My teacher in Mysore, India, Yogacharya Venkatesha, is still relatively young for his vast achievements and abilities. Toady he is 38 years old, having started to practice yoga at the age of 13. After many years of intesne training, self-study and practice he won many competitions for yoga. He holds the rare title of “Yoga Samrat” meaning the Emperor of Yoga and is affectively referred to as “rubber yogi” by his students. To date, he has taught thousands of Western students and certified many to teach his own style of yoga called AtmaVikasa. He is also the first teacher to offer specialized training programs in yoga therapy.
People often ask me how I found Yogacharya. Funny enough, had it not been for another student at the Ashtanga school (shala) I probably would never have met him. This student was a writer with the New Yorker. She was working on an article about Ashtanga and Pattabhi Jois in Mysore, which would later be entitled, "The Yoga Bums." She had seen me practising the back bends in the "finishing room", which was a designated place for the closing series of Ashtanga. Yogacharya was quietly gaining a good reputation as a renowned back bender with many Ashtanga students taking classes with him in the afternoon.
At the time, my Ashtanga days were getting numbered due to a bad knee injury. As much as I had been determined to stick to the practice, after 6 weeks of pain I finally looked around the practice room and decided this cannot be "yoga." Many Ashtanga students had told me that my knee problem was ego-related. Maybe it was; maybe it wasn't. Nevertheless, I ended my Ashtanga classes and went to see Yogacharya.
Yogacharya was a like a breath of fresh air. He was strict, but gentle. He did not believe in forcing or pushing, but in listening to your breath and working from within. When I approached him about taking his back bending classes, he looked at me with the compassion of a parent but the discipline of a teacher.
The first few things I recall during my initial meeting with Yogacharya were in him stating that he gave no physical adjustments. This was a surprise to me. He talked about not wanting to make people dependent for which he felt that adjustments were an addiction and externally based. He also stated that his aim was to teach a student "how" practice alone. His overall aim was to guide students toward inner realization.
And so began my journey with Yogacharya.
The essence of Yogacharya’s teaching lies not in shaping the student to fit the yogasana (postures of yoga), but in allowing the practice to guide the student. Yogacharya’s approach while strict and demanding is unique to each student who studies under him. What is taught to one student is not taught to another. Students learn the practice posture by posture, which ensures that they learn it on their own. Classes are not taught as a mass production line of students streaming in and out of the shala. The classes are small with each student quietly practicing along aside another one. There is a lot of onus placed upon the student to remember what they have been taught. Remembering what you had been taught came with the reward of learning more. Not remembering what you were taught kept you repeating the same pose or mantra.
Yogacharya’s philosophy is to guide the student toward becoming their own inner teacher. This cannot be done by spewing out the instructions over and over. It cannot be done by handing out adjustments to make students feel good. This is done by learning the breath, the internal focus and staying with the posture. The Sanskrit phrase, “Sthira Sukahm Asanam” means to explore what is and not what you are doing. With the latter approach comes the tendency of getting caught up in performing. The former approach allows for space and silence.
For me, Yogacharya is the only teacher I have found who is not teaching the more common approach of “monkey see, monkey do.” Yogacharya guides students to explore and investigate the asanas (postures) on a purely, individual level. Each asana in the beginning is practised 3 times. Later on this is decreased with 20 to 30 breathings for each pose. Yogahcarya often stood beside me and watched. He gave suggestions only where he felt it was needed and let me alone to practice. He often made more observations than comments during class, which made it very difficult to tell what he was thinking.
This is his way.
It has been under his direction that I learned to build upon my own personal practice of back bends. During each of the years I studied under Yogacharya new asanas were added or eliminated to the routine. When he asked me, “What do you what to learn?” it was always with excitement and dread. I was excited because of the possibility of what was open to me. I dreaded it because I understood the long path that still lay ahead of me. Sometimes the asanas I learned were very simple while others were extremely difficult and well beyond my current capacity. The simple ones made me remember that I am a beginner while the more difficult ones never let me rest on my laurels.
The single most important thing I learned from Yogachayra is how to practice alone as well as how to practice under any given circumstance. Whether it is a cramped hotel room, a stuffy basement or a small corner of the practice room, I learned to practice. Yet it has been the silent joy that came from gradually mastering an asana that is the essence of his teaching. During my struggles in practice Yogacharya would often say, “When you return to your country it will come.” And whether or not it was in my country or still in India, there was nothing more satisfying than to merge and melt into the asana. There was a strong feeling of having developed the asana from within.
What joy! What bliss!
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