Four Stories of the Tsunami

As the train took us down the western coast of Sri Lanka from Colombo to Galle, we were shocked by the disastrous effects of the Tsunami that had hit four years earlier. Entire lots of ruined houses, others with only building foundations left; stacks of bricks, piles of shredded cement walls, shack-towns where people have been surviving ever since their belongings and past lives were washed away by the furious water.

The Tsunami hit most severely the East coast which is part of the territory claimed by the Tamil Tigers and regarded as dangerous to access, meaning that the relief efforts were diverted from this area. It’s hard to evaluate what damage was caused or what rebuilding has taken place there given its state of isolation. The Tsunami then wrapped around the South and licked the West coast, reducing in intensity as it went north.

Unawatuna is a beach just south of Galle, on the South western tip of Sri Lanka, known by local and foreign tourists for its beauty and peacefulness. The Tsunami hit the coast line very brutally, destroying most of the town. Most people were able to save themselves by fleeing to the hills just behind the village. Four years later, we found memories to be just below the surface, though most people at least partially rebuilt their lives, sometimes thanks to donations and direct relationships with tourists. Tourism has not really picked up since then, mainly due to the civil war up North, and tourists unfortunately avoid the island for fear of being unsafe.

In Unawatuna we felt a general sense of struggle; most shops and guesthouses are family owned and are the sole means of livelihood. Hotels were generally below 50% occupancy – and this was high season - and many restaurants had only one or two couples seated for dinner. This year the peak season lasted only 2 weeks, around New Year, with mainly Singhalese tourists from Colombo coming down to party.

The people we talked to maintain their hope for better days and asked us to spread the word, to let the world know that Unawatuna is rebuilt and that the island is safe. And it is, provided you don’t venture into the far North where the war is still active.

Wikipedia states that this earthquake was the biggest in the Indian Ocean in the last 700 years. Of the death toll of 225 000, Sri Lanka lost 45 000 people and displaced 500 000. The Tsunami hit Unawatuna around 9:20 am the day after Christmas, 2004.

Sunil, our friendly rickshaw driver, was parked as usual along the road just above the beach, hanging out with colleagues in front of a hotel, waiting for customers. At first, water slowly came onto the road and started rising; he and his buddies didn’t understand what was happening. He got out of the rickshaw and as the water continued to rise his vehicle started floating. At first he tried to keep it from getting out of control by standing next to it and holding on to the handlebars, but soon understood he couldn’t control it and let go.
By now he knew something dramatic was taking place.
This was the first wave that came slowly and was only a few feet deep.

Left: Example of water receding during the Tsunami in Kata Noi Bay, Thailand.
Right: In Unawatuna, the water receded beyond the rocks at the edge of the bay.

Then, the water in the entire bay receded about 1500 feet before the second, destructive wave arrived. Imagine a bay full of the ocean, starting to empty itself. There was only wet sand...

The next wave then came over the road, powerfully, 4, 5, 6 feet of water, progressively gaining height to attain 22 feet, By then the tumultuous liquid mass, seething and swirling on all sides was taking everything with it; the stalls along the beach, restaurants, shops, small hotels, vehicles... and all the people who couldn’t hang on to something or who were trapped in rooms. There were floating pieces of construction materials everywhere, ripped off of houses; iron bars, beams, entire pieces of rooftops, corrugated metal …
Sunil was swept inland several hundred feet. The most difficult thing for everyone was to avoid being hit by the massive, sharp debris. Sunil caught a branch of a mango tree and hung to it, waiting for the water to calm down, trying to collect himself and consider what to do next. As the water mass slowed down he started swimming between the debris as best he could, with his right calf severely injured by a metal bar. He finally ended up in front of the second story of the Neptune Bay Hotel.

A tourist on a balcony caught his hand and pulled him out of the water. He was out of danger, but badly bleeding and was administered basic first aid on the spot. Five hours later, once he got to the Temple on the hill, he discovered that his family was safe. They had all fled up the hill behind the town at the first signs of the strange water behavior.
Sunil’s family had made friends over the years with some Dutch tourists. Aware of the impact of the Tsunami on Unawatuna, they contacted his family shortly after the disaster and directly funded a period of recovery, enabling him to rebuild his house, get a new rickshaw and replace the sewing equipment and material for their tailoring shop. The opportunity to help and be helped enabled these two families to become like one, forever bonded. The Tsunami was a trauma from which Sunil’s family came out whole.
Simona has been in Unawatuna for 22 years and created the Secret Garden guesthouse (http://www.secretgardenvilla.lk/) many years ago. Three days before the tsunami hit, in the height of the tourist season, she decided to go visit her mother who was going to be alone for Christmas in Switzerland. Simona had never left at this time of year before but felt she had to be with her 90 year old mother. She left her friend Danny in charge of the guesthouse.
That morning Danny saw the first water coming into the guesthouse garden. He had to get all of the guests awake, out of their beds and take them somewhere safe. He ran around the garden yelling “OUT, GET OUT” and guided people to follow him through the back of the garden. Nine of the ten guests were able to climb up the hill behind the guesthouse before the wave destroyed the buildings practically to the ground. One lady could not follow as quickly as the others and was caught in the water. She held on to a tree branch until the water stopped rising, and on Danny’s direction finally caught a floating door. Danny jumped in the water and swam to her, bringing her back to safety.

Simona arrived the next day. It would be four months before she would start cleaning up the grounds and rebuilding, and another 18 months to complete the rebuild. Though she didn’t say a word about it, we suppose that during that time she was instrumental in collecting funds from Europe and helping the community organize itself during the crisis. The guesthouse started to live again in 2006, practically two years after the tsunami hit. Staying several days in this lush tropical oasis, it was hard to imagine what had happened.

Chandana, our articulate guide and tuk-tuk driver, 24 at the time, was hanging around with colleagues waiting for customers on a street 100 yards removed from the beach. When the first water came through, they continued talking and even joking about how strange it was that there could be that much water on the road. Only when the water receded did they realize something critical was happening. He ran with his friends to the hill, knowing that his family house and all of his belongings would probably disappear. As he went up the hill, the second, main wave was coming; he saw it destroy the beach side buildings and later, take his rickshaw.

Chandana was relieved to know that his family was safe on the hill. After the disaster, friends of his tried to retrieve the dozens of rickshaws that were in the water, hoping they would repair them and get back into business. When they hauled them out of the bay they discovered the lightweight vehicles hadn’t resisted the power of the water and the floating debris, and were just good to sell for scrap metal.

Without insurance, how were they going to start their lives again? Months later Chandana met some Dutch tourists who decided to buy him a brand new tuk-tuk. He has been very grateful to have been helped in this way and has a special perspective on foreigners, seeing them as compassionate friends rather than only as sources of revenue.
Dimuthu aka "Jungle Boy", our dear Mister Do It All at the Secret Garden guesthouse, was 17 when the Tsunami hit. He was working at one of the beach hotels and saw the water progressively coming in. He stayed with his buddies, observing and chatting, until they were surprised by the second wave. Just in time, he was able to climb on the rooftop of the second floor of the hotel and saw the disaster happen before him.


The hotel started swaying and tilted to one side, but further resisted the pressure of the water. Dimuthu was able to rescue several people and pull them onto the roof, that held up. His siblings and father lived in the jungle on the hill, so he knew they were safe. The hotel had to be demolished and was out of business, and like most people in Unawatuna, Dimuthu lost his job. When Simona started cleaning up the Secret Garden and rebuilding the guesthouse, she called upon him since her son and Dimuthu were childhood friends. After that she offered him a job as caretaker; he is now hoping some day to go to Ireland and live with his girlfriend.

It took months for Unawatuna to take care of all the displaced families in refugee camps. There was literally nothing; no roof, no food, no utensils, no clothes. Little by little, some areas started to be cleaned up and rebuilt. Funds arrived sporadically through organizations and private individuals. Westerners established on the island, like Simona, became a conduit for funds to come directly from private donors. Tourists who had visited Unawatuna previously were compelled to help. Private initiatives emerged as the Sri Lanka government was unable to cope in the first weeks. Singhalese and foreigners alike benefited from these private funds to rebuild their houses and businesses.
Nandana, our friend in Kandy who is a psychologist, went to the coast to help Tsunami victims with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. He believes that the predominantly Buddhist Singhalese culture helped people rapidly recover and start to rebuild their new lives. The collective nature of the Singhalese identity, highly interdependent, supportive of and supported by the community, the intrinsic acceptance of forces greater than us and of what life deals to us helped them work through the trauma and loss with resilience.

This cultures has a low locus of control and considers life as driven mainly by external forces. This enabled its people to come to terms with the shock easier than if they were from a culture such as mine in the US, where the exercise of control over our lives is considered a criteria of sanity and well being… and makes life more neurotic when we are not in control, such as in accidents or natural catastrophies.

The aftermath of the Tsunami widely varied depending on whether people lived in a tourist area of “economic value” - such as Unawatuna -, that also enabled potential relationships with foreigners, or if they lived on one of the coastal strips that never see a tourist, or worse one that is politically isolated like the North Eastern Coast.

Today, in Unawatuna the waves come 30 feet further inland than they did four years ago. The village has mended its external scars but despite their recovery, each person’s story revealed vivid memories and emotions.

Above all, they hope now for a better future, bringing some prosperity back to their beach in paradise.

Just a travel update - from southern Sri Lanka

We’re now in Unawatuna, a beach town near Galle, on the South Western tip of Sri Lanka, on a few days of “vacation”, celebrating our one year of traveling through Thailand and India!

Since my fall in the stairwell eight weeks ago, I’ve been progressively, albeit slowly, recovering. It’s taken me this time to feel anything close to “normal”, and energy is still in limited supply. Recovering while traveling India is a challenge, even if you stay as quiet as possible.

Once out of the Ayurvedic hospital we headed to Alleppey, in Kerala, southern India, where our dear friend Don from California had come to celebrate the holidays with us. We spent a week at a homestay directly on the Kerala backwaters, a beautiful, extensive network of lakes, lagoons and canals bordered by coconut and palm trees and vibrant with wildlife. This was the very first nature setting we had experienced in 4 months. We were so lacking silence, nature and wildlife, especially in the five week confinement of the hospital. Being in a tropical water garden was a total feast for our senses. We rested at the homestay, took a long motor boat ride, discovering the villages strung along the canals. Don and I also took a couple of sunrise and sunset canoe rides. We spent a memorable Christmas Eve on the edge of the water, merrily singing Christmas carols with a couple of British guests.

Canal through tropical vegetation~~~~~~~~~~View from our homestay

We then went an hour north to Fort Cochin for another week, a quaint, old Portuguese and Dutch port. By then I could walk without a crutch and started to stroll around town, visiting the Chinese fishing nets that were brought there hundreds of years ago. We loved the Dutch palace and Jew town, one of Fort Cochin’s most picturesque neighborhoods, with buildings dating from the 16th century and rich architectural antique stores and yards. The fantastic variety of ancient doors, furniture and house accessories got me thinking about getting back into the antique business!

We spent New Year’s Eve dining on Indian white wine and cheese on a small terrace above the courtyard of the Malabar House restaurant, where festivities of music and dance were taking place for the guests. It was a very special way to welcome 2009!


Cochin Carnaval~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~Chinese fishing nets
A night train to Chennai brought us back to the East side of southern India, to catch our plane to Sri Lanka. For the past months we had been working out where to get a visa renewal (the options were Nepal, Thailand or Sri Lanka) and had reservations about coming here, not knowing what the situation would be in the North between military and the Tamil Tigers who have been at war for the past 27 years. Having read many different tales of travelers, we were wondering what to expect. In the two weeks here, we've been enchanted by the people, the sites and the general atmosphere.
Avoiding Colombo and its big city hassle, congestion, frequent police blocks-searches and pollution, we went directly to Negombo, a beach town to the north of the airport. The next day a van took us to Kandy, the ancient capital in the mountains, in the center of the country.
The Temple of the Tooth with the relic's shrine golden roof
Buddhist devotional candles and incense
Kandy has the main Buddhist temple in Sri Lanka, the Temple of the Tooth, where lies an actual tooth relic of the Buddha. There, it took a week to renew our visas for India – only 3 month visas were granted instead of the six months we had hoped for, which is changing our plans for the future.

We discovered a good deal of Kandy and some of central Sri Lanka – the bit my weak energy allowed towards the end of our stay: a tea factory, a spice garden, an elephant orphanage and a mountain meditation retreat that Nandana, the owner of Shangri-la guesthouse in Kandy, is creating.


Shangri-la guesthouse~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~Assortment of teas

Having lunch above the elephant orohanage bathing pool

Sri Lanka is very different from India and reminds me of Malaysia or Thailand. It’s a predominantly Buddhist country with Muslim, Hindu and Christian minorities; you feel the Buddhist influence in people’s behavior. They are generally calm, tolerant and welcoming. We immediately observed that people care about their environment. It’s clean and organized; you can actually expect vehicles to respect some road rules, and even to stop when you cross the street, a big contrast with the Indian traffic free for all where the law of the biggest prevails. So it’s been very relaxing to take a well needed break from busy India where we had been for the past 10 months.
Kandy, 4:45 am. Kamala next to a clear, antique timetable
The VERY crowded train to Colombo (picture taken from outside the window)

Two days ago we came by train to Unawatuna on the south-western coast for a few days, before heading back to India. Singhalese trains are like antiques, with woodwork inside, thinly padded seats, narrow wagons and bumpy, rough suspension and track layout. It took 6 hours, leaving at 5am and the train got very crowded with commuters one hour before arriving in Colombo.



We’re now immensely appreciating our little bungalow in the Secret Garden, a beautiful guesthouse in a luxuriant garden, held by Simona, a Swiss woman who has lived here for 22 years. Writing this at 8:00 am, the sound of chanting from the yoga class in the meditation hall is mixing with the tropical birds in the garden. We've had several conversations with locals about the Tsunami, that hit Sri Lanka's East, West and South coasts very severely, with a death toll of 45 000. I will write some stories on this topic.

It’s been a gift to change environments and be able to completely relax. Discovering Sri Lanka has changed our view of where we want to live and where I will network for my next job. South East Asia was my initial target and this experience brings me back to that vision. We will be deciding what will follow in the next 3 months.

Our bungalow at the Secret Garden~~~~~~~~~~Relaxing at night above the beach

Back in India we’ll head to Goa for 6 weeks of yoga workshop with Sharat, our Iyengar Yoga teacher from Dharamsala. This will be a new challenge to my weakened body; working out will help me recover to my best.

2009 is going to be the year of us finding our new spot in the world. Though today location and employment are still to be defined, we are looking forward to the adventure of settling down, getting back to work and creating our new life.

More committed to and passionate than ever about my profession, I am integrating the cultural and personal learning of this year into my coaching and consulting practices. You can read more about this in “Being a cultural alien”, “The Yoga of Alignment” and “How everything is perfect when I let go of control and handle my priorities”, blogs to come in the next few months.

Namasthe

Krishnamacharya Yoga Mandiram

Krishnamacharya Yoga Mandiram (KYM) is the one and only thing that brought us to Chennai early September 2008 to attend a one month, holistic yoga course called “Universal yet Personal, the Yoga of Krishnamacharya” followed by a 2 week class focused on Vedic chanting, named “Pilgrimage of Sound”, that covered Vedic chants, methods and ancient texts.

KYM has the unique value of being an established school coming from a lineage of masters, with structured programs, proven methods, knowledgeable and fluent English speaking faculty and multiple departments (Vedavani, the chanting branch; the Yoga Therapy department which is the principle activity of KYM).
KYM is recognized by the Indian government as a charitable organization, i.e. non-profit, and leads daily outreach programs that provide yoga instruction to the mentally and physically disabled and to underprivileged communities around Chennai.

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Sage Patanjali ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~T. Krishnamacharya

Sri T. Krishnamacharya (1888–1989) was the teacher of four 20th century world-renown yoga masters: BKS Iyengar, Patabi Jois who created Ashtanga yoga, Indira Devi and TKV Desikachar, who happens to be Krishnamacharya's son. He studied 30 years with his father before Krishnamacharya passed away at age 101. Desikachar founded the Krishnamacharya Yoga Mandiram in 1976 (see www.kym.org) as an offering to his teacher, with the goal of perpetuating his father’s teachings. Desikachar’s son, Kasthaub, following his father’s steps, created the Krishnamacharya Health and Yoga Foundation in 2003 (http://www.khyf.net/) to spread Yoga and Vedic chanting knowledge around the world through trainer certification courses.

25 people attended the one month yoga class; most were from the US, Germany, Australia, Spain and the UK, and mainly referred here by their teachers. We’ve found that people who come to India to perfect their yoga are often calm, insightful and self aware. Someone who invests their vacation time and money to come all this way is committed to yoga, and their attitudes reflect that.

As I wrote on my previous blog “Chennai the small town of 4.5 million”, we love Chennai and the neighborhoods where we lived. But it’s also a tough place, environmentally speaking. The air and water quality are very bad, it’s dirty, and a number of people arriving directly from abroad fell sick for a few days during that month. We were staying about 20 minutes away from the school by rickshaw and would return in the evening through the polluted Chennai traffic. This improved drastically after our first month when we moved 5 minutes walking distance away from the school. With a very full schedule, at the end of the day we were ready to go home, have some dinner and get to bed…

Schedule
5:50 Get up
7:00 Our landlord drove the 6 students staying at his guesthouse to school
7:30 - 8:30 Asana (postures) and Pranayama (breathing) practice
8:30-9:00 Breakfast
9:00-10:00 Principles of Asana (texts focused on postures, such as Hatha Yoga Pradipika)
10:00-11:00 Yoga philosophy (mainly Patanjali Sutras)
11:00-12:00 Vedic chanting practice
12:00-3:00 Lunch break
3:00-4:00 Application of yoga (functions and adaptations of postures, yoga therapy)
4:00-4:10 Chai break
4:00-5:00 Meditation
5:15-6:30 guest speakers 2-3 times per week

The KYM quality statement~~~~~~~~~~~~~~Preethi Villa yoga students

Asana

KYM teaches classic “Vinyasa” yoga as taught by Krishnamacharya. Vinyasa consists of sequenced postures synchronized with breathing, and in contrast to Iyengar yoga, with relatively little time spent holding the postures. Significant importance and level of detail is given to breathing in all classes, stressing the importance of breath as a vehicle between the body and the mind. The one month course becomes progressively more straining and demanding, each class being a succession of sequences, building up to a goal posture and coming back through counter postures and breathing steps. KYM also emphasizes the need to adapt the practice to the individual, not to the teacher’s preferences. Though this is not applied in the group sessions, it is the principle behind the yoga therapy consultations and individual classes. Given the short morning Asana practice, Kamala and I would stay between noon and 1:00 to put in an hour of postures before heading out to lunch. This completed the class schedule very well.

Principles of Asana
This topic was drawn from several ancient texts such as the Hatha Yoga Pradipika; the Yoga Samhita or the Yoga Vasishta. All the elements of asana and pranayama practice were clearly spelled out in texts that have been unchanged for several thousand years. From the purpose of asana practice to the classification of all of the postures, to the detailed execution of each asana, to principles of asana and pranayama breathing methods; how to design a sequence of practice or class, or how to plan a long term progression of practice… We learned the essential semantics of yoga, the concepts behind the language that give access to how these concepts apply across life, well beyond yoga practice itself.

Patanjali Sutra / Yoga Philosophy study
Certainly a highlight of the month’s classes. We delved into the theory of yoga that included the ultimate purpose of yoga –to achieve liberation-, how our consciousness works, the different categories of the mind and its activities, how to stabilize our brain’s effervescence, what are the lifestyle obstacles to a successful practice of yoga, techniques for reaching peace of mind, precepts for living a healthy and fruitful life,… This course was dense, rich and highly interactive, bringing out much discussion and debate.

Application of Yoga
Different from the practice and the principles of Asana studied in other classes, this course covered how and when to practice, how to adapt a practice to a lifestyle or to a given period of our life - the goal of a teenager’s practice and that of someone in their 50’s is completely different. We covered the specific function of each asana and pranayama, how to modify and adapt them to specific needs, simplifying them to accommodate someone’s limitations or intensifying them to make them more challenging. We worked on case studies of yoga therapy to address ailments related to specific professional situations.

Meditation
I was expecting to be sitting for an hour with some breathing instruction. In fact each evening we were given a meditation object and led through active meditation, including dynamic and static postures, breathing and chanting techniques. The purpose of the meditation object was to identify oneself with the intrinsic values of a symbol, for example the healing and pacifying qualities of Water, or the energizing, purifying attributes of the Sun.



Vedic chanting
The Veda-s were passed on from teacher to student for thousands of years by chanting in Sanskrit. A young student would learn the chant by heart before even learning the meaning in such a way to ensure that the intellect would not alter the content. Applying the strict rules of classic chanting was the only way to preserve the integrity of the tradition through ages, though fewer and fewer schools or even temple priests know and respect the classic Sanskrit rules of chanting.

For many centuries only men were allowed to chant; Krishnamacharya took a strong stand to open the teaching to women. KYM now gives daily Vedic chanting lessons to Chennaites, mainly women, who maintain the classical tradition that was close to being lost.

Of all the classes, Vedic chanting was a revelation to Kamala and I. We registered in the first place because we love to sing and chant together. Vedic chanting is a powerful meditative and breathing practice with many therapeutical benefits, calming, energizing, leveling, balancing… During the two weeks of “Pilgrimage of Sound”, we deepened our knowledge of the origins and meanings of the chants, as well as learned the technical aspects of pronunciation, meter and tone, practicing chants several hours per day.

Yoga therapy
We attended individual therapy consultations and private practice classes, learning specific sequences of postures and breathing that in my case focus on rebalancing my hip/pelvis/sacrum and shoulder/neck areas that were diagnosed as severely out of alignment, tilting in opposite directions. This has greatly helped me since then, a reference sequence I can practice, or choose elements from, depending on what my body needs.

The Teacher’s role in the Indian spiritual tradition
It is challenging to undertake a spiritual path all by oneself, since the nature of the quest is one’s own consciousness and inner life. Guidance and counsel are constantly needed to overcome the different obstacles that appear at each step of the journey.

In the still current Indian tradition, the young student, around age 7, enters the Gurukulam - literally the house of the guru-, to undergo 12 to 14 years of study of the Veda, learn the texts by heart from chants, then learn the meaning, and finally study specific arts and sciences such as Sanskrit, Yoga, Ayurveda, Astrology and Vedic rituals. During this time he would serve, and learn as much from observing the guru role-model values, disciplines and behaviors, as from the formal study of texts. Since the Veda-s were taught exclusively through oral tradition for thousands of years, the lineage of gurus was an assurance of the quality of teaching the student would receive.

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Gheeta our program Director~~~~~~~~~Guru Shrine, created for a puja

The guru - one who takes from darkness to light (gu=darkness, ru=light) - would share his personal experience and adapt the individual mentoring to each student’s capability and progress. When the student was learned, he would then go practice in the world, and in turn become a teacher, accountable to the standards of the lineage of teachers.

In the West we associate the notion of Guru with personality cult, someone who is above questioning, when in fact a Guru is considered here as a teacher with his/her strengths and weaknesses. It is mainly someone who has a total commitment to a spiritual path and to sharing their knowledge and experience with their students. The point was made very clearly to us that to pay one’s respect to a Guru is, in reality, to acknowledge the entire lineage of teachers that has enabled the teaching to reach the student.

Evening discourses and presentations
During the 6 weeks we attended captivating talks on the Veda-s, Yoga Therapy and Healing, the Science of Ayurveda, the Role of the Teacher, Preparation for Meditation, the Role of Women in Vedic chanting and the Young Spiritual student’s first steps. We also attended a traditional dance show given by Nritya, one of our teachers and a couple of Vedic chanting sessions by the senior staff of KYM led by Mrs. Desikachar. We also had two –much too- short question and answer sessions with TKV Desikachar.

Saturday morning talks
TKV Desikachar has a weekly one hour talk covering verses of the Patanjali yoga sutras. For example: "Bhuvana Jnanam Surye Samyamat", ”Understanding the Sun leads to understanding the Universe”. He would explain different reasons to be grateful to the Sun and take it as an object of meditation, stating that it is also the most universal and commonly accepted symbol of divinity around the world. It’s the one that young children are given in India to grasp the concept of the divine, of something greater than ourselves. His words are always simple, accessible and spoken from the heart.

In summary
We loved every bit of KYM. The faculty members role-model yogic values, i.e. introspection, self awareness, humility, gracefulness, discipline, personal practice and continuous learning. Learning the breadth of theoretical elements of yoga based on ancient texts with such a knowledgeable Indian faculty provided precious cultural depth to each subject. Our teachers would answer our questions and elaborate on any given topic, telling stories by heart from the ancient texts or relating examples of how yoga principles pervade daily life in India. We had “insider” information on the religious festivals happening while we were in Chennai, including descriptions of the rituals held behind closed doors in every home.



Richard and TKV Desikachar ~~~~~~~ The KYM staff for our month program

Attending these programs was an important financial investment, especially relative to our travel budget and to the price of other yoga classes in India. We wonder where else could we have received such depth of knowledge and tangible illustrations, as given by the KYM faculty.

We very strongly recommend KYM to serious yoga practitioners and even more so to yoga teachers who have the significant responsibility to convey much more than asana practice to their students. KYM teaches a holistic science of yoga that addresses all aspects of life and is taught unaltered from the most ancient traceable origins of the Veda-s and Sutra texts.

We are grateful to have had access to this transformative, life changing body of ancient knowledge, and hope for a long life, in order to integrate even a small fraction of it…