Krishnamacharya Healing Yoga Foundation

Home

Definitions

Articles

Forums

Interview in Namarupa Magazine

Submitted By Kausthub Desikachar

Email this article

Post a review

Rate this article

30-OCT-2006

R. ALEXANDER MEDIN interviews
KAUSTHUB DESIKACHAR
16th February 2005, Krishnamacharya Yoga Mandiram, Chennai
Kausthub Desikachar, grandson of the legendary T. Krishnamacharya and son of T.K. Desikachar, is the Chief Executive of the Krishnamacharya Yoga Mandiram in Chennai, South India.

This interview originally appeared in Issue 4, of Namarupa Magazine. www.namarupa.org
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

1. FATHER-TEACHER

HOW WOULD YOU DESCRIBE YOUR FATHER?

I have two relationships with my father. One is the relationship of father-son, and the other one, teacher-student. There’s absolute separation between the two relationships.

He has been an amazing father, doing everything he can to educate his children and support the family. He has never pushed us into deciding what we should or should not do. He always gave us freedom, and that’s why I ran far away from yoga and also why I came back. I was never pushed. Rather, I was pulled. The further away I went, something stronger pulled me back. So, as father and son, our relationship is very close; we are almost like friends.

The teacher-student relationship is a very different situation. In it, there is not even one percent of the father-son relationship. If I make a mistake, it’s a mistake. I have to correct it—it doesn’t matter that I’m his son. I can manage this basically because I grew up with this—I see that my father himself had this dual relationship with his father. I saw my father being a son to his father as well as being a student to his teacher. He can command the same respect because he went through the same process. We have arguments or fights or friendship as father and son. The moment the teacher-student relationship comes, everything else is shut off. There’s no question of family talks, politics, or this or that, it’s only teacher-student relationship, even if we’d just had an argument ten minutes before. So, sometimes when my mother sees us arguing as father and son, she says, “Why don’t you go and have a class?” [laughing] so that there is some peace in the house.

WHAT EXACTLY DID YOUR FATHER TEACH YOU IN THE FIELD OF YOGA?
When I was a young boy, he taught me some asanas and some pranayama. There was a time when I ran away from yoga. I was about sixteen years old, still in university. When I returned, at age nineteen, and again became his student, I had more willingness to learn. At twenty years old, my interest was very strong. When I studied with him then, I realized that the yoga tradition is much wider than is popularly known. The whole world is now obsessed with yoga as though ásanas form the important part of it. As a student of my father, we explored more than the asanas I did as a kid. He taught me asana and pranayama practice in more serious detail and started me on yoga sutra philosophies, along with other yogic texts like Bhagavad Gita, Hatha Yoga Pradipika, Yoga Yajnavalkya, etc. As I’ve been evolving from that time—in the last ten years of serious study—we have gone through so many things, not just asanas or pranayama. Slowly, meditation practices have been taught to me, as well as chanting practices, how to do certain rituals which are very important parts of yoga—karma yoga, kriya yoga—and the use of different hand gestures, or mudras, in the practice of meditation.
I’m still learning from him even now. I don’t think I’ve learned everything yet. And I’m hoping I will continue to learn in the next part of my life. There are some practices my father has initiated me into and others he has kept secret from me, because my father has felt that I am not in the right stage to practice them now, because I am a gähastha (householder), a family man. At some point I will have to move on from this stage, and when I become his age, I will have to start doing these other practices. My daughter will be an adult and I won’t have to worry about the responsibilities of taking care of her. When those things happen, maybe my practice will enter into another realm.
So, this is what I’ve learned and am continuing to learn: It’s holistic, the entire spectrum of yoga. It has been possible for my father to teach me, I think, only because he’d spent so much time with his teacher, my grandfather. He was his student for nearly thirty years, and changed a lot during this time. He started in his twenties, and when my grandfather died in 1989, my father was in his fifties. He was teaching him different things appropriate to different stages of his life, and I think that is what is happening to me as well now. It’s a continuous practice.

For example, I have different aspects of work and studies with my father. One is my personal practice. He’s teaching me how certain things are appropriate for certain moments. I have a young daughter, a lot of responsibilities in my work, and I travel. Based on this, he is teaching me a practice that is appropriate. I do two practices a day: one in the morning, which is a more ásana- and pránáyáma-based practice, and in the afternoon, around 2:30 to 3:00, I do practices that are based more on pránáyáma and meditation, using mantras. He has initiated me into some mantras which he felt were appropriate for me.

In the area of education, since I have different responsibilities—I am a yoga teacher, for example, and I do a lot of healing work—my father is teaching me about how to work with people who are sick, how to apply different types of yoga in regards to healing. I also teach people to be yoga teachers, so I have to continue to study about yoga and yoga philosophy. We work on Yoga Sutras, on the Bhagavad Gita, and other yoga texts.

And then there are the specific projects—dealing with some socially and economically challenged people, for example, or bringing yoga to mentally retarded children, special needs children or deaf and dumb children and blind people. My education slides into so many different paths. I see my father twice a day for my studies—once in the morning, once in the afternoon. Learning here is not just in a classroom situation. Many times I see him working with people and I’m observing what he’s doing with them. Somebody may come for a consultation after they’ve had a stroke or a heart attack, and I’m observing and learning about how he’s working with them.

Early this morning, for example, he asked me to come and observe a class that he was teaching to a lady with a lot of spiritual problems. I think he wanted me to learn more about these kinds of things, as they’re going to continue coming up in the future. At the end of the class he even asked me to teach her the practice he designed, something I had never seen before. This lady had a specific problem—religious issues she has to deal with through the practices that he’s asking me to teach. Basically, he’s educating me through this example, through this internship. And he’s going to monitor my teaching everyday; this I know for sure. He’s not going to leave me alone and say, “Do what you want.” That’s why I felt comfortable teaching her—otherwise I’d be as nervous as hell.

Of our teacher-training program, we say, “We should always have a teacher behind us to support us when we are in trouble, even when we are working with our students.” There are many examples where I do not know what to do with some students. Then, I always go back to my teacher. And I know that this is what my father used to do when he was a student, because I’ve seen him.

DID YOU HAVE ANY OTHER TEACHERS APART FROM YOUR FATHER?
No, never.

HOW WAS YOUR EXPERIENCE OF YOGA AS A CHILD?
I think I was the last in the family to get interested in yoga. My brother and my sister, younger than me, were already taking some classes with my father. But I was not really interested. Around 1981, when the group of teachers at KYM [Krishnamacharya Yoga Mandiram] had children from seven to nine years old, they started a yoga class for their children. My brother and sister, who were doing yoga at home, went to KYM to take part in the class. I was left alone in the house, bored, and that’s what made me go to the children’s class. That’s how I started, and I was not very interested at that age, I should say. When I was around thirteen or fourteen, the group had become larger, and they asked the senior students to teach the junior ones. So, two of us were made to teach the other children and I became a little more serious because it became a responsibility. So, for about three or four years I was a very serious student, until I went to university. I didn’t want anything to do with yoga then. I had this big sabbatical between sixteen and nineteen and then something brought me back. I can’t put my finger on it, but hopefully one day I will find out.

WHAT’S THE GREATEST THING THAT YOUR FATHER HAS TAUGHT YOU?
My father has taught me so many precious things. I’m not able to say that one particular thing is the greatest, but I would say he taught reverence for the teacher and the teachings. My father has always been very respectful and reverential towards the teacher.

WHAT DO YOU FEEL IS HIS CON-TRIBUTION TO THE WORLD OF YOGA AT LARGE?
There is a story in India about a great saint called Nammalvar, an undiscovered yogi. When Nammalvar was a sixteen-year-old boy, there was a great man called Madhurakavi, already in his fifties, a very wise man, a great yogi in his own right. He discovered Nammalvar and showed the world his greatness; he propounded the teachings of Nammalvar to the world. My father is like Madhurakavi. He introduced the world to Krishnamacharya and his teachings. Not many people talked about Krishnamacharya before my father arrived. When he started speaking about my grandfather, that is when the word spread. Before that, unfortunately, even though many people knew about and studied with my grandfather, they didn’t speak much about him. This is not to say that my father did not have his own contribution to yoga. He did a lot for yoga, just as Madhurakavi contributed a lot more to the field of the Sri Vaisnava tradition. But his single greatest contribution was to open the doors of Krishnamacharya to the world.

HOW DO YOU BELIEVE YOU CAN FURTHER CONTRIBUTE TO THE TEACHINGS OF YOUR FATHER?
To be honest, I don’t think I can contribute anything to the teachings of my father or grandfather or Patanjali, because yoga is complete in itself. The only thing I can do is not dilute or misrepresent it. If I don’t take away the spirit of yoga from these teachings, that would in itself make me a happy man.

DO YOU FEEL ANY PRESSURE TO LIVE UP TO CERTAIN EXPECTATIONS?
People have asked me this question, because I have two great masters whom I represent. But I don’t think about it, because the more I think about it, the more I will begin to worry about it. And also, because I know I have their support and blessings in whatever I do. I know I will be on the right path as long as I have this teacher to correct me and guide me in the right direction. Though I have a lot of freedom, I’m sure if I do something that isn’t right, my teacher will not hesitate to say, “This is wrong.” There will always be mistakes, and my father has always corrected me when I’ve made them, something I’m happy about, as it’s made me who I am.

For example, when we first worked on the Yoga Taravali, I spent a year and a half translating and making notes. He said, “This is not up to the mark, so just dump it.” And we did. Then, again, I worked for another year and a half, and this time I was much more careful. I went back to him more often, and it worked out fine. I don’t worry about expectations because I know if I make a mistake, I will be corrected.

2. PRACTICE
FROM WHAT AGE DID YOU HAVE THE DESIRE TO PRACTICE YOGA ON A DAILY BASIS?
When I become the senior teacher of the junior class at age thirteen, I had to show them the correct postures, and then it came to me: “Well, I have to practice.” I remember this boy and I used to practice everyday together. That feeling never went away, and even though I ran away from yoga at university for about three years, I still did some practice. I just was not interested in teaching or studying.

HOW WOULD YOU ARTICULATE YOUR FIRST UNDERSTANDING OF YOGA?
From a very young age, I thought it was a healing system, because people were coming to my father and my grandfather for healing. It was almost like a hospital and they were like doctors who removed people’s problems. Now I understand it in a different way, but at that time I thought: Everybody who has problems should do yoga because then they’ll be over their problems.

AND HOW WOULD YOU ARTICULATE YOUR UNDERSTANDING OF YOGA NOW?
Now I understand yoga as a very powerful, spiritual practice, which is not necessarily religious, but a practice that connects us with something much deeper than the body, the breath and the mind—something like a consciousness. Yoga is self-empowering. You go for massage therapy, the masseuse does the job—all you have to do is lie down. You go to a doctor and he gives you a pill; the pill does the job. In essence, “you” is not your body, “you” is not your mind, “you” is something deeper. You have to have the willpower and the desire to do yoga— “I have to do it.” Once you listen to that I, you can connect to something that is most deep inside you—the Self.

Yoga is a process of self-empowerment—you empower yourself to do it. Whether it is ásana, prá"áyáma, meditation or mudrás, you have to do it. Nobody else can do it for you and that is the beauty of yoga. That is why I feel it is a process of connecting with our deepest consciousness. I personally believe that the Self is the most powerful entity in the human system. When we die, the body is still there, the brain is still there, but nothing happens because the Self has said goodbye. When we connect with something as powerful as that, many miracles can happen, including healing. Whether somebody has polio or stroke or is bedridden, he or she can still do something with yoga—empower themselves as long as they are alive. That is what my grandfather used to say. They may not be able to do ásana and prá"áyáma, but they may be able to recite some mantras.

WHAT DOES YOUR DAILY YOGA PRACTICE CONSIST OF? WHAT DO YOU DO? HOW LONG IS IT, EXACTLY?
It’s changed from time to time. Now my father has me doing two practices: one in the morning, one in the afternoon. Before, when I was a younger boy, there was only one practice a day—a much longer asana practice, followed by twenty to twenty-five minutes of pranayama. Now, morning practice, which is about fifty minutes, is mainly based on asana and pranayama. The afternoon pranayama and meditation practice is about half an hour.

ARE THERE ANY TEXTS YOU CONTINUOUSLY STUDY THAT AID YOUR DEVELOPMENT AS A TEACHER?
The first question I asked my father when I became a serious student of yoga was, “Tell me which is the most important text in yoga—I want to study that.” My father said, “Yoga Sutras,” and we started studying them. That’s been the only text that I have consistently studied. I’ve studied all the other texts as well, but it’s taken me ten years to study the Yoga Sutras, which we only recently finished.

The first round, that is. It’s taken me ten years because my father had been through it before, first very gently as a general idea, without breaking down every sâtra into the different components of understanding. Yoga Sutras is a profound philosophical work. If I have to study all of this, it is going to take a long time. I’ve studied Bhagavad Gita and Hatha Yoga Pradipika, but this text [Yoga Sutras], has been the most important. I believe it’s the first work on psychology, even though we say Freud is the originator. Patanjali was the first psychologist; I don’t think anyone has understood the mind as he has. The third and fourth chapters are brilliant expositions on the human mind. And the greatness of yoga is that it is about the human mind, not the human body.

DO YOU FOLLOW ANY PARTICULAR SADHANA APART FROM YOUR YOGA PRACTICE?
Part of my daily morning practice is visiting my grandfather’s shrine in the vicinity. Here I will sit for some time and chant. If I’m not in this country, I always do some chanting, remembering this place, because the connection is back to my grandfather. Apart from that, I’m constantly working with people, which is also a sadhana.

3. TRADITION
DO YOU KNOW APPROXIMATELY HOW MANY PEOPLE ALL OVER THE WORLD ARE PRACTICING THE STYLE OF YOGA THAT YOU TEACH DIRECTLY OR INDIRECTLY?
I really don’t know. Whatever I say will only be an estimation.

THIRTY YEARS AGO, IT WAS ONLY A HANDFUL. WHAT IS YOUR VIEW ON THIS BOOMING POPULARITY?
Yoga can be extremely beneficial to people, and I think it’s better people do yoga than get addicted to drugs or do something else which is harmful. The more that people do yoga, the better off society is—yoga has the power to change people. I’m doing my PhD. on understanding yoga and its affect on our quality of life. I work with people who come with, say, back, leg or neck pain. After some yoga, a few weeks later, they return with their back pain gone. “Not just back pain, Sir. I am now arguing less with my wife, I am more tolerant towards my children, I’m now communicating better with my boss. I’m doing much better in my job.” Yoga does not just change the body or the breath, it changes other important aspects of life. It understands the human being in different layers, and therefore reaches different layers of the human system.

The disadvantage is, of course, the commercialization and exploitation of yoga, in the sense that something becomes popular and everyone wants to capitalize on it. Sometimes they do so at the cost of integrity—a bad thing. For example, you need a mat to do yoga, but you don’t need a $300 designer mat to do yoga. When you create that desire in people, though—when you get celebrities involved—you’re creating a situation that is not correct. My grandfather wrote an article in 1950, and said, “Yoga is the cheapest and the best form of health, because you don’t need to buy anything, all you need is yourself.” Self-empowerment, you don’t need anything else. But today yoga is a business. You can buy yoga mats, yoga bags, yoga T-shirts, yoga this and yoga that. For her second birthday, somebody recently gifted my daughter with a “yogi toy,” a lion sitting in a pose! And there are, of course, people who don’t take enough training and become yoga teachers, and that is also not correct and can cause harm.

WHAT DO YOU FEEL IS UNIQUE ABOUT THE STYLE OF YOGA THAT YOU TEACH HERE AT KYM IN RELATION TO OTHER SCHOOLS?
The uniqueness of my grandfather’s teaching is that he revived this ancient art of yoga as an individual process. Each of us is unique, with different needs, requirements and abilities. Yoga must be based on these differences—not be given as one standard thing for everybody. That is what we do here, because people who come here don’t come for the same reasons. Someone may come wanting to be more spiritual, someone else because he has back pain. And somebody may come wanting to be a yoga teacher. We can’t teach the same to all three. Someone may be young or old or handicapped. Yoga has to be adapted for the need of the individual. You go to a tailor to make a suit that’s the right fit. And you don’t wear that one suit for your life, because, as you grow, you may change in dimension. You have to keep changing according to where you are. Maybe in the summer you need a different kind of material than you need in the winter. It is the same with yoga. In the beginning of the last century, my grandfather revived this ancient idea; he went back to the roots of yoga. And this is one of the most profound values of teaching—that every individual is different and, therefore, every yoga practice must be adapted to these individuals, according to them, not the opposite.

DOES YOGA NEED TO BE ROOTED IN A TRADITION OR SHOULD IT CONTINUALLY RENEW ITSELF OR BOTH?
I think the beauty is that it needs both. In a sense, yoga’s concepts are timeless, but our life is bound by time and space. Therefore, we can’t put a rigid system in place. The concepts need not change. Human suffering will always be there, for example, but what causes human suffering can change. Fifty years ago, nobody worried about HIV. Today it is a concern. The concept of suffering doesn’t change and yoga’s concepts cannot change. Ahimsa should be Ahimsa. Satya should be satya. Yogah citta vrtti nirodhah will always be the same.

But the practitioners have to adapt to changing needs, changing times. We are not living in the same time as the yogis of the past. They came from an era when they’d do physical jobs, like get firewood and walk everywhere—a different lifestyle. Today, people don’t even walk two blocks down the road; we let cars take us everywhere. We don’t need to cook food anymore—we just telephone and order and food comes to our house immediately. Things will not work the same way as in the past. But concepts, I feel, have to be the same. Teaching style needs to accept modern lifestyle changes consistent with the principles of yoga. It’s not correct to change anything any way you want.

4. SPIRITUALITY
WHAT IS THE MEANING OF SPIRITUALITY TO YOU?
Many people come here for spiritual enlightenment. One of the sutras in the fourth chapter says that the really enlightened person is one who is not even interested in enlightenment, but who continues his daily job with a sense of dharma. I think the person who is spiritually enlightened is somebody who follows their dharma all the time. I feel if we do our dharma all the time, we are spiritual people. But doing our dharma all the time is not so easy—we have so much desire, so many distractions that take us away from our dharma. When someone is doing his dharma—what is right—that is integrity; that is who I would call a spiritual person. I think doing our dharma is being useful to people. I always use the example of Mother Teresa, who never stopped working for her dharma, helping the poor in the slums of Calcutta. Until she died, she was doing it again and again. Whatever she did, it was only to support her dharma. She raised funds to support her dharma, not to be famous. She lived very simply and did things in a simple way.

HOW WOULD YOU DEFINE GOD, ATMAN, AND THIS WORLD?
Yoga philosophy says that our consciousness cannot function by itself—it needs a medium through which to function. That medium is the body and the mind. It’s all there to serve the consciousness. But, where does it come from? What gives life? Where does the magic come from? I view God as a mysterious force which is the owner, the source of all this life. I don’t know if he’s a creator, preserver or destroyer. I don’t believe it is a person who is watching us and punishing us or a person who is evaluating our good and bad, and who is going to do something on Judgement Day. I don’t have that kind of idea about God, but I feel that there is some force beyond us, which we can’t explain in words, something that is more powerful than us. How did this tsunami happen? There is some force beyond us, and maybe that is what we call God. It can’t be understood through the mind; we have to go beyond the mind, because the mind is limited. There is some source which creates all these things.

The world is there to serve—that is what the Yoga Sutras say. That is why I am biased towards yoga philosophy. Yoga Sutras say all these objects in the world exist to serve the drasta (seer). When drasta wants it, it is there! There are baby shops everywhere, and I never even thought about it until my daughter was born. They were there all the time, but they never served me until I wanted them to serve me. So the world exists, and it serves me when I am interested in it.

IS THERE ANYTHING SPIRITUAL ABOUT THE PHYSICAL YOGA PRACTICE?
Asana can be done as a spiritual practice, in a sense. When we have to do our dharma, we need a body through which to do it. You want to interview me, I have to talk to you, which means I need a body and a voice to talk to you. Same way that when I have to carry my daughter, I have to have an arm, my body, and I have to have strength. I believe practice can serve to support that dharma. It can be like a preparation, or a process that makes you fit enough to do your dharma. You know, if you don’t have the strength to lift your baby when she’s crying, you’re going to suffer and cry. Therefore, you do the practice so that you are healthy and can do your job. If you are sick, you have to take off from work, maybe you’ll have to renounce some responsibilities, an obstacle to dharma rather than a support. So, this practice can be a support for the dharma, definitely. Otherwise, Yoga Sutras would never mention asanas.

HOW WOULD YOU EXPLAIN YS 1.2 YOGAH CITTA VRTTI NIRODHAH
This sUtra is what many people, including VyAsa, call the Laksana Sutra, the definition of yoga. The word nirodha means a very intimate connection, where you’re enveloped by something so strongly that nothing from outside interferes and nothing from inside gets out. The word nirodha comes from the root rudhir avaranet, enveloped. If you take an envelope and put a greeting card inside and seal the envelope, nothing from outside gets in, what is inside does not get out. So citta vrtti nirodhah is that state in which the mind is so focused on the object, that it is almost like an envelope enclosing the object so the object does not escape from the mind, and no other object comes inside it. So, when I’m thinking of something, but no longer distracted by anything else, that is citta vrtti nirodhah. My father used to say, “Yoga is like a relationship. When you are in a relationship, you are very strongly related to your partner.” When we are in yoga with an object, we are so focused that we are not distracted by anything else. When that happens, we begin to understand things that we don’t understand otherwise.

HOW WOULD YOU DESCRIBE YS 1.3 TADA DRASTUH SVARUPE AVASTHANAM
When I’m more and more linked with the object, I become more and more attentive. Tada drastuh svarupe avasthanam [Then the Seer abides in Itself]. The job of the drasta is to see. The drasta is firmly established in perception, which is its own nature, its svarupa. All it means is that the perception we get when we are in a state of yoga is different from the perception when we are not in a state of yoga. When we are in a state of yoga, we are very strongly linked with a focus. A deep mind takes over, that is why the word citta is used. Citta vrttii nirodhah.

Citta is a very deep mind; not a very sensory mind, like the manas. Who is connecting with the focus—it is not the mind only. Something deeper is telling the mind, “Listen, look at this.” The mind is asked by the consciousness to look at a particular object and not at other things. So the mind says, “Ok, boss,” and looks at this object. The drasta becomes the master; it begins to perceive from there. And other times vrtti sarupyam itaratra [the Seer appears to assume the form of the modifications of the mind]. The mind takes over. For example, in an organization when the boss is not firmly established in his place, sometimes the secretary can dominate the proceedings. She can tell people, “No, the boss is now busy,” and can completely take over the situation. When the boss is firmly established in his seat, however, and in his dharma, he will say “Hey, listen, do this,” and the secretary will do it; “Don’t do this!” and the secretary won’t. When the boss is not so strong, but wishy-washy, and the secretary is stronger, she takes control. And when she takes control, it’s a different situation.

HOW DOES YOUR TEACHING FACILITATE A GENUINE UNDER-STANDING FOR ITS PRACTITIONERS TO ABIDE IN THEIR OWN NATURE?
When we are interested in a spiritual process, we are supposed to connect with our dharma. Dharma is our focus. However, when sickness arises, when we have other distractions, we are not able to focus on the dharma. When there is back pain, how are we able to focus on something that is our dharma? We are more worried about our back pain. If I was not well today, I would not worry about this interview with you, I’d be worried about my suffering. So what does yoga do? What do we do here? We are helping to reduce suffering through teaching yoga, so that people can connect with their dharma. When somebody comes with health problems, the problems can be physical in nature, emotional, mental, or spiritual, but they all become distractions. Distraction is an obstacle to yoga. Here, we are removing this distraction so that they can do yoga. They can better link with their svarupa, with their dharma, with their responsibilities to their families.

We all have different dharmas. I have a dharma as a father to my daughter, as a husband to my wife, as a son to my parents, as an administrator to this place. I have a dharma as a teacher to my students. We all have different dharmas! When I’m sick, all of these dharmas take second place. Last week I had the flu and I’m still recovering. It affected my dharma so much because I couldn’t take care of my daughter, because I didn’t want her to get the flu. I couldn’t come to work because I was very sick. So it interfered with my job. But through yoga we can link with our dharma. The Bhagavad Gita says, “Somebody who is the most spiritual person is not somebody who is chanting God’s name all the time, but somebody who does their dharma.” Arjuna saw Krsna in the divine form. What does he need anymore? He could have said “ Krsna, I’ve seen you, what else do I need?” At the end of the Bhagavad Gita when Arjuna says to Krsna, “You tell me what I should do, I will do it,” Krsna does not say “You have seen me now, you don’t need to do anything.” Krsna says, “Fight. Do your dharma.” Dharma is the most precious thing.

In our work here, we are trying to eliminate sickness. My grandfather used to say, “Yoga is a process of preparation.” He also said, “We have one mind, one body, one instrument. We are using this instrument to do many dharmas, but it needs to be prepared so that it can do all these dharmas, otherwise it can fail.” So through yoga we prepare the body, the mind, and the senses to do these different dharmas, and that is what yoga is.

WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO BE A TRUE YOGI?
What does it mean to be a true yogi? [chuckle]. I don’t know. I’m a yoga student; I’m not yet a yogi.

5. TEACHING
WHAT IS YOUR EXPERIENCE OF TEACHING NOW COMPARED TO WHEN YOU FIRST STARTED?
Now I’m able to help people much more than before—because of the experience I’ve had, my own growth and evolution as a student and as a teacher. I’m more confident and more clear with what to do, and most importantly, I’ve learned to say, “I’m not able to help you,” when I can’t help. Before, I thought I could help everybody with yoga. But now I know I can’t help some people with yoga because yoga cannot help everybody in every way, trust me. Can yoga cure HIV? I would say, “No way!” It can heal the person, but it can’t cure them. Suppose somebody comes with a fracture, I would say, “First go and set your bone and then come. I can’t make any promises about setting the bone right.” Say somebody comes with a massive heart attack, I would say, “You go and have a doctor do some angioplasty or something—you must do it! Then you come to yoga, it will take care of your stress. Yoga will take care of your healing aspect.” We, as yoga teachers, must take the responsibility to know what we can and cannot do, because yoga, like other systems, cannot remove every problem. I can remove many problems, but not every problem.

HOW LONG DID YOU PRACTICE YOGA ON A REGULAR BASIS BEFORE YOU BECAME A YOGA TEACHER?
I’ve been a very regular practitioner since I was nineteen. Even when I was very much a beginner, when I was twenty and twenty-one, my father would allow me to teach people what I knew and what I could help them with, like very simple health problems. So, very soon I came to teach, because that teaching process itself was my learning process.

WHY DO YOU THINK THE SYSTEM OF YOGA THAT YOU TEACH IS SO POPULAR IN THE WORLD TODAY?
People come here because of the way we teach yoga. The way yoga should be taught, my grandfather believed, is to adapt yoga to the need of each individual rather than have each individual adapt to yoga. It respects the individual as a unique person—it does not put him or her in a box with five hundred other people. Many who come here have been to different places, but here they feel that every person is respected as an individual for what they are, where they are and how they are.

HOW IS YOUR TEACHING RELATED TO THE CLASSICAL YOGA ACCORDING TO PATANJALI?
Patanjali was a very smart man. Yoga in those days was taught very privately; the upadesa (instruction) was taught between one teacher and one student, and that is what we are doing now. In a way, we are very close to what the classical masters were saying.

WHAT ARE YOU ACTUALLY TEACHING IN THE REALM OF YOGA (ASANA,PRANAYAMA, PHILOSOPHY, PRAYERS)?
It’s a question of who is in front of me. When a student comes, we evaluate him or her—what are the problems? Depending on the student’s requirements, we teach all kinds of things: asanas, pranayama, meditation, chanting, rituals, maybe some gestures, prayer, and sometimes we send them on pilgrimage—what is called yatra.

DO YOU TEACH EXACTLY THE SAME WAY AS YOU WERE TAUGHT, OR HAVE YOU CHANGED THE SYSTEM OR THE APPROACH?
I have not changed the concept at all, but I have changed the way it is done, and the way it is taught. I didn’t learn in English with my father, but now I have to teach in English. I learned from an Indian teacher, but I’m not teaching only Indian students. Therefore, there are some differences in the way it is done, but I don’t think conceptually I have changed anything. That’s what my goal in life is—not to change anything in the concept.

IF YOU WERE NOT TEACHING YOGA, WHAT DO YOU THINK YOU WOULD BE DOING?
I don’t know. I think I would have been a kind of artist or photographer, because that’s always been my hobby.

WHAT IS YOUR BEST ADVICE FOR ASPIRING YOGA TEACHERS?
I think yoga works because of respect and reverence, and if that is not there, yoga is not going to work. If somebody is on the path of yoga, he or she must find a teacher who deserves respect and reverence, and then must study with the teacher with that respect and reverence. Respect and reverence does not mean to be the slave of the teacher. There’s a lot of difference between that and respect and reverence. Yoga is something very precious. It should not be done casually, and this is what I mean by respect to the teachings. So when something is taught, guard it like you would guard a very precious stone or a jewel. I think that is what we should do. The moments you spend with your teacher should be thought of as really precious.

Additionally, if you are not very quick, don’t worry. Yoga takes time, so you should be very patient. It’s very difficult because in today’s world everybody wants everything very quickly. Yoga does not work that way. My grandfather used to say that even to feel the benefits of ásana practice we must practice for three months. How much longer will it take for meditation practice? Many years probably. That’s why it should be patiently pursued.

WHAT ARE THE QUALITIES OF A GOOD YOGA TEACHER?
A yoga teacher must first be a yoga student—that is the first and most important quality. That means they must have a teacher themselves as a reference, otherwise it’s not going to work. Certainly, there must be respect for the students, not as a source of income, but because they are seeking something special from you as their teacher. We must deserve their respect, therefore integrity and honesty are very important, along with patience and steadiness. We can’t be unsteady when teaching yoga, because we are teaching people to become more steady and stable. A good teacher points out our defects and nurtures us so that we will become full of strength. A lot of people will say, “You be my student,” but they don’t feel that they need a teacher themselves. People who don’t have a guru, who don’t have any care for their own teacher, but want their students to treat them like gods—this is not correct. It is hypocrisy.

6. FUTURE
HOW DO YOU LOOK UPON THE FUTURE OF YOGA IN OUR CONTEMPORARY SOCIETY?
Ten years ago, I didn’t expect yoga to be as popular as it is now. I don’t know what is happening in the future; it’s not in our hands. We should worry about the present, not worry about the past and the future.

WHAT IS YOUR VIEW ON THE MANY WESTERN ADAPTATIONS AND INTER-PRETATIONS IN THE FIELD OF YOGA?
Because of the commercial aspect of yoga, this is a difficult question. I see many people—Westerners and even Indians—who have twisted things to suit their own personal agendas. That is not correct, nor will it last. What will last are those people who are continuing to teach yoga with integrity. The $300 yoga mat will be popular as long as the celebrities are endorsing it with their practice of yoga. Once they stop doing yoga that mat will disappear into history, but yoga will continue. It has lasted for thousands of years. Yoga has stood the test of foreign invasions from different cultures, from different religions, and is still practiced. The same thing is happening now. Even with the invasion of commercialization, I don’t think yoga will lose its spiritual quality. It has the spiritual strength to last.

DO YOU FEEL ANY RESPONSIBILITIES TOWARD THE TRADITION YOU REPRESENT?
The only responsibility I feel is to not distort yoga. I would just like to maintain the sanctity of this teaching. And, as someone enrolled in this field of yoga, I feel it is one of my responsibilities to stand up against the commercialization of it. It’s not easy and will take time.

HOW DO YOU PLAN TO IMPLEMENT THIS?
In our country, we believe that whenever something is on the slide, it will not slide forever. When something has great spiritual strength—even if it slides in popularity a little—somebody will come and boost it up. When Vedanta began to slide, Sankara came up. Then it started to slide again, and Ramanuja came up, then once again and Vedanta Desika came up. In the same way, yoga will sustain itself. But yoga is beyond any individual. That is why Patanjali did not put his name in the Yoga Sutras; that is why he is so humble. Yoga is supporting us, we are not doing anything to support yoga, and we must remember that. Two hundred years from now, I know that yoga will still be popular, and will have the respect it has here and now.

IS THERE A NEED FOR A MORE WIDELY ACCEPTED STANDARD FOR YOGA TEACHERS, OR SHOULD PEOPLE BE ALLOWED TO TEACH WHATEVER THEY LIKE?
My grandfather never believed that democracy would work in yoga. Yoga, for thousands of years, has been handed down in a teacher-student, parampara, lineage. It’s not a democratic meeting place where you sit at a round table with twenty people arguing, and voting for this and that—this will never work. That’s why my grandfather never founded any associations. So, I don’t think a standard setup will work, even if it is accepted.

IS THERE ANY NEED FOR YOGA TO RENEW ITSELF?
Yoga does not have to renew itself; yoga styles have to renew themselves. Yoga styles are not yoga, because yoga can never be a fixed system. They will definitely have to change because otherwise they will become history. But yoga never has to change. When you do yoga in the classical way, you are never bored because every day is a different thing.

WHAT’S THE ESSENCE OF YOGA ACCORDING TO YOU?
It is a holistic system that completely respects every individual as a unique person. That is why it is so effective. It has tools that reach every aspect of our human system. It also respects and is appropriate to the dharma of every different stage of our lives. Yoga is a context-sensitive process. That is its essence. When we are sick, we can feel better by doing yoga. When we are healthy, we can do yoga for pursuing our dharma more effectively. When we are older, we can still do yoga. There’s no homogeneity in the kind of people who come here. A child who is four may come, a man who is ninety-five may come, a perfectly healthy athlete or a very sick person who can’t even walk may come. Yoga has benefits for all these people. That is its power and its essence.

Post Your Review

Send Article


Feedbacks

Cilla Stevens
07-FEB-2007
I found this a truly inspirational article giving a real insight into the meaning and respect of the student/teacher relationship in this traditon.

Ramamani Kalyanaraman
23-JAN-2007
Thanx for the motivation to enter into this section of KHYF. Very exhaustive set of questions and well replied.

Padmini Narendran
16-DEC-2006
well framed questions. excellent ,relevant, crisp answers thank uKausthub

Fran Ubertini
05-DEC-2006
A beautiful article that speaks from the heart. Thanks for sharing what it means to be a student and teacher.

Mary KEIZER
12-NOV-2006
this reveals a beautiful teacher student relationship and the ability to carry the essence of the teaching without distortion is so vital.

Daniel Pineault
11-NOV-2006
Great article, great tool to learn a litle more about Kausthub, his father and the tradition. Highly recommended reading. Daniel Pineault


11-NOV-2006
Ok for approval.


11-NOV-2006
I found this of tremendous interest and hope it finds wide outlet as I think it needs to reach as many people as possible. It offers insight in to the life and times of of great teachers who share this modern world with us. An excellent piece.

Felicia Mcgilchrist
05-NOV-2006
This article is a wonderful oppotunity for the reader to have a respected teacher express in a very personal and open manner, a variety of core topics in yoga today. It is clearly presented, sensitive and gives much to reflect on, no matter what direction you may enter on this yoga path!

Chandra
03-NOV-2006
This interview is inspiring, challenging and supporting. I'm thankful to Kausthub for his simple and clear way of expression and I'm grateful to the publishers who were able to extract this essence.

Gill Lloyd
03-NOV-2006
This gives a very personal and detailed account of Kausthub Desikachar's life and work. It is very well written and presented and both interesting and informative. It would be good if this interview could be read by all those involved in yoga today and I hope it has a wide circulation.

Gill Lloyd
03-NOV-2006
This gives a very personal and detailed account of Kausthub Desikachar's life and work. It is very well written and presented and both interesting and informative. It would be good if this interview could be read by all those involved in yoga today and I hope it has a wide circulation.