasa sequences used in the touring demonstrations of Krishnamacharya's yoga were, according to an interview with Jois, "virtually identical to

429-424: Is transformed along with the nature of the teacher's authority; yoga as exercise is often taught in an urban yoga studio, where the instructor's yoga teacher training stands in for the old guru-shishya relationship. The trend away from authority is continued in post-lineage yoga , which is practised outside any major school or guru's lineage. The concept of the guru, along with mantra and meditation , reached

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468-568: The Upaniṣads . In 1924 Krishnamacharya supposedly researched an ancient text which he called the Yoga Korunta ; he described this as badly damaged and with many missing portions, and claimed he had learned the text from a teacher named Rama Mohan Brahmachari on a supposed seven-year stay in the Himalayas. Jois began his studies with Krishnamacharya in 1927 and was taught what Krishnamacharya called

507-567: The Yoga Korunta method. An entire system of practices including pranayama , bandhas , (core muscular and energetic locks) and drishti (visual focal points) were included along with āsanas (postures) and vinyāsas (connecting movements), defining the method that Jois went on to teach. Jois stated that he had never seen the text; its authenticity is impossible to validate as no copy has ever been seen by scholars. A major component of Ashtanga Yoga absent from Krishnamacharya's early teachings

546-625: The flowing style of yoga as exercise known as Ashtanga vinyasa yoga . In 1948, Jois established the Ashtanga Yoga Research Institute in Mysore , India . Pattabhi Jois is one of a short list of Indians instrumental in establishing modern yoga as exercise in the 20th century, along with B. K. S. Iyengar , another pupil of Krishnamacharya in Mysore. Jois sexually abused some of his yoga students by touching inappropriately during adjustments. Sharath Jois has publicly apologised for his grandfather's "improper adjustments". Krishna Pattabhi Jois

585-405: The Mysore palace was constantly changing, adapted to the needs of specific pupils according to their ages, constitutions ( deha ), vocations ( vrttibheda ), capabilities ( sakti ), and paths ( marga ); the approach was "experimental". In contrast, the system that Krishnamacharya taught to Jois and that became the basis of Ashtanga Vinyasa Yoga was fixed. This may have been because Jois had to teach at

624-632: The Sanskrit Pathasala in 1933, while Krishnamacharya's other pupils were studying at his Yogasala, so he may, Mark Singleton suggests, have taught the 18-year-old Jois a simple fixed sequence suitable for a novice teacher to use with large groups of boys. Norman Sjoman notes that Krishnamacharya cited the 19th century Sritattvanidhi which documents asanas used in the Mysore palace in his early writings; his early vinyasas developed into forms more like those of Jois, something that Sjoman takes as evidence that Krishnamacharya created rather than inherited

663-495: The US several times over the next 20 years, to teach yoga at Encinitas and beyond. Parampara , the passing of knowledge from teacher to pupil (traditionally, from guru to shishya ), is said to lie at the heart of Jois's Ashtanga Yoga. Teachers are certified through many years of daily practice and extended trips to Mysore, India, to become authorized "lineage holders". Having studied under Krishnamacharya for many years, Jois expected

702-594: The West in the 1960s with The Beatles' trip to India , for a Transcendental Meditation training course at Maharishi Mahesh Yogi 's ashram in Rishikesh . Modern gurus since then have used the divine status of the traditional guru to claim that they were gods or goddesses. Some asserted they were avatars , earthly incarnations of a god, fulfilling the prophecy in the Bhagavad Gita that Vishnu would take on earthly form when

741-698: The West was in 1974, to South America, to deliver a lecture in Sanskrit at an international yoga conference. In 1975 he stayed for four months in Encinitas , California, marking the beginning of Ashtanga Vinyasa Yoga in America. Norman Allen , one of his first western students, collaborated with Jois on his trips to America. He had said on many occasions that there might be only twenty or thirty students practising Ashtanga Yoga in America then, but, 'gradually, gradually, in twenty years, it will be fully spreading'. He returned to

780-489: The aerobic schema" of modern Ashtanga Vinyasa Yoga, namely "several distinct 'series' within which each main asana is conjoined by a short, repeated, linking series of postures and jumps based on the Surya Namaskar model". Modern vinyasa yoga such as is taught by Sharath Jois (grandson of Pattabhi Jois) coordinates the breath with the vinyasa transition movements between asanas. A particular sequence of asanas, also called

819-652: The back of the house for a yoga hall. In 1964, a Belgian named André Van Lysebeth spent two months with Jois learning the primary and intermediate series of the Ashtanga Vinyasa Yoga system. Not long afterward, van Lysebeth wrote the book J'apprends le Yoga (1967, English title: Yoga Self-Taught ) which mentioned Jois and included his address. This brought Westerners to Mysore to study yoga. The first Americans came, after Jois's son Manju demonstrated yoga at Swami Gitananda's ashram in Pondicherry . To accommodate

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858-470: The early 20th century. According to Ashtanga Vinyasa Yoga's official history, Krishnamacharya learned the complete system of asanas (postures) and vinyasas (transitions) from an otherwise unknown document, the Yoga Kurunta , supposedly written 5,000 years ago by Vamana Rishi; the history tells that Krishnamacharya copied it out and taught it, unmodified, to Pattabhi Jois. However, the original manuscript

897-453: The guise of "adjustments" and sometimes under the guise of "welcoming" and "saying goodbye" to students. The number of victims is unknown, but women and men have described their experiences of abuse, with video and photographic evidence. Some well known Ashtanga Yoga teachers have come forward to corroborate the accusations. In 2019, R. Sharath Jois published an acknowledgement of his sadness over his grandfather's conduct, apologising to

936-430: The guru in the modern world is radically transformed. Globalisation has extended the guru's reach into environments where they may be a stranger, and where the religion, purpose, and status of the guru is poorly understood. Modern yoga practices are often open to everyone, without any sort of initiation into any organisation or doctrine. The modern guru Jaggi Vasudev explicitly rejected "all that traditional whatever"; all

975-518: The increasing number of students, he opened a new school in Gokulam in 2002. Jois continued to teach at the Ashtanga Yoga Research Institute in Mysore , now in the neighbourhood of Gokulam, with his only daughter Saraswathi Rangaswamy (b. 1941) and his grandson Sharath for the rest of his life. He published the book Yoga Mālā , in Kannada in 1958; an English translation appeared in 1999. His first trip to

1014-422: The modern era that there are many incompetent gurus, and that a true guru should understand the spirit of the scriptures, have a pure character and be free from sin, and should be selfless, without desire for money and fame. Following the downfalls of several gurus accused of misconduct, practitioners have publicly debated whether gurus are still necessary. As for how gurus can get away with abuse for so long, there

1053-401: The same from his students, creating among the most stringent requirements anywhere in yoga teacher training . On the full moon of June 1933, when Jois was 18 years old, he married Savitramma, who affectionately came to be known as Amma by Pattabhi Jois's family and students alike. They had three children: Saraswathi, Mañju and Ramesh. In 1948, with the help of his students, Jois purchased

1092-458: The same time Krishnamacharya departed Hassan to teach elsewhere. Two years later, Jois was reunited with Krishnamacharya, who had also made his way to Mysore. During this time, the Maharaja of Mysore, Krishna Rajendra Wodeyar , had become seriously ill and it is said that Krishnamacharya had healed him, through yoga, where others had failed. The Maharaja became Krishnamacharya's patron and established

1131-456: The same, some yoga traditions still emphasise and respect a teacher's lineage ( parampara ). For example, Gurumayi 's Siddha Yoga pays careful attention to her predecessors, Muktananda and Bhagawan Nityananda . Another major change was introduced by Vivekananda; his Ramakrishna Mission set the example of public service in education and medicine, something now practised by many other Indian religious movements. These religions thus shifted from

1170-645: The students concerned, and encouraging them to forgive his grandfather. "It brings me immense pain that I also witnessed him giving improper adjustments", Sharath wrote. In the early 21st century, Jois's grandson, R. Sharath Jois , led the Ashtanga Yoga community as director of the K. Pattabhi Jois Ashtanga Yoga Institute (KPJAYI) in Mysore. Jois's organization Sonima often provides organizational support to Sharath's world tours, and produces online programs that provide supplementary teaching tools for Ashtanga. Jois's daughter, Saraswathi, and granddaughter, Sharmila, run

1209-752: The two men's yoga systems are different; both were taught by Krishnamacharya. The obituary in The Economist questioned Jois's adherence to the yogic principle of ahimsa or non-violence, writing that "a good number of Mr Jois's students seemed constantly to be limping around with injured knees or backs because they had received his "adjustments", yanking them into Lotus, the splits or a backbend." Adjustments by Jois have been characterized as "overwhelming, producing fear and extreme discomfort in students as they are pushed beyond their physical and psychological comfort zones in often-difficult, even dangerous asana." The Economist obituary questioned Jois's adherence to

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1248-540: The vinyasas: "It was not an inherited format". Krishnamacharya used "vinyasa" in at least two different ways. One was in a broad sense to mean "an appropriately formulated sequence of steps ( krama ) for approaching a given posture". The other was a "stage in the execution of an asana". For example, in Yoga Makaranda the Sarvangasana sequence is introduced with the words "This has 12 vinyasas [stages]. The 8th vinyasa

1287-434: The world was threatened by evil. The potential for abuse in the transformed guru-follower relationship is large, and there have been multiple instances of apparent or proven sexual, mental, and emotional abuse by gurus. Anthony Storr has documented, for example, the excesses of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh ; Joel Kramer and Diana Alstad have examined the betrayal of trust that is involved. Swami Vivekananda said early in

1326-443: The yogic principle of brahmacharya or sexual continence, and made the accusation that some students received different "adjustments"; further evidence and accusations soon emerged in 2009. In 2010, it became public knowledge that Jois had systematically sexually abused some of his female and male yoga students , both in Mysore and during his travels, until his death in 2009. Some of this was straightforward sexual abuse, some under

1365-460: Was Surya Namaskar , the Sun Salutation. However, Surya Namaskar already existed, and Krishnamacharya was aware of it in the 1930s, as it was being taught, as exercise rather than as yoga, in the hall next to his Yogaśala in the Mysore palace. The Maharaja of Mysore sometimes attended classes when Jois was assisting, and offered Jois a teaching position at the Sanskrit College in Mysore with

1404-423: Was born in a Kannada Hindu family on 26 July 1915 ( Guru Pūrṇimā , full moon day) in the village of Kowshika, near Hassan , Karnataka , South India. Jois's father was an astrologer , priest, and landholder. His mother took care of the house and the nine children - five girls and four boys - of whom Pattabhi Jois was the fifth. From the age of five, he was instructed in Sanskrit and rituals by his father, which

1443-416: Was made about him by Robert Wilkins. Modern yoga gurus Modern yoga gurus are people widely acknowledged to be gurus of modern yoga in any of its forms, whether religious or not. The role implies being well-known and having a large following; in contrast to the old guru-shishya tradition , the modern guru-follower relationship is not secretive, not exclusive, and does not necessarily involve

1482-539: Was supposedly destroyed by ants, and no copy survives; neither Jois nor any other of Krishnamacharya's pupils transcribed it, as would have been expected in a traditional guru - shishya relationship. Further, Krishnamacharya "surprising[ly]" did not cite the text in his 1935 Yoga Makaranda or his c. 1941 Yogasanagalu . The Yogasanagalu did contain tables of asanas and vinyasas, and these are "comparable" to Jois's system, but far from being fixed as written in an ancient manuscript, Krishnamacharya's "jumping" yoga style at

1521-478: Was the primary means by which spirituality was expressed in India. Traditional yoga was often exclusive and secretive: the shishya submitted to and obeyed the guru, understanding that lengthy initiation and training under the guru was essential for progress. So strong was the guru-shishya relationship that Vivekananda stated that "The guru must be worshipped as God. He is God, he is nothing less than that". The role of

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