Patabhi Jois and Ashtanga Yoga

Besides teaching Iyengar, Knishnamacharya also taught Patabhi Jois (b. 1915). Patabhi Jois’ system is called Ashtanga Yoga (and also Vinyasa Yoga: vinyasa means ‘arrangement’), which has significantly gained in popularity in the West since the early 1990s.

Patabhi Jois started learning yoga from Krishnamacharya in 1927, and continued as his student for twenty-five years. From 1937, Jois began teaching at the Sanskrit College in Mysore, and in 1948 established the Ashtanga Yoga Research Institute. In 1964, Jois’ photograph and address appeared in the book Pranayama by the Belgian author André van Lyspeth.

Jois only taught family members and young men from the local community in Mysore until the early 1970s, when he began teaching foreign students. Jois first taught yoga abroad in California in 1975.

Jois’ system is one of the most energetic and aerobic styles of yoga. Groups of postures are arranged in six series, with three levels of increasing difficulty.

Emphasised are rhythmic breathing during the practice, the raising of heat in the body, and the application of ‘locks’ (bandhas) in postures. Pranayama is also taught, usually after mastery of the ‘Primary Series’, the first level of postures.

Several styles of yoga are derivative, to a greater or lesser degree, of Jois’ system; among the best-known are Vikram Yoga and Power Yoga.

Jois’ system is known as Astanga Yoga, which occasionally leads to some misunderstanding among yoga students. As noted in Section 6, Patanjali’s eight-limbed (ashtanga) system only twice briefly mentions asana (posture): no postures are presented.

(However, as also mentioned, Vyasa, the commentator on the Yoga Sutra, lists eleven postures for sitting steadily and comfortably.) Jois inherited the philosophical tradition of Ashtanga Yoga from his guru, Krishnamacharya, but Krishnamacharya taught a system of lengthy sequences of postures, incorporating bandhas.

He devised a system that incorporated what are essentially Nath yoga practices, but omitted some of the most radical exercises, such as vajroli mudra. So, even though the philosophy of Ashtanga Yoga is in the tradition of Patanjali, the practices are not based on Patanjali’s Yoga Sutra.

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