K. Pattabhi Jois

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K. Pattabhi Jois (26 July 1915<ref name="times">Template:Cite news</ref> – 18 May 2009)<ref name="rediff">Template:Cite web</ref> was an Indian yoga guru<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> who developed and popularized the flowing style of yoga as exercise known as Ashtanga (vinyasa) yoga.Template:Efn<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> In 1948, Jois established the Ashtanga Yoga Research Institute<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> in Mysore, India.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> Pattabhi Jois is one of a short list of Indians instrumental in establishing modern yoga as exercise in the 20th century, along with B. K. S. Iyengar, another pupil of Krishnamacharya in Mysore.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref><ref>Template:Cite news</ref><ref name="Economist">Template:Cite periodical</ref><ref>Template:Cite news</ref> Jois sexually abused some of his yoga students by touching inappropriately during adjustments.<ref name="YJ Staff 2018"/> Sharath Jois has publicly apologised for his grandfather's "improper adjustments".<ref name="Sharath 2019"/>

Biography

Early life

Krishna Pattabhi Jois was born in Karnataka<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> on 26 July 1915 (Guru Pūrṇimā, full moon day) in the village of Kowshika,<ref name="churumuriRIP">Template:Cite web</ref> near Hassan, Karnataka, Southern India. Jois's father was an astrologer, priest, and landholder. His mother took care of the house and the nine children - five girls and four boys - of whom Pattabhi Jois was the fifth. From the age of five, he was instructed in Sanskrit and rituals by his father. No one else in his family learned yoga.<ref name="Stern, Eddie 2002">Template:Cite book</ref>

Education

In 1927, at the age of 12, Jois attended a lecture and demonstration at the Jubilee Hall<ref name="mysorean">Template:Cite web</ref> in Hassan, Karnataka by T. Krishnamacharya<ref name="raghuram">Template:Cite web</ref> and became his student the next day. He stayed in Kowshika for two years and practiced with Krishnamacharya every day.<ref name="Stern, Eddie 2002" />

In 1930, Jois ran away from home to Mysore to study Sanskrit, with 2 rupees.<ref name="times"/><ref name="nyt">Template:Cite news</ref> Around the same time Krishnamacharya departed Hassan to teach elsewhere. Two years later, Jois was reunited with Krishnamacharya, who had also made his way to Mysore. During this time, the Maharaja of Mysore, Krishna Rajendra Wodeyar, had become seriously ill and it is said that Krishnamacharya had healed him, through yoga, where others had failed. The Maharaja became Krishnamacharya's patron and established a yogaśala for him at the Jaganmohan Palace.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> Jois often accompanied Krishnamacharya in demonstrations,<ref name="bakasana">Template:Cite web</ref> and occasionally assisted Krishnamacharya in class and taught in his absence.<ref name="Stern 2002">Template:Cite book</ref>

Jois studied with Krishnamacharya from 1927 to 1929 in his own village, and then in Mysore from 1932 to 1953.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref><ref>Template:Cite web</ref> He studied texts such as Patañjali's Yoga Sūtra, Haṭha Yoga Pradīpikā, Yoga Yajñavalkya and the Upaniṣads.<ref name="thehindu">Template:Cite news</ref>

In 1924 Krishnamacharya supposedly researched an ancient text which he called the Yoga Korunta; he described this as badly damaged and with many missing portions,<ref name="Stern 2002"/> and claimed he had learned the text from a teacher named Rama Mohan Brahmachari on a supposed seven-year stay in the Himalayas.<ref name="Singleton 2010 pp184-186"/> Jois began his studies with Krishnamacharya in 1927 and was taught what Krishnamacharya called the Yoga Korunta method.<ref name="Stern 2002"/> An entire system of practices including pranayama, bandhas, (core muscular and energetic locks) and drishti (visual focal points) were included along with āsanas (postures) and vinyāsas (connecting movements), defining the method that Jois went on to teach.<ref name="Sjoman 1999 49">Template:Cite book</ref> Jois stated that he had never seen the text;<ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref name="Stern 2002"/> its authenticity is impossible to validate as no copy has ever been seen by scholars.<ref name="Singleton 2010 pp184-186">Template:Cite book</ref>

A major component of Ashtanga Yoga absent from Krishnamacharya's early teachings was Surya Namaskar, the Sun Salutation. However, Surya Namaskar already existed, and Krishnamacharya was aware of it in the 1930s, as it was being taught, as exercise rather than as yoga, in the hall next to his Yogaśala in the Mysore palace.<ref name="Singleton 2010 pp203-206">Template:Cite book</ref><ref name="Sjoman 1999 49"/>

Career

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Jois taught yoga at the Sanskrit College, Mysore from 1937 to 1973.<ref name="huffington"/>

The Maharaja of Mysore sometimes attended classes when Jois was assisting, and offered Jois a teaching position at the Sanskrit College in Mysore with a salary, scholarship to the college and room and board.<ref name="Stern 2002"/> Jois held a yoga teaching position at the Sanskrit College<ref name="bakasana"/> from 1937 to 1973,<ref name="huffington">Template:Cite web</ref> becoming vidwan (professor) in 1956,<ref name="huffington"/> as well as being Honorary Professor of Yoga at the Government College of Indian Medicine from 1976 to 1978.<ref name="thehindu"/>

In 1948, Jois established the Ashtanga Yoga Research Institute at their home in Lakshmipuram.<ref name="bbc">Template:Cite web</ref> In 1964 he built an extension in the back of the house for a yoga hall.<ref name="Stern, Eddie 2002"/> In 1964, a Belgian named André Van Lysebeth spent two months with Jois learning the primary and intermediate series of the Ashtanga Vinyasa Yoga system. Not long afterward, van Lysebeth wrote the book J'apprends le Yoga (1967, English title: Yoga Self-Taught) which mentioned Jois and included his address. This brought Westerners to Mysore to study yoga.<ref name="nyt"/><ref name="Sjoman 1999 49"/> The first Americans came, after Jois's son Manju demonstrated yoga at Swami Gitananda's ashram in Pondicherry.<ref name="Stern, Eddie 2002"/> To accommodate the increasing number of students, he opened a new school in Gokulam in 2002.<ref name="Donahue 2012">Template:Cite book Template:Page needed</ref> Jois continued to teach at the Ashtanga Yoga Research Institute in Mysore, now in the neighbourhood of Gokulam,<ref name="churumuriRIP"/> with his only daughter Saraswathi Rangaswamy (b. 1941) and his grandson Sharath for the rest of his life.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> He published the book Yoga Mālā, in Kannada in 1958; an English translation appeared in 1999.<ref name="latimes"/>

His first trip to the West was in 1974, to South America, to deliver a lecture in Sanskrit at an international yoga conference.<ref name="huffington"/> In 1975 he stayed for four months in Encinitas, California, marking the beginning of Ashtanga Vinyasa Yoga in America.<ref name="latimes">Template:Cite news</ref> Norman Allen, one of his first western students, collaborated with Jois on his trips to America.<ref name="Pizer 2019">Template:Cite web</ref> He had said on many occasions that there might be only twenty or thirty students practising Ashtanga Yoga in America then, but, 'gradually, gradually, in twenty years, it will be fully spreading'.<ref name="Stern, Eddie 2002"/> He returned to the US several times over the next 20 years, to teach yoga at Encinitas and beyond.<ref name="latimes"/>

Parampara, the passing of knowledge from teacher to pupil (traditionally, from guru to shishya), is said to lie at the heart of Jois's Ashtanga Yoga.<ref name="Byrne 2014">Template:Cite book</ref> Teachers are certified through many years of daily practice and extended trips to Mysore, India, to become authorized "lineage holders".<ref name="Byrne 2014"/> Having studied under Krishnamacharya for many years, Jois expected the same from his students, creating among the most stringent requirements anywhere in yoga teacher training.<ref name="Byrne 2014"/>

Family life

On the full moon of June 1933, when Jois was 18 years old, he married Savitramma,<ref name="nyt"/> who affectionately came to be known as Amma by Pattabhi Jois's family and students alike. They had three children: Saraswathi, Mañju and Ramesh.<ref name="kpjayi-kpj">Template:Cite web</ref><ref name="ayny-guruji">Template:Cite web</ref>

In 1948, with the help of his students, Jois purchased a home in the section of town called Lakshmipuram. According to Tim Miller, Jois continued to practice asanas until his son Ramesh committed suicide when Jois was in his early 60s.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

Re-evaluation

Criticisms

According to B.K.S. Iyengar, Jois was assigned to teach asana at the Sanskrit Pathshala when Krishnamacharya's yogaśala was opened in 1933, and was "never a regular student".<ref name="Singleton 2010">Template:Cite book</ref><ref name="Iyengar 2000">Template:Cite book</ref> Jois claimed he was B. K. S. Iyengar's teacher, although Iyengar has denied this, and the two men's yoga systems are different; both were taught by Krishnamacharya.<ref name="name=Sjoman 1999">Template:Cite book</ref>

The obituary in The Economist questioned Jois's adherence to the yogic principle of ahimsa or non-violence, writing that "a good number of Mr Jois's students seemed constantly to be limping around with injured knees or backs because they had received his "adjustments", yanking them into Lotus, the splits or a backbend."<ref name="Economist" /> Adjustments by Jois have been characterized as "overwhelming, producing fear and extreme discomfort in students as they are pushed beyond their physical and psychological comfort zones in often-difficult, even dangerous asana."<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>

Sexual abuse

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The Economist obituary questioned Jois's adherence to the yogic principle of brahmacharya or sexual continence, and made the accusation that some students received different "adjustments";<ref name="Economist"/> further evidence and accusations soon emerged in 2009.<ref name="Elephant Journal 2009">Template:Cite web</ref><ref name="YogaDork 2009">Template:Cite web</ref> In 2010, it became public knowledge that Jois had systematically sexually abused some of his female and male yoga students, both in Mysore and during his travels, until his death in 2009.<ref name="early abuse reports">Among the reports of abuse from 2010 onwards are:

The number of victims is unknown, but women and men have described their experiences of abuse, with video and photographic evidence.<ref name="multiple abuse experiences">The many interviews and first-hand reports include:

Some well known Ashtanga Yoga teachers have come forward to corroborate the accusations.<ref name="well-known witnesses">Statements from Ashtanga Yoga teachers who witnessed abuse include:

In 2019, R. Sharath Jois published an acknowledgement of his sadness over his grandfather's conduct, apologising to the students concerned, and encouraging them to forgive his grandfather. "It brings me immense pain that I also witnessed him giving improper adjustments", Sharath wrote.<ref name="Sharath 2019">Template:Cite webTemplate:Cbignore</ref><ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

Legacy

In the early 21st century, Jois's grandson, R. Sharath Jois, led the Ashtanga Yoga community as director of the K. Pattabhi Jois Ashtanga Yoga Institute (KPJAYI) in Mysore.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Template:Cite web</ref> Jois's organization Sonima often provides organizational support to Sharath's world tours, and produces online programs that provide supplementary teaching tools for Ashtanga. Jois's daughter, Saraswathi, and granddaughter, Sharmila, run a yoga school in Mysore and travel the world on teaching tours.<ref name="Byrne 2014"/>

A student, David Life, co-founder of Jivamukti Yoga, has said of Jois, "He was not a monk or a renunciate; he was fearless about combining the path of yogi with the path of participant. He never saw it as separate from our lives. He thought that anyone could attain to yoga if they had the desire and the enthusiasm."<ref name="Fortini">Template:Cite news</ref> A 2006 film Guru was made about him by Robert Wilkins.<ref name="movie">Template:Cite web</ref>

Bibliography

See also

Notes

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References

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