Sharath’s First Conference of the Season
By Suzanne El-Safty
22 October 2011
Last Sunday Sharath gave his first conference of this season (it’s
taken me forever to write this up – too many classes and too little
sleep this week). The conference was short as it was the first day and
Sharath didn’t want to overwhelm the new students (‘lot of new students,
is good, means Ashtanga Yoga is spreading’).
He started by speaking about appropriate behaviour in Mysore –
appropriate dress (not beach clothes, women should wear a shawl to cover
themselves), not standing in big groups at the coconut stand, avoiding
making unwanted ‘friends’.
Sharath then described how yoga first came to Mysore (I’ve added a
few details here in order to be precise and complete; additional details
have been taken from the book ‘Guruji’):
In the early 1900s Tirumalai Krishnamacharya (a yoga teacher and
scholar, often referred to as ‘the father of modern yoga’, his students
include Shri K. Pattabhi Jois, B.K.S. Iyengar and T.K.V. Desikachar) was
touring India to try to spread
hatha yoga. In 1927 he went to
Hassan to give a yoga demonstration and, fortunately for us, watching in
the audience was a 12-year old Pattabhi Jois (the grandfather of
Sharath). Pattabhi Jois was so impressed by the demonstration that he
asked Krishnamacharya if he could become his student and the following
day began his yoga practice. At that time yoga was not held in high
regard and Pattabhi Jois had to keep his practice secret from his
family.
In 1929, at the age of 14, Pattabhi Jois ran away from home with
just 2 rupees in his pocket and went to Mysore to further his study of
Sanskrit at the Maharaja Sanskrit College. In 1931 Krishnamacharya also
moved to Mysore and Pattabhi Jois was able to continue his studies with
him for the next 22 years, until 1953 when Krishnamacharya moved to
Chennai.
In 1937 the Maharaja of Mysore set up a yoga department at the
Sanskrit College and appointed Pattabhi Jois as its head; Pattabhi Jois
then taught there until his retirement in 1973. And in 1948 Pattabhi
Jois established the Ashtanga Yoga Research Institute (the predecessor
of KPJAYI) at his home in Lakshmipuram, a suburb of Mysore.
Prior to Krishnamacharya all of the great yoga masters had been in
the north of India, and people at that time believed that yoga was only
meant for
sadhus and sannyasis (wandering monks, renunciants),
that in effect the practice of yoga led to a withdrawal from society.
Krishnamacharya changed this – he demonstrated that anyone can do yoga.
Sharath finished by saying that this lineage from Krishnamacharya is not anywhere else in the world and that in order to learn
Ashtanga Yoga we have to study through this lineage.
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