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…