La intención siembra los beneficios de la práctica. ~ Toni Romero

Todo en la vida puede ser una actividad de salvación o condena. También el yoga puede darnos el efecto inverso al que buscamos. Es algo que aprendí practicando sirsasana. Supongo que eso es consecuencia de no haber tenido ningún profesor y haber aprendido por libre, no te beneficias de la guía, más que en el ámbito físico, sobretodo en el emocional. Así que te dejas llevar por el enorme deseo del principiante de hacerlo bien, de hacerlo perfecto. De ahí repites una y otra vez, ese proceso anula todos los beneficios, no estás disfrutando de la práctica, sino alimentando el ego, buscando esa auto-satisfacción rápida. Es algo que en mayor o menor grado

todos hacemos en distintas facetas. Es parte de nuestra naturaleza, pero ese deseo no controlado, es el fruto en gran medida del dolor y sufrimiento. Ese sobreesfuerzo te hace luchar contra tu cuerpo.
Patanjali en los yoga sutras, si mal no recuerdo, dice que una asana es perfecta cuando se hace sin esfuerzo. El tema es que si te limitas a la plasticidad, estás valorando el cuerpo por encima de la mente y el espíritu, en ese momento es cuando el yoga se convierte en circo y es una absoluta pérdida de tiempo.
Contrariamente si en este proceso aprendes a ser paciente, a no concebir una desmesurada importancia en los resultados, sino en sentir que has dado el máximo esfuerzo y así recibes todos los beneficios, la frustración desaparece. Tu cuerpo se desbloquea y realmente las asanas se abren como pétalos de flores. Las asanas fluyen y se perfecciona a la vez que la importancia que le das a ese hecho cada vez es menor y te centras más en la calidad de los beneficios, en una correcta respiración. Creo que ese es un punto importante en el aprendizaje. Es un momento crucial para ver lo que realmente estás buscando.

Yoga as Self-Transformation by Joel Kramer

For thousands of years, yoga has been a tool to open the mind and body, bringing transformation. At its core, yoga is a process that involves confronting your limits and transcending them. It is a psychophysical approach to life and to self-understanding that can be creatively adapted to the needs of the times.

Yoga transforms you by opening up the physical and mental bindsthat block your potential, limiting yourlife. Transformation is a process that brings newness and interest. You might think that changing deeply could

make you so different that you’d lose touch with those you love and even yourself. Actually, the transformation that yoga brings makes you more yourself, and opens you up to loving with greater depth. It involves a honing and refining which releases your true essence, as a sculptor brings out the beauty of form in the stone by slowly and carefully chipping away the rest.Doing yoga brings many concrete benefits: it’s a powerful therapeutic tool for correcting physical and psychological problems; it retards aging and keeps you opened sexually; it gives strength and flexibility for other physical activities; it can enhance your looks, posture, skin and muscle tone, and vitality; and it can give your life a sense of grace and overall well-being.At its deepest level, yoga involves generating energy. Energy is often thought of as a mysterious force which is either there or not, and out of your control. But through yoga, you can actually change its quality and generate more of it, by enlarging the body’s capacity as an energy transformer. Everyone has experienced different qualities of energy.Sometimes “scattered” or agitated – you’re off in different directions at once. Yet, at othertimes, you may also have great energy and be very focused and calm. Yoga involveslearning to generate energy, and also to focus it into different parts of your body. This enables you to break through physical and psychological blocks, increasing energy, which allows new interest to come into yourlife. At any instant, the quality of your life is directly related to how interested you are in it. Yoga involves far more than either having or developing flexibility. Being able to do complicated postures doesn’t necessarily mean you know how to do yoga. The essence of yoga is not attainments, but how awarely you work with your limits – wherever and whatever they may be. The important thing is not how far you get in any given pose, but how you approach the yogic process, which in turn is directly related to how your mind views yoga.There are different basic frameworks of mind – what I call “headsets” that people bring to yoga. One involves viewing a posture as an end to be achieved, a goal: how far you get in the posture is what counts. Another one views the posture as a tool to explore and open the body. Instead of using the body to “get” the posture, you use the posture to open the body. Whichever framework you’re in greatly influences how you do each posture.Approaching postures as goals makes you less sensitive to the messagesthe body issending.If your mind is primarily on the goal, the gap between where you are and where you want to be can bring tension and hinder movement. You push too hard and fast instead of allowing your body to open at its own pace. Paradoxically, if you’re oriented toward the process instead of the end results, progress and opening come naturally. Postures can be achieved through struggle, but the struggle itself limits both your immediate opening and how far you ultimately move in yoga.Valuing “progress” is a deep part of our conditioning. It’s natural to enjoy progress, but problems come when your yoga is attached at its core to results, instead of to the daily process of opening and generating energy. This attachment imposes one ofthe real limitsto your yoga.Many of you have probably noticed how your yoga is cyclical, in the sense that you’re into it, then out of it, then into it again, and so on. One reason

for thisinvolves being subtly hooked into accomplishments. When you’re improving, it turns you on, and you’re motivated as long as you continue to improve. When you “plateau” – as we all on occasion do – you need all the energy it took to improve just to maintain where you are. If your main incentive is progress, the lack of improvement can cause you to lose interest. Consequently, you may do less or no yoga until you close up and your body complains. Then you do yoga to feel better, and again you improve until once more you hit a plateau.The quality of mind that you bring to yoga is of utmost importance. In fact, most of the real limits that you confront in yoga live in the mind, not the body. People think they are limited by their body’s endurance – that tiring is purely physical.I have found it is usually not the body that tires first, but rather, themind which losesthe stamina required for attention.When your mind tires, your attention wanes and begins to wander, and sensitivity to your body’s messages diminishes. You treat the body with less care, and this

Toni Romero in Durvasana

tires it more quickly. Yoga involves a balance between “control” and “surrender” – between pushing and relaxing, channeling energy and letting go, so the energy can move you. I have found there are basically two personality types in yoga. I call them the “pushers” and the “sensualists.” The pushers are more into control and progress – the sensualists into surrender and relaxation. As yoga truly means balance, if your tendency is to push, you must also learn to let go, relax, and enjoy the sensuality of the stretch. If your tendency is to relax, and be “laid back,” you must learn to experience the turn on of pushing your edges and using control to generate energy.The art of yoga liesin learning howto focus and generate energy into different parts of the body, in listening to the body’s messages(feedback), and in surrendering to where the energy leads you. The body’s resistance should be respected, since it is useful feedback. Trying to conquer resistance and push past pain is actually another form of resistance – resistance to your own limits, to what and where you are now.When you change your focus from “resisting resistance” to channeling energy into where the limits lie, your body can follow its own flow and open on its own, with minimal resistance. Trying forcibly to push past your limits actually creates more resistance and tension, whereas surrendering to the posture ultimately draws you into far greater depth. The body will tell you when to move and deepen if you listen to it.Another important aspect in my approach to yoga involves understanding “conditioning.” Just as doing yoga is playing the edge between control and surrender, there is also an interplay between transformation and resistance to change. There’s no way to remain the way you are now: you either become more rigid and crystallized, or you break out of patterns and transform. The conditioning process brings habitsin the mind and body that accumulate over time. These patterns define you – the way you move, hold your body, what you think and even when you think. As you age, the habit taking-on process makes you more rigid both physically and mentally. Your internalsystemsfunction less efficiently and your body’s movements are more limited.I amnot presenting conditioning as a villain to be done away with, for itservesimportant functionsin people’slives, as well asin the universe. Conditioning and its ensuing habits are part of the universal process of individuation. Individual entities, all of us, are systems with self-protective mechanismsthat de-fine boundaries and keep them intact. The way we build security in our life involves habits that we are often not conscious of. Some habits are necessary. They become dangerous if we unconsciously let them direct our lives. Repeating habits over time tends to put you on automatic like a machine, and filters how you relate to the present. If your habits are rigid and deep in the unconscious, the filter is very cloudy and you miss the present. If you missthe present, you miss all there really is.Experience conditions you, leaving a mark, an imprint.

Memory lives in the cells, in the systems of the body, in the brain, and in thought itself. The paradox of experience is that it both teaches you and limits you. It expands your horizons, and is the ground or matrix from which transformation can occur. At the same time, it also builds habits in the mind and body which narrow and confine you. For instance, if you pull a muscle in yoga, this experience can teach you how applying too much force may stem from greed or inattention. It can also create habitsin your yoga. You can consciously or unconsciously avoid the area. Or, if you approach the injuredmuscle, the fear of hurting yourself againmay bring tension that closes itfurther. Asthisisrepeated, the muscle learnsto close to protect itself from anticipated pain. A habit isformed.There are habits in yoga as in everything you do repeatedly, but awareness of the nature of habits helps you avoid being automatically pushed by them. Doing postures like

mechanical exercises turns yoga into calisthenics, which dulls the adventure and passion that is part of the transformative process. Resistance to doing yoga is often feedback that your practice has become stale and habit-bound.“ Feedback-sensitivity” isthe capacity to listen to and understand the messages the different parts of the body are sending. This sensitivity is not only crucial in avoiding injuries or healing them, but it enables you to have greater control over the yogic process. For example, it is only through feedback sensitivity that you can know when to move deeper into an area or when to back off the pose.

Physical Aspects

Before going into my approach to doing physical yoga, I would like to describe how yoga affects your wellbeing. Infants are flexible; their bodies move easily. As you age, you tighten and this tightness surrounds the nerves, glands, circulatory system, the spine and energy systems. The body then becomes less efficient; energy wanes as systems slow down or get blocked. The body is less sensitive and less in touch with itself – more coated and dulled. Since a basic dimension of life is movement on all levels, the very quality of life is dimmed.The word “disease” means what it literally says: dis-ease. As the body becomes less “easy” in itself, it begins to break down. The process of yoga keepsthe physicalsystems opened and energized which prevents breakdown and illness. Yoga also has great curative potential since the postures are highly refined tools. They enable you to get into different bodily systems in very specific ways, strengthening and healing them. Yoga gives you the possibility of taking your health into your own hands.Many people only concern themselves with health when it’s gone. They lack the interest or the ability to stay in touch with the state of their various systems, until it’s too late and breakdown occurs. Doing yoga can alert you when yourreservoir of energy first begins to go down, as well as give you the means to replenish it. The preventative power of yoga is greatly aided by the fact that yoga builds sensitivity to internal feedback, helping you detect early warnings. You can then, through yoga, learn to heal yourself long before breakdown occurs.Yoga has been called a “fountain of youth” because it brings health and vitality, but this is a misnomer. The search for a fountain of youth, whether through magic, drugs, or techniques, indicates a resistance to the aging process. I prefer to call yoga a “fountain of life.” Aging isinevitable. Yoga allows you to approach it awarely as a transformative process that can bring growth and new depths with maturation. Resisting aging is actually resisting transformation and growth. Paradoxically, the resistance to aging, which includes holding on to old, inappropriate ways of living, exacerbates the very aging process you fear.In yoga you confront the living/dying processthat expresses itself in aging. Youth is a time of innocence when the body maintains and even increases its energy fund automatically. Then there comes a time, usually in the late 20’s or 30’s, when this process reverses so that the body, left to its own devices, begins gradually to lose energy. It’s possible, however, to age with continued increase in the power and efficiency of your energy. This does not happen by itself. You must deal consciously and awarely with the automatic tendencies of closure (entropy) in your body. Yoga not only counters the entropic process of breakdown, but it opens you up in new ways, bringing a way of maturing and developing with elegance, depth and richness.Doing yoga in the morning puts you in direct touch with how you have been treating yourself on the previous day. You learn to read subtle differences in flexibility, endurance, and energy. The body has its own intelligence, and being able to listen to and learn from that intelligence is an essential part of yoga. Through this paying attention, yoga can align and remold the structure of your body according to an innersense of what it needs.

Techniques of Yoga

Yoga, both as an accumulated body knowledge and as an art, involves learning and refining technique. Teachers are useful in helping expand your technical repertoire, which in turn enhances your potential for creative self-expression in yoga. Technique enables you to work the body in deeper ways, and it also helps hone focus and attention. However, it is important to keep in mind that although technique has its own aesthetic quality – its own beauty – it is a meansfor transformation, not an end in itself.

Attention & Focus

The essence of yoga is focus and attention – attention to breath, to the body’s messages, to energy, and even to the quality of your attention. Over the years, I have found that the way I do yoga is continually changing. Deepening your practice is notso much learning to do more advanced postures, but rather increasing your understanding of how to do yoga. Precision in technique can make yoga, even in very basic postures, more focused and exciting, and can deepen your understanding of what yoga is about.Learning to do yoga is, among other things, learning to love doing it. Not necessarily all the time, but as a general presence in your life. You can love someone who on occasion frustrates or angers you, yet the love remains underneath. If

Toni Romero in Pungu Kukkutasana

you’ve been doing yoga forsome time and you don’t love doing it, thisin itselfis an indication that the way you are approaching itshould be questioned. At any place in a posture, are you turned on, interested in being there? If you find you’re not, this most likely means your mind issomewhere else.Perhaps you’re stoically enduring the pose so you can feel you’ve done what you “should” or “what’s good for you.” You could also be struggling to achieve the final goal, which may be a completed posture, or yesterday’s level of flexibility. If your attention and interest are not in the body, you are not fully present in the posture.Attention in yoga involves letting go, a relaxation that surrenders to the “what is” of the posture. Here you are alert and watchful, but not passive. It’s the body that “decides” when to hold, when to back off, when to deepen, and when to come out of the posture.Yoga developsthe ability to focus energy into specific areas, which generates energy whether you’re stretching or relaxing in a pose. Learning to focus energy with great depth and precision is a vital part of yoga that is often not emphasized. This ability does not depend on flexibility, but rather on a quality of mind that is able consciously to sense the body for tightnesses and blocks, and then focusinto them.By “attention” I mean a broadening of the spectrum of awareness, which occurs when the mind lets go of control and direction. “Focus” is more one-pointed than attention and, of course, involves control. Although focus and attention are different, they are intimately connected.It isthrough being attentive that you learn where to focus, and deeper focus brings a capacity for a greater attention. This is another way that yoga plays between control and surrender.

Breath

Breath is the fuel of life (traditionally called “prana”). In yoga it serves as a bridge between the mind and the body, since it operates on automatic and can also be consciously controlled.Breath is a cornerstone of technique. Learning to use it effectively is a key to deepening your yoga, since it directly increasesstretch,strength, endurance and balance. I use a variation of “ujjayi,” which is deep-chest breathing that lengthens the breath through glottal control. The pull of lungs across the glottis on inhale and the push of lungs on exhale help you move in the postures and deepen them, while at the same time relaxing you.In posturesthat involve folding, compacting, and forward-bending, you move and stretch on the exhale while holding and relaxing, or aligning on the inhale. Conversely, stretches that expand the lungs and chest are done on the inhale, relaxing or aligning on the exhale.Breath itself is an interesting lesson in control and surrender. By using breath, instead of the mind, to guide and control movement and stretch, the body can let go,surrendering to the posture more easily. When breath and body are coordinated, so they are moving as one, energy flowsinto the musculature, totally changing the quality of yoga. The proper use of breath gets you out of yourmind and into your body, bringing a grace and sensuality to movement impossible when the mind is in control. This way of using breath gives a relaxed and centered attention to the whole organism, and can also be used to focus energy into different parts of the body.

Playing Edges

Another important dimension in yoga is learning how to “play the edge.” The body has edges that mark its limits in stretch, strength, endurance, and balance. The flexibility edge can be used to illustrate this. In each posture, at any given time, there is a limit to stretch that I call the final or “maximum edge.” This edge has a feeling of intensity, and is right before pain, but it is not pain itself. The edge moves from day to day and from breath to breath. It does not always move forward; sometimes it retreats. Part of learning how to do yoga is learning how to surrender to this edge, so that when it changes you move with the change. It is psychologically easier to move forward than to back off. But it’s as important to learn to move back if your edge closes, as it is to learn to move forward slowly asthe body opens.There is a subtle psychological addiction to a completed pose, or at least to our maximum extensions. The tendency to push toward maximum extension quickly, puts you out of touch with the body’s feedback and makes you come out of the posture sooner. Out of the memory of how flexible I was yesterday,I can be unconsciously pushing toward thatremembered level of flexibility, being content if I meet it, enthused if Isurpassit, and disappointed if I cannot reach it.Each posture ideally involves the whole body, even though postures usually have one or more major areas where the stretch is most deeply felt. If you reach for your maximum edge too quickly, you bypass many areas. This givesthe illusion of a completed stretch, but the body may not be properly aligned, nor really as open asit can be. Opening the ancillary areas of the body before you reach for maximum extension, helps insure proper alignment and ultimately deepens the major stretch.There is another less obvious edge that is very easy to miss: I call it the first or “minimum edge.” This edge occurs while moving into the posture where the body meets its very first resistance. In beginning a pose, initially you move with ease until the first hint of the sensation of blockage or holding appears. This is the first edge, and it’s very important to stop here to acclimatize yourself, realign the posture, and become aware of your breath and deepen it. Your attention should be in the feeling, waiting for it to diminish, at which point the body will automatically move to greater depth and a new edge will appear. This process repeats itself until you eventually reach your final edge. By thistime, your body has opened with minimal resistance or effort. Often the more slowly and carefully you treat your early edges, the deeper your final edge will be. Building endurance involves staying longer at the early edges and moving slowly toward intensity, for the closer you are to your final edge, the less endurance you tend to have. Also learning to hold the posture at intermediary edges until you can deepen and slow the breath, enables you to relax along the way. Playing edges slowly in this fashion has the advantage of giving you better alignment throughout the whole process, and a sharper capacity to listen to feedback, which enables you to enjoy greater levels of intensity without pain, and minimizes the possibility of injury. Edge-playing also allows you to get in touch with the sensual nature of the posture and the quality of feeling in the stretch,so that each pose can become an aesthetic experience.

Pain & Feedback

It is vital to know the difference between pain and intensity. The line between them might sometimes appear nebulous, but it is actually well defined by the state of your mind. Pain is not only physical, but psychological, too, for it involves a judgment of discomfort – not liking to be there. If you are running from the feeling, it’s pain. Intensity that is not pain generates an energy and sensuous quality that turns you on.Fear and ambition can often cloud the difference between pain and intensity. If you’re afraid of hurting yourself, low levels of feeling can be interpreted as pain and therefore avoided, whereas ambition can make you ignore or tolerate pain. If you are fearful in a posture, it is wise not to try to override the fear in orderto be “courageous,” since thismakesinjuring yourself more likely, creating a self-fulfilling prophecy. Instead you can play on the edge of fear: find a place in the posture where you’re not afraid, but near where the fear comes in; hold this position, deepen the breath, and wait for relaxation to come and the body to open. Only then do you move forward. If you are aware of being ambitious in a posture, I strongly recommend you stay with your first edge longer and move through your intermediary edges slower. This will bring a feedback sensitivity that can help counter the tendency to ignore the body’s messages.Pain is often hard to recognize as it isn’t necessarily sharp or intense, nor does great intensity always mean pain. If the feeling issuch that you are trying to get away from it, it’s pain. If you are afraid, even at relatively low levels of intensity, this is your edge, by definition. You can become less fearful by opening slowly, rather than pushing past psychological limits.Running away from pain can take different forms: stoically enduring, waiting to get the posture over with, thinking of something else, or rushing the posture. These states are often feedback indicating discomfort. Pain causes inattention in the pose, actually increasing the likelihood of overextending the body and pulling a muscle. Most injuries in yoga are brought about by ambition or inattention – usually both. Ambition in a posture takes many forms: holding it a prescribed length of time, trying to stretch as far as someone else, unconsciously reaching for remembered levels of flexibility, or trying to achieve or reproduce psychic states. Ambition is a characteristic of thought, and therefore a fact of life, as is comparison. You cannot eliminate ambition through effort, for the very effort is ambition. Awarely playing the different edgesturns your attention away from ambition to the body’s feelings. Ideally a posture should not bring pain. Pain is feedback – if you ignore it or try to push past it, you will eventually hurt yourself. Doing yoga with habitual discomfort colors your attitude toward yoga, making you more reluctant to do it. It also turns yoga into a chore, instead of the joy it could be.

Lines of Energy

In addition to breath and playing your edges, there is a third dimension to physical yoga.This dimension involves channeling energy to different parts of the body by creating whatI call “lines of energy.”These lines of energy are vibratory currents that move in different directions within each posture. Descriptions of internalstates are approximations at best. Even the word “energy,” when it is used to signify an inward level of activation, may seem vague. Yet we are aware of having more or less energy. If you pay attention, you may notice that some parts of the body seem alive and vital, while others feel dead and blocked. You may also notice subtle currents moving in the body. This should not be surprising since the body has a hydraulic (circulatory) and an electrical (nervous)system.Most of the stretching done in postures primarily involves muscles and tendons. But there is another kind of stretching that I call “stretching in the nerves.” Here you use the muscles to stretch the nerves, creating an energy flow, instead of to gain extension in the posture. The focus is on creating an internal current in the nerves that can be felt and intensified. The intensity of this current in the nerves can be controlled by the muscles and has a vibratory feeling, usually moving in an outward direction. For example, you can create an internal line of energy by holding your arm parallel to the floor and stretching it outward. This brings a vibration that moves from the shoulder out the arm, through the fingers. Each posture has its own lines of energy which can be created at different stages in the posture, and which complement one another and work together to involve the body as a whole.These lines of energy affect your yoga in several ways by: 1) increasing energy within the posture, 2) toning and relaxing the nervous system, 3) decreasing the likelihood of injury through over extension of muscular stretch, 4) increasing strength and endurance in postures, and 5)internally aligning the body in the pose.Concern for proper alignment in a posture is important; however, many people exclusively use external methods to get aligned – such as having another person, who hopefully knows alignment. adjust their body, or trying to approximate a picture or ideal of a completed pose. External methods are useful at times, but I feel it is only when alignment is done internally, by the body’s own intelligence, that a posture is truly “understood.”In the Triangle pose, the arrows in figure one mark the direction of five lines of energy. Strengthening the flow of the current along each of the lines automatically aligns the body from the inside. When the posture is properly aligned, the currents of energy flow more freely. This can be felt. These lines of energy break through blocksin the body without “forcing” the posture and ultimately give greater extension.If in the Triangle, you emphasize the line from shoulder through the raised arm to the finger tips, it opensthe chest and aligns the pelvis. The back leg line moves from the hip down the leg into the outside of the foot, raising the arch. This line also alignsthe pelvis and freesthe hip.The front leg linemoves from the buttock down the leg to the foot, aligning the front knee in a plane with the pelvis. The line moving up the spine outward elongates the spine, giving it room to move. This also unlocks the hip and works in opposition to the back leg line. The fifth line, from the shoulder down to the fingertips of the lower arm, helps keep the shoulders in the same plane as the pelvis, and also helps move the posture to greater depth.These lines are actually moving the energy in five directions and creating different oppositions of musculature. Using muscle sets in opposition can allow you to separate different parts of the body (and in other postures, even vertebrae of the spine) from each other, creating control, extension, energy and release. It islearning to create and channel lines of energy that makesthis possible. In figure 2 the extension is much less than figure 1. Assume this is the place of first resistance – the first edge. By deepening your breath and consciously increasing the five lines in the posture, you are doing what I call “stretching within the pose” or “nerve-stretching,’’ instead of muscle-stretching, which isreaching for greater extension. This alignsthe body throughout the pose, helping you let go ofinitial resistance, and allowsthe body to draw you in more deeply.

Levers

There are three basic kinds of “levers” orforcesthat help move the muscles: 1) external levers (floor, wall, and other objects), 2) body-on-body levers (where one part of the body moves another), and 3) internal levers (where the muscleslearn to lever themselves without external aid).External levers are the easiest to use and internal levers are the hardest to learn. But it is important whenever possible to use internal levers, since they teach you how to move yourself from the inside. This builds sensitivity in the tissue and also gives the kind of control necessary to deepen your yoga. It is easiest to injure yourself using external levers because you are applying force to the body from the outside. Body-on-body levers also exert force from the outside, but allow more sensitivity to feedback.It is hard to injure yourself using internal levers because it’s difficultforthe body to push itself beyond itslimits from the inside. All internal levers depend on lines of energy to work properly. (However, not all lines of energy are internal levers.) Learning how to use these levers opens yet another dimension in yoga.Understanding the PostureIhave foundthat amore importantframeworkthanmentally aiming to “get” the final pose, is “understanding how the posture works.” When attention and focus, edge-playing, levers, and lines of energy interweave so that these seemingly disparate elements become one, then you understand how the posture works. Understanding a posture is not just knowing with your mind how to place the body. The understanding comes when the muscles and nerves, and even the cells themselves, “know” how to work the posture.There are many different ways of using breath, edges, lines of energy, alignment and levers in combination and separately. For example, you can focus on deepening and lengthening breath at the first edge; when breathing becomes regular, change your focusto creating one line of energy.Assoon asthe body holdsthisin a relaxed way, you can add a second line of energy.You could also let go of one energy line and turn your attention to a different line. Another technically more difficult way of approaching the same posture is slowly to create and intensify all the lines of energy at once, using breath to control the intensity. Lines of energy bring whatI call a dynamic relaxation to the muscles, for although the nerves are generating a current of energy, the muscleslet go and eventually move to greater extension. When you understand how the posture works and follow where the energy of the body leads you, often you find that what you think is a completed pose hasfurther extensions and possible variations.

Psychological Aspects

Resistance

Transformation, change, growth, actualizing potential - these are very positive sounding idealsthatmost people who do yoga strive for. Yet all of us who are involved in any growth process face resistance. In yoga there is resistance in the tissue, resistance to doing yoga, resistance to changing the habits and lifestyles that impede growth. As a person who has been involved with yoga and growth-oriented activitiesfor years, itseemingly would be nice if I could tell you that I have conquered resistance. I have not. I do not feel that it can be totally conquered, although it need not be a significant problem either. You can learn to use it as a teacher, for resistance can teach you where your habits and attachments lie. It can also teach you where you block yourself and where you are selfprotective. In order to go into this, I would like to discuss more of the psychological aspects of yoga.That the mind and body affect each other is obvious. Psychological tensions live in the musculature: when you are “up tight,” you are literally tightening the muscles and blocking energy. Through years of accumulated tensions, the body becomes a repository for the unconscious, in that it “learns” to close off different physical areas that affect emotional states. For instance, a compressed chest literally makes it harder to experience deep emotions. The strength of the emotions that may come from opening your chest can make you uncomfortable,so you may resist opening that area.So much of what limits our yoga practice is not in the body itself, but rather mental attitudes and habits. Resistance in posturesisin the mind as well asin the body.Mental resistance can take many forms – forgetting, excuses, so-called “laziness,” even illness and injuries. If you can minimize mental resistance, that is the key to eventually working through the physical resistance. As you get deeper into Hatha (physical) Yoga,it becomes increasingly necessary to get to know the nature of the mind.Mostofustotallyidentifywithourmind, callingitourselves. Without realizing it isjust one of the systemsthat makes up a human being. The importance of the mind is enormous, and its power so great, that it often ignores, subverts, or overrides the other systems that have their own intelligence. Our body may tell us we’re not hungry, yet we eat; or when tired, we push ourselves. Though yoga can make us more attuned to the wisdom within the tissue, it isthe mind that must interpret this. How the mind interprets is directly related to its nature and its experience (conditioning). We don’t usually think of the mind as structured and conditioned, because our mind is like a lens that we view ourselves and the world through – a given, that we rarely question. Yet there are principlesto how the mind works, just like there are principlesto how the body works. Understanding them opens up the mind and body to hitherto unimagined possibilities, and is a doorway to transformation.Looking at resistance can reveal the nature of mind, for what we are resisting is often the very thing we say we want. Why do I do yoga at all? How much of my yoga is fueled by fear – of aging, of dying, of losing energy? How much of my yoga is driven by ambition – for accomplishment, for higher states of consciousness,for youth and health,for vibrancy? Of course, we all have fears and ambitionsthat we bring to yoga. The problem is not that we have them, but rather that they take over our yoga, often unconsciously. When this happens, the mind is oriented either to the past or the future, and loses contact with the living process of yoga: how the musclesfeel, the energy being generated, the subtle changes which require great attention. If you become aware of how the motives that underly fear and ambition can limit your practice, this does not necessarily eliminate them or your other reasons for doing yoga.It can, however, help you put them aside during your practice,so that you can be less mechanical and more present and attentive.

Habits

Have you ever asked yourself why you do things that you know aren’t good for you? Not, “how do Istop? but, “why do I do them at all?” Another way of asking is, “What is the nature of self-destructiveness?” Most of us think we would like to have more energy, but if we look carefully and honestly, we see that we keep our energy controlled within safe boundaries. If our energy gets too low, the fabric of our life falls apart. We need a certain amount of energy to keep it together. Less obviously, if your energy gets too high, it can push you out of your habits and the security and pleasures they are linked to. Many activities take a certain energy level – some high, others low. For example, you can’t watch television if your energy is too high, for you become restless. If, for whatever reason, you are attached to TV, you may overeat to bring your energy down. Here you are unconsciously controlling your energy with overeating, which is self-destructive, in order to preserve a pleasure. Doing yoga properly increases energy, which pushes against mental and physical habits, while the habits, by their nature, resist change.“Bad habits” can be looked upon as a way of resisting change by hooking you to immediate gratification, which is a powerfulsource of conditioning. The taste of food, for example, can give immediate pleasure. The power of taste makes it difficult not to let it rule you, which puts you out of touch with using food for energy and nourishment. The feeling of being out of control, unable to resist temptation, is usually a sign of physical or psychological addiction, and has mechanical aspects that keep you on automatic. Though you “know” the pleasure is not worth the pain it will cause, it is still often surprisingly difficult to resist it. Self-destructivenessinvolves, among other things, going for an immediate pleasure, even though the end result is pain. Part of the resistance to doing yoga stems from a deep reluctance to let go of the pleasures within the addictions. Doing yoga awarely can unhook you from those habits and addictions.When you recognize what an important role mind plays in yoga, you can see why exploring the mind is essential. As conditioning in the body narrows the body’s movements, so do habits in the mind tend to make you more “narrowminded.” A narrow mind involves more than just being attached to a particular set of beliefs. It narrows the whole field of perception and also cuts off emotional responsiveness and empathy. Rigidity in the mind constricts mental movement and consequently limits the field of what is possible for you in life. The beliefs, values, headsets, and even the wants that live in thought create self-images that determine what you think, imagine, and therefore what you do. In physical yoga, the process of confronting and nudging the body’s limits, blocks, and conditionings opens and transforms you. So, too, as you get to know your mind, how it works and where your psychological limits are, the process opens the mind and literally expands consciousness.How much do memory, expectation, and immediate grati-fication affect the way you do yoga? What thoughts come up during your yoga practice? Are there postures you look forward to doing, while you avoid others? Do you hurry the ones you don’t like to get them over with? Does your mind wander? Do you contemplate what posture to do next, how long you have left to go, or what you’re going to do after yoga? These types of thoughts may cross your mind while doing yoga. Naturally, they greatly influence how you do the pose and the quality of energy generated.Most of us involved in yoga tell ourselves we want to grow. If we look honestly at this, what we generally mean by “growth” is keeping everything about ourselves and our lives that we like, getting rid of what we don’t like, and getting more of what we think we’re going to like. Real growth and transformation move you not only from things you don’t like, but also from pleasures and habits you’re attached to. You cannot be certain how you would be if you were different or in what direction growth will take you. Real growth has aspects of unpredictability in it that can not only alter your habits, but even the very likes and dislikes, or preferences, that underlie them.People often ask this kind of question: “To do yoga, will I have to give up wine and steak?” It’s important to understand that the fear of giving up or losing certain pleasures (whatever they may be) can bring the reaction of holding on more tightly, which limits your yoga and growth. There are so many pleasures and habits that define your life – your very personality. The old, by its nature, has a comfort. Even your problems and “hang ups” are a form of security against change. Some habits and pleasures are appropriate only during certain periods of life. Others can remain fitting, if modified, while still others might meaningfully stay with you over your lifespan. Whether what you are doing is in fact “right” for your life is a basic question that cannot be answered through formulas. One of the real gifts yoga gives you is more sensitivity to life, which moves you toward what is appropriate for you.In the process of yoga, habits and ways of being can leave or modify on their own. This is not to say there is no resistance to letting go of old pleasures, or that you do not have to use intelligence to free yourself from aspects of your life that are no longer appropriate. Rather, the energy of yoga, and the awareness it brings, make more obvious what is and is not conducive to your well-being. The day-to-day practice of yoga gives you messages that are very difficult to ignore.There is an edge that each of us must confront between growing, which is an adventure, and holding on to security. Some security is necessary as a base to move from, while too much dampens growth and dullslife by keeping newness out. One of the remarkable things about yoga is that it generates energy that opens you, while building both the physical and psychological strength to assimilate change into your life. This gives an entirely different kind of security – the security of knowing that you can respond to whatever challenges life may bring.

Competition & Comparison

Have you ever noticed how much of your day-to-day life you spend thinking? Thought can be very mechanical and repetitive. In different situations you have certain thought patterns which are so much like tapes that I call them “mental cassettes.” They serve many purposes. For example,some mental tapesreduce tension, others channel anger to hurt or hurt to anger (depending on which you’re used to and more comfortable with). Many of these tapes also evaluate and judge. How much of your life do you spend feeling either “better than” or “worse than?” What thoughts bring these feelings? We use our minds to control how we feel as best we can. Often controlling how we feel gives immediate relief or gratification, but causes more severe long-term problems. For example, if I am envious of you and also think envy is bad, or a sign of how unevolved I am, I suppress it with thought. I talk myself out of feeling it consciously, or pretend I don’t feel it at all,and hide it from myself by burying it deep within the body’s tissues. This is the stuff of tension.Yoga is usually presented as being noncompetitive. At its heart, this is true, but that doesn’t mean yoga is free from competition at all times. As you get more deeply into yoga, the competitive aspect of mind must be looked at, for if you don’t explore it, competition can occur automatically, and take you over unawarely. Either you channel yourself toward accomplishment, ultimately resulting in injuries, or you try to suppress competitiveness, which closes you to the learning that can only come through comparison. If you subscribe to a value system that judges competition to be bad, it makes it harder to see it should it arise in you. This impedes selfknowledge, and closes and tightens you.If you look very carefully at competition,you will find that its roots lie in comparison, which is a basic mode of thought. The very notion of “progress” implies comparison. You may say that you can be competitive with yourself without comparing yourselfto others. Thisis partially true, but it is important to see that being competitive with yourself has aspects of competitiveness with others in it. Standards of excellence or progress do not exist in a vacuum, but arise in the context of what other people are doing.The mind that compares is a useful and necessary tool, for day-to-day comparison is a basisforfeedback. Doing yoga daily is a very direct way of tuning in on how you have been treating yourself on the previous day, as well as seeing long-range trends. Diet, emotions, conflict, stress, and relationships affect you and your yoga. These aspects of life can be used as feedback that can help you learn how things affect each other. Reading feedback of thissort is based on comparison.Wanting to progress has a self-competitive aspect – wanting to be as good as or better than yesterday, or last year. Also, comparing yourself with others, whether you like it or not, is inevitable. Comparison, and its extension competition, cannot be eliminated through effort, no matter how much you might want to. Trying to be non-competitive is competing with yourself or others on how non-competitive you are.If you think you are succeeding, (and the mind can convince itself of anything), this can feed feelings of superiority, which is competition. The meditative state of mind that is essential for the necessary attention in yoga transcends competition, not by fighting it, but rather by seeing its place asfeedback, and also seeing itslimits and dangers.Comparison is an integral part of perceiving change, but I can subtly begin to compete – with myself or others – in how much or how fast I am changing and transforming. In this way, even the idea of transformation can become yet another goal to be achieved. Transformation is an endless process to be lived, that cannot be captured or possessed – you can only participate in it.

Evolution

Yoga, at its core, is looking within to understand the timeless question, “Who am I?” As you delve into the deep regions of your being, the knowledge that comes is not merely about you, the individual, but includes the understanding of yourself as part of the total fabric of life.When the parts ofthe whole open up to each other, breaking the boundaries ofseparateness, real communication, which is communion, occurs.Movement is at the core of energy, relationship, growth – it is at the heart of life itself. Evolution is the way movement expresses itself throughout the universe. Evolution can be looked upon asthe movement of formstoward

greater complexity and adaptability. This is, however, only the external form, the skin, of evolution, which makes possible the most basic movement: the evolution of awareness. Maturation and evolution come when the spectrum of awareness broadens, becoming more inclusive.Yoga brings opening and movement deep within the very fi-ber of your being, and expands consciousness, enlarging your capacity for depth of communication. This self-transformation opens you to a more profound relationship with life, and also to an aware participation in the evolutionary process. In the last analysis, these two things are one.

Intervew with K. Pattabi Jois: Practice Makes Perfect By Sandra Anderson

Happiness on the face, light in the eyes, a healthy body-these are the signs of a yogi, according to the Hatha Yoga Pradipika, the classic Sanskrit text on hatha yoga. Such a description fits K. Pattabi Jois, who at the

age of 78 has the straight spine and smooth face of a much younger man. He laughs easily, beaming when we are introduced in a steamy New York studio, and asks if I would take yoga with him. According to the Pradipika, hatha yoga is taught for the attainment of raja yoga, also known as ashtanga yoga, the complete, eight-limbed path to self-realization, but few emphasize the importance of attaining perfection in posture and breathing as a means of achieving the other limbs as clearly as Jois does.



Born in 1915 in southern India, K. Pattabi Jois met his guru, Krishnamacharya, who was also B. K. Iyengar's teacher, while still a young boy. He has been teaching yoga since 1937, and students from all over the world come to study with him in his home in Mysore, India. He has visited the United States several times, and although this is his first visit to New York, most of the students in this morning's class seem to know the sequence he teaches.



It's hot. The windows are closed, and the already humid air is thick with the labored breathing of 35 sweating bodies. The students groan and sigh. For some, the sequence appears to unfold effortlessly, but still their bodies glisten with sweat. Jois is everywhere encouraging-a hand here, a foot there, a joke wherever it is most needed. He calls out the sequence of postures in a strong deep voice, using their Sanskrit names.



There's no laziness here: only determined hard work and a grace born of strength and flexibility, as the class moves from one posture to the next, pausing only to hold the pose, and linking the postures with a spine-flexing sequence reminiscent of the sun salutation and similarly coordinated with the breath. "Exhale, chatwari (chaturanga dandasana), inhale, pancha (urdhva mukha svanasana)." Jois establishes discipline but tempers it with gentle humor and affection, as he teases students, verbally and physically, into places they didn't realize they could reach.



And if the coaxing, the energy in the room, and the peer pressure aren't enough, there's the heat. In spite of the mats, there's hardly a dry spot left on the crowded hardwood floor at the end of this rigorous two-hour

session. The sequence of postures continuously flowing with the breath is designed to stoke the fire of purification-to cleanse the nervous and circulatory systems with discipline and good old-fashioned sweat. "Practice, practice, practice," Jois says later, addressing a small group of students gathered in a loft in Soho. He spoke at length about the method he uses, emphasizing that he has added nothing new to the original teachings of his teacher and the Yoga Sutra.



Where did you learn yoga? From my guru, Krishnamacharya. I started studying with him in 1927, when I was 12 years old. First he taught me asana and pranayama. Later I studied Sanskrit and advaita philosophy at the Sanskrit College in Mysore and began teaching yoga there in 1937. I became a professor and taught Sanskrit and philosophy at the College for 36 years. I first taught in America in Encinitas, California, in 1975. Now I'm going all over America. I will teach anyone who wants the perfect yoga method-ashtanga yoga-just as my guru taught me.



Do you also teach your Western students Sanskrit? No, only asana and pranayama. You need Sanskrit to understand the yoga method, but many people, even though they would like to learn Sanskrit, say they have no time. It is very important to understand yoga philosophy: without philosophy, practice is not good, and yoga practice is the starting place for yoga philosophy. Mixing both is actually the best.





What method do you use to teach asana and pranayama? I teach only ashtanga yoga, the original method given in Patanjali's Yoga Sutra. Ashtanga means "eight-step" yoga: yama, niyama, asana, pranayama, pratyahara, dharana, dhyana, samadhi. The Yoga Sutra says "Tasmin sati svasa prasvasayor gati vicchedah pranayamah (II.49)." First you perfect asana, and then you practice pranayama: you control the inhalation and the exhalation, you regulate the breath, you retain and restrain the breath. After asana is perfected, then pranayama can be perfected. That is the yoga method.



What is perfect asana, and how do you perfect asana? "Sthira sukham asanam (YS II.46)." Perfect asana means you can sit for three hours with steadiness and happiness, with no trouble. After you take the legs out of the asana, the body is still happy. In the method I teach, there are many asanas, and they work with blood circulation, the breathing system, and the focus of the eyes (to develop concentration). In this method you must be completely flexible and keep the three parts of the body-head, neck, and trunk-in a straight line. If the spinal cord bends, the breathing system is affected. If you want to practice the correct breathing system, you must have a straight spine.



From the muladhara [the chakra at the base of the spine] 72,000 nadis [channels through which prana travels in the subtle body] originate. The nervous system grows from here. All these nadis are dirty and need cleaning. With the yoga method, you use asana and the breathing system to clean the nadis every day. You purify the nadis by sitting in the right posture and practicing every day, inhaling and exhaling, until finally, after a long time, your whole body is strong and your nervous system is perfectly cured. When the nervous system is perfect, the body is strong. Once all the nadis are clean, prana enters the central nadi, called sushumna. For this to happen, you must completely control the anus. You must carefully practice the bandhas-mulabandha, uddiyana bandha, and the others-during asana and pranayama practice. If you practice the method I teach, automatically the bandhas will come. This is the original teaching, the ashtanga yoga method. I've not added anything else. These modern teachings, I don't know. . . I'm an old man!



This method is physically quite demanding. How do you teach someone who is in bad shape physically?
Bad shape is not impossible to work with. The yoga text says that yoga practice makes you lean but strong like an elephant. You have a yogic face. A yogic face is always a smiling face. It means you hear nada, the internal sound, and your eyes are clear. Then you see clearly, and you control bindu [the vital energy sometimes interpreted as sexual energy]. The inner fire unfolds, and the body is free of disease.



There are three types of disease: body disease, mind disease, and nervous system disease. When the mind is diseased, the whole body is diseased. The yoga scriptures say "Manayeva manushanam karanam bandha mokshayoho," the mind is the cause of both bondage and liberation. If the mind is sick and sad, the whole body gets sick, and all is finished. So first you must give medicine to the mind. Mind medicine-that is yoga.



What exactly would mind medicine be? Yoga practice and the correct breathing system. Practice, practice, practice. That's it. Practice so the nervous system is perfect and the blood circulation is good, which is very important. With good blood circulation, you don't get heart trouble. Controlling the bindu, not wasting your bindu, is also very important. A person is alive by containing the bindu; when the bindu is completely gone, you are a dead man. That's what the scriptures say. By practicing every day, the blood becomes purified, and the mind gradually comes under your control. This is the yogic method. "Yogas chitta vritti nirodhah (YS: I.2)." This means that yoga is control over the modifications of the mind.



We've been talking mostly about yoga practice as asana and pranayama. How important are the first two limbs of ashtanga yoga, the yamas and niyamas? They are very difficult. If you have a weak mind and a weak body, you have weak principles. The yamas have five limbs: ahimsa [nonviolence], satya [truthfulness], asteya [non-stealing], brahmacharya [continence], and aparigraha [non-possessiveness]. Ahimsa is impossible; also telling the truth is very difficult. The scriptures say speak that truth which is sweet; don't speak truth which hurts. But don't lie, no matter how sweet it sounds. Very difficult. You tell only the sweet truth because he who speaks the unpleasant truth is a dead man.



So, a weak mind means a weak body. That's why you build a good foundation with asana and pranayama, so your body and mind and nervous system are all working; then you work on ahimsa, satya, and the other yamas and niyamas.



What about the other limbs of ashtanga yoga? Do you teach a method of meditation? Meditation is dhyana, the seventh step in the ashtanga system. After one step is perfect, then you take the next step. For dhyana, you must sit with a straight back with your eyes closed and focus on the bridge of the nostrils. If you don't do this, you're not centered. If the eyes open and close, so does the mind.



Yoga is 95 percent practical. Only 5 percent is theory. Without practice, it doesn't work; there is no benefit. So you have to practice, following the right method, following the steps one by one. Then it's possible.

The term vinyasa is used to describe what you teach. What does it mean? Vinyasa means "breathing system." Without vinyasa, don't do asana. When vinyasa is perfect, the mind is under control. That's the main thing-controlling the mind. That's the method Patanjali described. The scriptures say that prana and apana are made equal by keeping the ratio of inhalation and exhalation equal and by following the breath in the nostrils with the mind. If you practice this way, gradually mind comes under control.



Do you teach pranayama in the sitting postures also? Yes. When padmasana [the lotus sitting posture] is perfect, then you control your anus with mulabandha, and also use the chin lock, jalandrabandha. There are many types of pranayama, but the most important one is kevala kumbhaka, when the fluctuations of the breath-the inhalation and exhalation-are controlled and automatically stop. For this you must practice. Practice, practice, practice. When you practice, new ways of thinking, new thoughts, come in your mind. Lectures sound good; you give a good lecture and everyone says you're so great, but lectures are 991/2 percent not practical. For many years you must practice asana and pranayama. The scriptures say "Practicing a long time with respect and without interruption brings perfection." One year, two years, ten years . . . your entire life long, you practice.



After asana and pranayama are perfect, pratyahara, sense control [the fifth limb of ashtanga yoga], follows. The first four limbs are external exercises: yama, niyama, asana, pranayama. The last four are internal, and they automatically follow when the first four are mastered. Pratyahara means that anywhere you look, you see God. Good mind control gives that capacity, so that when you look, everything you see is Atman (the God within). Then for you the world is colored by God. Whatever you see, you identify it with your Atman. The scriptures say that a true yogi's mind is so absorbed in the lotus feet of the Lord that nothing distracts him, no matter what happens in the external world.



What is your parting advice for those who have a desire to pursue yoga? Yoga is possible for anybody who really wants it. Yoga is universal. Yoga is not mine. But don't approach yoga with a business mind-looking for worldly gain. If you want to be near God, turn your mind toward God, and practice yoga. As the scriptures say "without yoga practice, how can knowledge give you moksha [liberation]?"

Tristana from the book ashtanga yoga by John Scott

La verdadera esencia de vinyasa se experimenta cuando se alcanza el estado de tristana, que es la unión de los tres principales centros de atención del Ashtanga Yoga: la sincronización avanzada de la respiración y el movimiento, los bandhas y los dristis. Cuando esta unión florece, una poderosa ola de fluidez y elegancia emerge de la práctica, y la química resultante despliega las energías de los cinco elementos:

• Tierra: mula bandha que produce base de apoyo,estabilidad y fuerza.
• Agua: la fluidez de vinyasa que produce sudor. 
• Aire: la respiración ujjayi y los bandhas que aportan agilidad.
• Fuego: el fuego digestivo purificador de agni.
• Éter:.el sutil prana que todo lo invade.

Tristana se alcanza con la repetición; sólo así seconsigue la familiaridad necesaria para realizar las transiciones y las posturas de forma sutil, natural y elegante.

El hilo de la mente. ~ Toni Romero

La expansión de nuestra conciencia, del nivel de conectividad con el universo a lo divino, transita en direcciones opuestas circulares. Son dos grados de compresión que se retroalimentan en orientaciones opuestas, pero de ningún modo puede llegar a entrecortase. Tomando una forma metafórica de una galaxia elíptica donde finalmente convergen los puntos en un centro teórico donde todo es succionado en sí mismo. El cultivo del autoconocimiento va llevando a la experiencia interna de los movimientos casuales que se suceden de forma espontánea y sin control. Adentrando en la mente uno va tomando conciencia de esos procesos internos, a la vez de los reflejos externos en las capacidades físicas del propio cuerpo. Eso va creando un cordón conectivo hasta la extensiva universal, uno puedo sentirse parte integral de todo el sistema universal tejido como una telaraña a nuestra alrededor. Ese flujo de conocimiento se constituye con el latido divino. Podemos remover ese hilo como una serpiente que rompe todas las ataduras emocionales, sociales que nos sujetan en la pasividad de la verdadera naturaleza de la mente. Llegado a un punto de extrema conexión es cordón o atadura entre el yo y el flujo mismo del universo es succionado por el núcleo elemental hasta que el continente-contenido son identificados con lo mismo e innombrable por infinito.

Krishnamacharya's Legacy (yoga journal, By Fernando Pagés Ruiz)

Whether you practice the dynamic series of Pattabhi Jois, the refined alignments of B.K.S. Iyengar, the classical postures of Indra Devi, or the customized vinyasa of Viniyoga, your practice stems from one source: a five-foot, two-inch Brahmin born more than one hundred years ago in a small South Indian village.

He never crossed an ocean, but Krishnamacharya's yoga has spread through Europe, Asia, and the Americas. Today it's difficult to find an asana tradition he hasn't influenced. Even if you learned from a yogi now outside the traditions associated with Krishnamacharya, there's a good chance your teacher trained in the Iyengar, Ashtanga, or Viniyoga lineages before developing another style. Rodney Yee, for instance, who appears in many popular videos, studied with Iyengar. Richard Hittleman, a well-known TV yogi of the

Sri T. Krishnamacharya

1970s, trained with Devi. Other teachers have borrowed from several Krishnamacharya-based styles, creating unique approaches such as Ganga White's White Lotus Yoga and Manny Finger's ISHTA Yoga. Most teachers, even from styles not directly linked to Krishnamacharya—Sivananda Yoga and Bikram Yoga, for example—have been influenced by some aspect of Krishnamacharya's teachings.

Many of his contributions have been so thoroughly integrated into the fabric of yoga that their source has been forgotten. It's been said that he's responsible for the modern emphasis on Sirsasana (Headstand) and Sarvangasana (Shoulderstand). He was a pioneer in refining postures, sequencing them optimally, and ascribing therapeutic value to specific asanas. By combining pranayama and asana, he made the postures an integral part of meditation instead of just a step leading toward it.

In fact, Krishnamacharya's influence can be seen most clearly in the emphasis on asana practice that's become the signature of yoga today. Probably no yogi before him developed the physical practices so deliberately. In the process, he transformed hatha—once an obscure backwater of yoga—into its central current. Yoga's resurgence in India owes a great deal to his countless lecture tours and demonstrations during the 1930s, and his four most famous disciples—Jois, Iyengar, Devi, and Krishnamacharya's son, T.K.V. Desikachar—played a huge role in popularizing yoga in the West.
Recovering Yoga's Roots

When Yoga Journal asked me to profile Krishnamacharya's legacy, I thought that tracing the story of someone who died barely a decade ago would be an easy job. But I discovered that Krishnamacharya remains a mystery, even to his family. He never wrote a full memoir or took credit for his many innovations. His life lies shrouded in myth. Those who knew him well have grown old. If we lose their recollections, we risk losing more than the story of one of yoga's most remarkable adepts; we risk losing a clear understanding of the history of the vibrant tradition we've inherited.

It's intriguing to consider how the evolution of this multifaceted man's personality still influences the yoga we practice today. Krishnamacharya began his teaching career by perfecting a strict, idealized version of hatha yoga. Then, as the currents of history impelled him to adapt, he became one of yoga's great reformers. Some of his students remember him as an exacting, volatile teacher; B.K.S. Iyengar told me Krishnamacharya could have been a saint, were he not so ill-tempered and self-centered. Others recall a gentle mentor who cherished their individuality. Desikachar, for example, describes his father as a kind person who often placed his late guru's sandals on top of his own head in an act of humility.

Both of these men remain fiercely loyal to their guru, but they knew Krishnamacharya at different stages of his life; it's as if they recall two different people. Seemingly opposite characteristics can still be seen in the contrasting tones of the traditions he inspired—some gentle, some strict, each appealing to different personalities and lending depth and variety to our still-evolving practice of hatha yoga.
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.

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.

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

Sri T. Krishnamacharya

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.

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.

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

Sri T. Krishnamacharya Y Sri K Pattabhi Jois

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.

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.

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

Sri T. Krishnamacharya y BKS Iyengar

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.

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.

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

Sri K Pattabhi Jois y BKS Iyengar

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.

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.

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.

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.

By Fernando Pagés Ruiz