Lineage and Tradition of Ashtanga

Introduction

The Ashtanga Vinyasa Yoga system is a method for practicing yoga that takes its name from the practice the sage Patanjali describes in the Yoga Sutras. While Patanjali doesn’t describe or explain asana, much less create a series of postures or alignment principles, what he does do is describe a process of spiritual liberation. This process is, in many ways, at the heart of the yoga practiced in studios worldwide every day. More commonly known as “the eight-limbs limbs of yoga,” Patanjali’s Ashtanga outlines a yoga practice of 8 limbs that, when practiced with sincerity, will calm the mind down so that it functions with clarity and sees reality as it. The Ashtanga Vinyasa Yoga method seeks to leverage yoga posture and a ritualized practice to achieve Patanjali's objective some 1,700 years ago.

History of Ashtanga Yoga

Ashtanga, simply put, is a lineage-based practice that was developed by Tirumalai Krishnamacharya (November 18, 1888 – February 28, 1989) and his student K. Pattabhi Jois (26 July 1915 – 18 May 2009) and spread throughout the world by students of the Ashtanga Yoga Research Institute (AYRI) in Mysore, India which was established by Pattabhi Jois in 1948 and continues today under the guidance of his grandson, Sharath Jois, the current head of the tradition.

Legend has it that the Ashtanga Vinyasa series originated in an ancient text called the Yoga Korunta, compiled by Vamana Rishi and given to Krishnamacharya by his Guru Rama Mohan Brahmachari at Mount Kailash in the early 20th century. Little is known about the Yoga Korunta today, and no known copy is thought to exist. Because of this, the Yoga Korunta is thought by many to be a legend created by Krishnamacharya.

Krishnamacharya

Krishnamacharya was a devoted scholar of formal logic, Sanskrit grammar and Indian philosophy, studying at many of India’s most prestigious universities and learning centers. As part of his studies, Krishnamacharya would eventually travel to Northern India, to Mt. Kailash, to study with the renowned teacher Rama Mohan Brahmachari. With Brahmachari, he studied asana, prãnãyãma, mudra and therapeutic yoga practices. As payment for his studies, Brahmachari requested only that Krishnamacharya “take a wife, raise children and be a teacher of Yoga.”

After his studies with Brahmachari, Krishnamacharya moved to Mysore, India, where he would eventually teach Sanskrit at Mysore University. He soon gained notoriety for performing yoga feats, demonstrating difficult asanas and breath manipulation. In Mysore, Krishnamacharya was immersed in the physical culture of the time. His exposure to acrobatics, wrestling and gymnastics would eventually influence his vision of the future of yoga. It was a time of great expansion for yoga. In the early 20th century, teachers from southern India, like Bishnu Ghosh, created written guides full of postural shapes similar to Krishnamacharya’s asana system.

Krishnamacharya, a student of medieval hatha and tantric texts, recognized an opportunity to merge a ritualized, fluid sequence of fluid with modern innovation emerging in from research being done on exercise science and human physiology. He envisioned a singular system that could serve as a vehicle for deeper, transformative aspects of yoga. The flowing Surya Namaskar, which became the basis for vinyasa, was not considered yoga asana at the time.

The early system created by Krishnamacharya is known as “vinyasa krama,” in which the practice is divided into smaller sequences and subroutines that approach specific bodily needs. He would tailor his teachings to address specific concerns of the person or group he was teaching. Because every person’s physiology is different, their bodies dictate their own physiological requirements that should be considered in terms of their yoga practice.

While working with the convalescing Maharaja of Mysore, Krishnamacharya was asked to set up a yoga shala, or yoga school. It is said that it was at this time that he created a krama-based posture sequence, implementing a specific krama for the young boys who lived there. The practice he created fused what was taught in the Yoga Korunta, his studies in tantric-based flowing sequences, and contemporaneous physiology and exercise science. This practice became a template for what we know today as Ashtanga Vinyasa Yoga.

Mark Singleton argues that earlier yoga pioneers Yogendra, Krishamacharya, and Kuvalayananda seemingly “seamlessly incorporate[d] elements of physical culture into their systems of ‘yoga’

Many notable past and present-day teachers were among his students, such as Sri K. Pattabhi Jois, B.K.S. Iyengar, Indra Devi, Shrivata Ramaswami and Krishnamacharya’s son T.K.V. Desikachar. Each of his students taught a different practice focused on the needs of different populations of students. Krishnamacharya’s early iteration of Ashtanga vinyasa, a physically demanding practice, was considered successful at channeling the hyperactivity of young minds. It was taught to the young boys living in the Mysore Palace. He would eventually commission Pattabhi Jois to teach this particular practice, an athletic practice that strengthens the mind, body and spirit.

Pattabhi Jois

Pattabhi Jois is responsible for the Ashtanga Yoga the world knows today. As he learned to teach yoga, as commissioned by his teacher, he studied texts such as Patañjali’s Yoga Sūtra, the Haṭha Yoga Pradīpikā, the Yoga Yajñavalkya and the Upaniṣads. The Maharaja of Mysore would attend classes when Jois was assisting and offered Jois a teaching position at the Sanskrit College in Mysore with a salary, scholarship to the college and room and board. Pattabhi Jois held a yoga teaching position at the Sanskrit College from 1937 to 1973, becoming vidwan (professor) in 1956 and being an Honorary Professor of Yoga at the Government College of Indian Medicine from 1976 to 1978. He taught there until 1973, when he left to devote himself full-time to teaching yoga at his yoga shala, which he originally opened in 1948.

Ashtanga is a lineage-based practice where the guru, initially Sri. K. Pattabhi Jois authorized students to teach based on their progress as a student. This process grants authority to teachers and maintains the integrity of the practice. Those authorized teachers are included on a list of approved teachers trusted to teach in the Ashtanga tradition. Since the early 1980s, influential Ashtanga yoga teachers have been partially responsible for the spread of vinyasa to the West. , including Richard Freeman, Mary Taylor, Nancy Gilgolf, Tim Miller, Kino McGregor, Edie Stern, John Scott and many others.

Over the years, many of the West’s most respected yoga teachers have studied in Mysore under Pattabhi Jois or his grandson Sharath Jois, who currently holds the lineage since Pattabhi Jois died in 2009. Of these, many have opened studios, or yoga schools, of their own. Because only the head of the lineage is allowed to authorize teachers, many continue to travel to Mysore to study. This is a stark departure from the Yoga Alliance process for certifying yoga teachers, leaving many of the most knowledgeable yoga teachers in the West uncertified by alliance standards.

Recent years have seen fundamental changes in the Ashtanga community. While the Jois lineage continues to thrive, variations, spinoffs and mutations have emerged, for better or worse. Many authorized teachers have distanced themselves from AYRI in Mysore following damaging sexual assault allegations raised against Pattabhi Jois as a much too-late result of the me-too movement. This has caused discussion about the role of yoga teachers in all yoga communities and caused a loosening of the traditional role of the “guru” culture that has always kept the Ashtanga community practicing under the same banner. At the same time, many senior teachers have taken pains to communicate that the Ashtanga system is not tied to Jois, using their place in the community to re-focus the practice on the students where it should be. Biomechanics and modern understanding regarding anatomy have become a focus in many of these studios, removing some of the athleticism in favor of a more mindful and contemplation variation of the practice.

Some senior teachers like Richard Freeman and Mary Taylor, founders of the Yoga Workshop, continue to value the essence of lineage but also have taken pains to modify their teaching to fit the needs of their students. An example of this is the use of props. Where many Ashtanga studios refrain from using props, Richard and Mary encourage props when needed and seek to meet the student where they are at. At the same time, as Buddhist practitioners, they teach an approach to yoga philosophy that resists dogmatism in favor of inclusivity and acceptance, valuing compassion over ideology.

“An integral part of all classical schools of yoga is their lineage or tracing of their roots from teacher to teacher to teacher. The importance of a lineage to any tradition is that, due to the interplay of different perspectives brought together by generations of teachers, the teachings automatically encompass subtle breadth and depth—a merging of awakening minds. The presence of lineage guarantees a transmission of the most essential and subtle experience of yoga, which otherwise can be missed in the shadow of the ego.” — Freeman + Taylor