As we sit here looking out at Ubud’s luscious green ricefields, it seems almost unreal that we were in India just a week ago. Not just any old place in India, but Mysore. Magical Mysore, the ‘source’ of Ashtanga Vinyasa yoga: the place where Sri T. Krishnamarcharya, the ‘father of modern yoga’ taught at the Sanskrit College and established a yoga shala at the Jaganmohan palace under the patronage of the Maharaja in the 1930s.The place where Sri K. Pattabhi Jois, otherwise affectionately known as Guruji, studied yoga with his Guru Krishnamarcharya in 1927 and who went on to be a Professor at the Sanskrit college of the Mysore Palace until 1973. The place where Guruji then dedicated the remainder of his life from 1974 until his passing in 2009 to teach the practice of Ashtanga Vinyasa yoga in his home, the Ashtanga Yoga Research Institute, first in the neighbourhood of Lakshmipuram then moving to the neighbourhood of Gokulam, to a larger Shala, as the number of international students wanting to practice with him rocketed. The place where Sharath Jois, Guruji’s grandson, now heads up the Ashtanga Yoga Research Institute, with support from his mother, Saraswati, and to where thousands of students continue to flock each year for the ‘season’ which usually runs from October to March.
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