1. Who is Sri Titumulai Krisnamacharya
2. Sri Tirumalai Krisnamacharya and Ashtanga Yoga
3. Sri Tirumalai Krisnamacharya and the spread of yoga

Who is Sri Tirumalai Krisnamacharya

Considered as one of the most important among the fathers of modern forms of yoga , Sri Tirumalai Krisnamacharya was born in 1888 in what was the Kingdom of Mysore, in today’s Karnataka, before the unification of India. 

His life and teaching are one , an experience that spanned the entire 20th century, having left his body in 1989 at the age of 100. 

This meant that some of his teachings were documented and still today there are not only texts and photos, but also videos of his practices . 

He was a true scholar, profound connoisseur of the more physical part of yoga , that linked to hatha yoga and kriya yoga , and during most of his life he traveled around India to give yoga lessons and demonstrations, both on a practical level. than theoretical. 

A master of both yoga and traditional Indian healing methods, he boasts immense credit among true yoga connoisseurs , and even Iyengar himself places him on a special pedestal. He is regarded as the father of vinyasa , the smooth transition between one posture and another, accompanied by adequate breathing. 

Sri Tirumalai Krisnamacharya and Ashtanga Yoga

Few people know that Sri Tirumalai Krisnamacharya influenced , if not created, the form of yoga they practice regularly . Whether it is a dynamic form of hatha yoga, or one focused on static alignment of posture, or a more classic one made up of asana sequences, or why not one of the more modern elaborate forms of hatha yoga, rest assured that you owe something to Sri Tirumalai Krisnamacharya. 

Although he has never left India, his influence has reached every corner of the world . Sri Tirumalai Krisnamacharya opened a casket of yogic knowledge which had previously remained almost completely hidden, a treasure passed only from teacher to student through the initiatory path. 

Sri Tirumalai Krisnamacharya spent his life during the last decades of British colonialism in India, in the most recrudiscent phase where non-collaborationism, when not outright revolt, pushed India towards its independence. The spread of hatha yoga played an important role in this historical moment . 

Sri Tirumalai Krisnamacharya and the spread of yoga

Sri Tirumalai Krisnamacharya found himself at the head of a group of masters who, although not directly involved in the independence movement , offered the secrets of hatha yoga, the real one, to the masses, to give ordinary citizens the power to endure the suffering and oppression perpetrated. by the colonizers. 

Yoga would give Indians the inner power to endure fatigue , hunger, moral and physical pain. Thus the first open schools of hatha yoga were born: asana, pranayama and meditation were taught to the common people, to the great masses and therefore spread. This policy was successful and India became independent . 

With independence, India began to open up to the rest of the world and attract visitors and travelers , who also had the opportunity to come across and learn hatha yoga, then taking it to the West for further dissemination. 

Few practices can boast the level of globalization achieved by yoga, and this is also thanks to Sri Tirumalai Krisnamacharya. Many researchers are attracted to Sri Tirumalai Krisnamacharya, father of ashtanga yoga, and there is no need to emphasize how much, even today, it is worth going to rediscover this root of modern hatha yoga practices. 

But to do this you need to be prepared: the material on Sri Tirumalai Krisnamacharya will put you in front of a very different practice from those practiced today , for better or for worse. Indeed, without good and without evil, because good and evil have no place in evolution, in it only what is most suitable for the times survives and thrives. 

However, masters of the genre are born once a century: scholar, teacher, yogi, poet, Sanskritist, expert of the Vedas, healer, innovator, refined connoisseur of the human psyche. That’s who Sri Tirumalai Krisnamacharya was.