May 06 2008
Interview with Desikachar
There’s an interesting interview with T.K.V. Desikachar, one of the founding fathers of modern yoga practice, in the March 2008 edition of the Indian news magazine Civil Society. It contains a number of interesting points, and I think the humility, simplicity and practicality of many of his and his school’s views are great. Yoga in the West, I think, is often taught either as a type of spiritual practice (by people who, when you see their tv shows, seem like earnest charlatans) or as a ‘performance sport’ with little focus on the individual’s physical and psychological needs.
The piece in Civil Society touches on a number of aspects around this. A key passage for me was about yoga and Hinduism:
[…] teachers were mixing Hinduism and yoga, presenting them as one, implying that if people wanted to follow yoga they had to follow the Hindu religion. Desikachar knew from his studies with his father that none of these practices followed the guidelines of Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras. For instance, Patanjali saw religious affiliation as a student’s personal choice not the teacher’s. If yoga is tied with Hinduism, then it would have to exclude people who may not be comfortable with its religious content.
What also resonates is Desikachar’s emphasis of individual healing as part of the process of studying yoga. Students come to KYM (Desikachar’s yoga centre) for many reasons, but often because they struggle with specific health issues.
An assessment is made of each person in his or her entirety. The student and teacher then understand each other through an evolving personal relationship. A course is designed for the individual and adapted according to the progress made. The personal factor plays a vital role.[…] Therapy at KYM includes helping those afflicted by psychological and emotional suffering. Here, too, the course is designed for the individual and adapted according to the progress made under the guidance of a supervisor.
This sounds enticingly different from yoga studios and schools in the West. Still, the spirit of this type of yoga was carried into the world by students of Desikachar’s. For instance, Vanda Scaravelli, an Italian disciple, brought some of these more interegrated, gentler, secular principles to Europe and North America. In Toronto, the Esther Myers Yoga Studio carries on aspects of this tradition today.
