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| Guruji and Richard Freeman |
It would be part of any yoga teaching. The question is: Does the system
work. or does the collection of systems and methodology work? And in
many cases, in many schools of yoga, not a lot is happening. Yoga tradi-
tionally has been passed down from teacher to student over thousands of
years. and often the lineages are broken, so it is like a wire that is broken
and no current flows through it, so the actual internal teaching doesn't
get transmitted.
Do you know how far back this lineage goes beyond Krishnmnacharya's
teacher? Do we know anything about Rama Mohan Brahmachari's teacher?
No, we don't. Of course, Guruji has a family lineage which is the lineage
of Shankaracharya. And he is constantly making reference to Shankara-
charya. to teachers in the Shankaracharya lineage, and he has much in-
volvement in that, and his yoga gum, Sri Krishnamacharya, also has his
yoga guru and his family lineage. It's a complex thing to study.
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| Shankaracharya |
How important is a guru when practicing yoga, and how does Guruji perform that function of separating the light from the darkness?
The guru is practically the key to the whole system. I suppose in theory,
if one were extremely intelligent and extremely lucky and extremely kind,
you could learn yoga from a book and you could do very well and get very far. But with a teacher, you develop a relationship. and something right at
the heart of that relationship carries the essence of the practice, and so
the various techniques that you might learn, even the various philoso-
phies you might leam, are placed in an immediate context by the guru.
That context is simply one of complete, open relationship, complete
presence. It's a great thing. So if there's a great teacher around, take ad-
vantage of it! If there's no teacher around, practice anyway.
How would you characterize Guruji's teaching method?
When I first met Guruji, he reminded me very much of a Zen Buddhist
teacher in that he used very few words in his classes. The words he
would use were like koans, they were puzzling, at least to most of the
students. And often, he was just trying to wake you up with what he was
doing. It wasn't so much the content of what he was saying. He would
sometimes try to distract you or to place you in a kind of double bind
where you might just laugh and let your breath flow and all of a sudden
find yourself doing a posture that you had feared two minutes before.
l remember doing backbends in Mysore with Guruji. We were just
standing and arching back and grabbing our knees which is, if you think
about it, very scary at times. I was all set to do it with my arms crossed
and he looked at my shorts which were soaking wet and cotton and he
said, “Oh, nice material!" just as I was starting to drop back and made me
completely forget my preconceptions. And the backbend was no problem
at all.
When there is fear going into a pose, does he have a technique to take you
deeper, beyond your body's apparent natural capacity?
l think what he does is he makes you drop your presuppositions, your
preconceptions about your body and therefore about your limitations.
Oftentimes you'll approach him and say, “Oh Guruji, this muscle is hurt-
ing" or "This bone has this problem." And he'll just look at you and say,
“What muscle?" In other words, he is inviting you again to look with a
completely fresh mind to see if there is anything really there. And by
dropping the concept you have around a sensation or feeling, you release
them. Many times the concept is the limiting factor. He's a master at
that: seeing if there is some fear or some attachment. And usually, in a
very kind, sometimes gentle, sometimes abrupt way, he'll get you to re-
frame a situation.
ls he imparting that skill to Sharath?
l think naturally he is. That's just the way he relates to people, and so
Sharath is bound to pick it up I think.
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| Guruji and Sharath |
Guruji immediately present, which is an intense way to practice. So
Sharath experiences sometimes a lot of pain, sometimes his own fear,
and so he is very sympathetic with the students, very compassionate, be-
cause he has learned to be compassionate with himself when he prac-
tices. Guruji is also that way, but he doesn't do asana practice anymore
and so he just takes you right into it.
From the book "Guruji: A Portrait of Sri K. Pattabhi Jois Through the Eyes of His Students" Richard Freeman excerpts part1 (1/3)
From the book "Guruji: A Portrait of Sri K. Pattabhi Jois Through the Eyes of His Students" Richard Freeman excerpts part2 (3/3)
