10) My first Mysore Ashtanga Yoga Class experience

When I first started to investigate about Ashtanga Vinyasa Yoga after completing my Sivananda Advanced Yoga Teachers Training Course ( ATTC ) in 2004 , I came across Louise Ellis through the net .It was quite an accident that I came across her name at the ashtanga.com site and when I went through her website I was thrilled that she too had a back ground at the Sivananda System and had done the Sivananda Yoga Teachers Training Course (TTC ) in 1971 directly under its founder Swami Vishnu devananda .Soon I was in touch with her through emails /chats but could never meet her directly until September 2010 . As my interest in Ashtanga Vinyasa Yoga was not very great in 2004 I dropped it and started to focus on the Sivananda System of Classical Hatha Yoga itself .  But in 2010 after I completed the Sivananda Sadhana Intensive Course ( SI) in Jan 2010 for the second time ( I did the first one in Jan 2009 ) ,I decided that it is time to move ahead of the Sivananda System and came across Ashtanga Vinyasa Yoga in Summer of 2010 .I have detailed in my earlier blog post  titled "2 How my Ashtanga Vinayasa Yoga practice began " about this journey .

So in the summer of 2010 when I started seriously getting interested in the Ashtanga Vinyasa Yoga I decided to learn it myself using Books , DVD's as there was  no proper Ashtanga Shala in my City ,Chennai .In fact in India itself there is no proper Ashtanga Shala except the one of Pattabhi Joise  in Mysore run now by Sharath and Saraswathi .Of course there are few others in Mysore and other places but those are being run by people not directly Certified by Pattabhi Joise . So as a first step I got the relevant books related Ashtanga Vinyasa Yoga like David Swenson's Ashtanga Yoga Manual ,Gregor Maehle's Ashtanga Yoga books ( both Primary as well as Intermediate series ) , downloaded the Ashtanga Surya Namaskar A,B Charts as well the entire Primary series Charts from the internet , downloaded David Swenson's Primary series videos from you tube and started learning on my own and practicing the same . As there is a wonderful online ashtanga community on the net  ( and some even maintaining detailed blogs of their practice right from the start ) I could very much connect with the way many people have started their ashtanga journey ,the challenges they faced etc etc .

Once I got bit familiar with the Ashtanga Surya Namaskar A,B and the standing poses I felt the need for a guided audio practice and got hold of Sharath's Ashtanga Primary Audio CD (Available from the site ashtanga.com ) and started to practice the same . It felt as though Sharath was personally instructing me . Though my practice was only up to the completion of the standing sequences ,I felt that I have got a good start as far as my ashtanga vinyasa practice was concerned .It took me a while to get used to this Ashtanga Vinyasa Practice as I come from a different style whose sequence and method are very much different from that of Ashtanga Vinyasa Yoga and whose style I have been practicing for more than  10 years . Even though I was happy with my personal  Ashtanga Vinaysa practice I felt the need for a direct initiation of the practice under a proper certified ashtanga vinyasa teacher  as I felt that while books , DVDs ,CDs can give you knowledge , inspiration and instructions they cant give you the energy of a live teacher . So while I was probing over how to solve this problem of finding a proper live ashtanga teacher to initiate my Ashtanga Journey I came across again Louise Ellis and got to know from her website that she is giving her Mysore style ashtanga classes in Rishikesh from September - December 2010 . This was like a spiritual call to me as Rishikesh in the land of Yoga where my first spiritual Guru Swami Sivananda started his Global spiritual mission and since Louise Ellis also started her Yoga journey with Sivananda Tradition in 1971 ,I felt that nothing better can be than having my first proper ashtanga initiation at Rishikesh ,the land of Yoga under a senior Ashtanga Vinyasa Teacher  who also has a Sivananda background .So I immediately booked my ticket as well as the hotel reservations to Rishikesh for end of september 2010 and luckily a friend of mine also wanted to join me ( though he was not interested in practicing ashtyanga yoga and  he wanted to just have a spiritual break in Rishikesh ) .Luckily for me the flight was available at very cheap rates and the hotel was also not expensive( I stayed at Hotel Narayan Kunj , Swarg Ashram , near Ram Jhula Rishikesh ) and  since it was being shared by my friend  I have to pay only half the rate and I felt like things were all falling in place . As I was visiting North India itself after a gap of 14 years and Rishikesh after 19 years and I was full of excitement .I sent an email to Louise Ellis informing my confirmation of my trip to Rishikesh to take her classes .

Once I landed in Rishikesh on Mon 27 September 2010 evening ,the first thing that I did was to  visit the Holy Ganges river and wash my hands ,legs and sprinkle few drops of the holy ganges water  on my head as a symbolic holy bath and then  visited  the Samadhi Shrine of my spiritual Guru Swami Sivananda at Divine Life Society to receive his blessings before starting my Ashtanga Vinyasa Journey . When I came back to the hotel I got in touch with Louise Ellis over her cell and informed her of my arrival and she told me to come for class the next day at 7 a.m at the Yoga Hall at  the Divine  Ganga Cottage near Laxman Jhula in Rishikesh .

I went half an hour early and when Louise Ellis came I informed her about my lack of real life  training in Ashtanga and she told me not to be worried about the same and just relax as this was a Mysore class and there is absolutely no pressure on me to be intimidated by other's performance .She handed out to me a photo copy of Ashtanga Primary series sheet as well as the copy of Ashtanga Prayer sheet .

The class started it at 7 a.m ( Tue 28 September 2010 ) with the Ashtanga Prayer and after that everyone started to do their own self practice and I started doing on my own Ashtanga Surya Namaskar A-5 rounds and B - 5 rounds and Louise Ellis was watching me over and she said they were correct and after that she demonstrated one by one each of the Standing Sequence and asked me to do the same . I had no problem in doing most of them except  Utthita Hast Padangushtasana ( Upright Hand to Big Toe Posture )  .After the standing poses were over , she introduced  to me one by one  the basic sitting poses  along with the Vinyasyas between the sides as well as between the postures up  to Navasan and said  that for any beginner to Ashtanga Vinyasa practice Navasan is the stopping point and after that one can continue with the concluding postures.For me the sitting postures some were easy and some were challenging  and it was quite a new challenging experience for me doing the Vinyasas between the sides as well as between  the postures  and finally  and I did the concluding postures on my own  and I got wonderful adjustments from Louise Ellis for Paschimottasana( Intense Western Stretch )  and Urdhva Padmasana ( Upwards Lotus Posture ) .The concluding postures were not a great difficulty for me as I am used to head stand , shoulder stand , halasan etc as part of the Sivananda Asana routine .Then I had a very good final relaxation for  10 mts .The entire session lasted 90 mts and I concluded around 8.30 a.m and she told me that this will up my regular practice for the next few months and I need to master all the postures up to Navsan before proceeding to the other postures in the primary series .
So this was my first ever real life Mysore Ashtanga practice in a Shala under a real life teacher and happy that I got my formal Ashtanga Initiation under Louise Ellis and I can never forget this first ever Mysore Ashtanga Class experience  on Tue 28 September 2010 at Rishikesh  under Louise Ellis and I consider that date to be my date of formal initiation in to Ashtanga Vinyasa Yoga .

9) Yoga Beyond the Mat

While most of us are aware of the type of yoga to be done on the mat but when it comes to practicing Yoga beyond the mat many of us are confused as to how it should be done . Some consider Yoga to be just what is being done on the Mat and nothing more than that . So when someone says that they are practicing Yoga they mean that they are practicing Yoga on the Mat and nothing more than that and they evaluate themselves as to how far they have progressed in Yoga by how many postures they have learnt , how long they can hold the postures , how many rounds of Surya Namaskar they can do , whether they can stand upside down in Headstand or  do advanced balancing postures like Peacock ( Mayur Asan)  , Scorpion , Crow etc . Some measure their yogic life by how many time a week they practice Yoga , how many times a week they take sattvic food , how many times they meditate , how many yoga sutras or Bhagavad Gita verses they have mastered  etc etc .First of all we must understand that Yoga means joining or integrating and hence when we say that we are practicing yoga we need to include in it all aspects of our life and not just confine it to yoga on the mat .While Yoga on the Mat is the very visible part of this journey ,there is a larger invisible yogic journey that is happening beyond the mat but since it does not have a structure like Ashtanga , Iyengar , Sivananda ,Anusara etc it is never discussed much and many do not know what it means to practice yoga beyond the mat . Yoga beyond the mat varies from person to person and situation to situation and there can be no standard yardstick for the same .Take for example the topic on Being Honest or Truthful . While we need to be honest and truthful in our speech most of the time but there are circumstances where we need to lie ,say for example your friend/family member  is seriously ill and admitted in the hospital and while the Doctor says to you personally that he/she will not be alive for long but request you not to reveal the same to the patient , you must not say No No I practice honesty in my speech and if the patient asks me what they Doctor is saying ,I will reveal to him the truth that he will not live for long . This is the most cruel way of practicing Honesty or truth in speech .So in each and every situation in life we need to weight the pros and cons and act accordingly and there is no standard rule for everyone /every situation .While scriptures like Bhagavad Gita , Yoga Sutras talk about Good /Bad , right /wrong ,standard set of universal values  like Yamas ,Niyamas etc etc but kindly note that  life is no black and white where all things are either all  black or  all white and there are hundreds of shades of grey between them and it is these  grey situations that are tricky and need to be handled and no scripture can come to your Guidance under these grey circumstances .So what is to be done under these circumstances ? There is no easy answer but Sages of the past have given 2 tools to be used when we are confronted with a difficult situation :

1) Put yourself in the shoes of the other person and see what you would do in a similar situation 

2) Introspect yourself as to your  motive behind doing anything i.e are u doing it for some seeking some rewards ( monetary or otherwise ) , are u doing it to seek love , approval or appreciation from the other .

 Putting urself in to the  shoes of the other person and verifying whether you are doing anything for selfish reasons will help you un condition your mind and give your more mental space and this extra mental space will help you get the necessary clarity to take proper decisions appropriate to the situation . But this is easily said than done as the mind has been conditioned  for centuries to think in terms of what benefit it will get directly or indirectly and suddenly asking it to revert to an unselfish situation will not work so easily .But all said and done this is the only way we can see things for clear as they are and not what we want it to be .

While the entire yoga market is flooded with Books and DVDs related to yoga postures only few are related to practicing yoga beyond the mat and I found the following 2 books very good ( links given above ):

1) Bringing Yoga to Life : The Everyday practice of Enlightened Living by Donna Farhi 

 2) Living your Yoga : Finding the Spiritual in Everyday Life by Judith Lasater

Both Donna Farhi and Judith Lasater are seasoned yoga practitioners and teachers and have a rich experience of  not only yoga in general but life itself in particular and the wisdom accumulated by them in their many years of teaching yoga to people from various walks of life in various countries world over  are very much reflected in both these books and  I suggest every serious Yoga practitioner / teacher  to have these books as a guiding tool in their yoga journey as many of the tricky situations we encounter in our yogic life either as a practitioner / teacher have been already encountered by them before and they have given their own insights as to how they have handled them .

8)Best Introductory books for Practising Ashtanga Vinayasa Yoga

When I started on my Ashtanga Journey first in 2004 I had Pattabhi Joise book "Yoga Mala" but I found it difficult to use that book for my personal practice as the book had lots of instructions and only few pictures and moreover the instructions and pictures were in different places and I had to keep turning back and forth the pages to know which instruction is for which pose . Since I was fully immersed in the Sivananada System of Classical Hatha Yoga at that time I was not motivated much by Ashtanga Yoga and though "Yoga Mala "was rich in content but  the way in which the instructions and pictures were laid out put me off in seriously pursing Ashtanga Vinyasa Yoga . When I restarted my Ashtanga Vinyasa Journey in Mid 2010 ( I consider 2010 to be the real starting point of my Ashtanga Vinyasa Journey ) I was on lookout for a good Introductory Ashtanga Instruction Manual to follow and found the following 2 books to be very excellent books for any student beginning their Ashtanga Vinyasa Journey and the books are :

                                  1)Total Ashtanga by Tara Fraser

                                  2) Ashtanga Yoga the Practice Manual by David Swenson .

While David Swenson's Ashtanga Yoga Practice Manual is quite popular and famous among the Ashtanga Community , Tara Fraser's book "Total Ashtanga" is not that much popular but it is equally an excellent book for beginners . This book by Tara Fraser was never in my list of Ashtanga Books as no one in the Ashtanga Community talked about it ( except for one serious Ashtanga blogger ) and every one were talking more about David Swenson's Ashtanga Practice Manual followed by John Scott's book on Ashtanga Yoga and Gregor Maehle's books on Ashtanga Primary and Secondary series . I came to know of Tara Fraser's book while I was on a Trip to Rishikesh in the end of Sept 2010 to learn formally Ashtanga Vinaysa Yoga under Louise Ellis . As I was going through a book shop in Rishikesh I was surprised to find this excellent introductory book on AsIhtanga Vinyasa Yoga by Tara Fraser and immediately bought it and since then have started using  it more often   as reference for my Ashtanga Vinyasa Practice . I  would say that John Scott and Gregor Maehle's books would suit more for a person who has had a quite an in depth practice  and for a beginner it is better they choose either Tara Fraser or David Swenson's book on Ashtanga Yoga .The reason why I am suggesting these 2 books are :

 1) They are like a ready reference manual with each page having a picture of the posture and its basic instructions .

2) Modifications are given for difficult postures .( While Hard Core Ashtangis refuse to use props , these books make use of basic props to attempt the difficult postures ) .

3) The layout of the book is that there is a perfect balance between pictures and instructions and makes it easy for a beginner to follow the instructions looking at the picture .

 4) The instructions are also quite simple and not too technical and easy to follow .

5) David Swenson's book covers both the primary as well as secondary sequence and if a person is keen on learning both these sequence it is better to get David Swenson's book . Tara Fraser's book covers only the primary sequence .

5) Both these books at the end give a complete Ashtanga Primary Sequence in Picture format .David Swenson's book also has the Secondary series sequence .So even if u do not have an Ashtanga Vinayas  Poster , this picture sequence can help guide you properly . In fact I keep Tara Fraser book by my side when I practice my Ashtanga sequence .

 6) Both these books give a short primary sequence and while  I have not tried them ,it would be very helpful for those who want to have a short primary practice .

So in  conclusion I would say that if you serious in learning both the primary and secondary ashtanga vinyasa sequence then it is better get David Swenson's book but if you are unsure about your own commitment to Ashtanga Vinaysa Practice then better get Tara Fraser's book as it is a simple one  and deals with just the  primary series .

Note : No book can substitute for the instructions received from a qualified real life  teacher but in the absence of a proper Ashtanga Teacher these 2 books are the best guides for you as a beginner to Ashtanga Vinyasa Yoga .

7) Yoga and my Journaling journey

Eventhough I started my yoga journey through the Sivananda System in Mid 1997 I never got in to serious journaling from 2008 onwards .I never had  maintained a dedicated personal  journal so far and during my college days I used to just make some short notes in my diary and in some cases some long notes but never have I seriously documented my life and its happenings in detail .Though Swami Sivananda had urged people on the path of Yoga to maintain a spiritual diary and had also provided a basic template of the same in his books I never felt motivated to develop it as a proper discipline .I used to maintain notes of my practice /  teaching for a few weeks and give it up . It was only in April 2008 when I read an article  titled "Words Heal the world " on the importance of  maintaining a personal journal by Anita Anand  from a magazine called "Life Positive" that I decided that enough is enough and it is high time I started maintaining a dedicated personal journal . Even though I was motivated to start maintaining a personal journal I had my own doubts about how far I will be successful in the same and hence did not to waste any money buying fresh and expensive  writing journals and decided to start writing using an old diary that was virtually empty barring few odd jottings here and there .I could not write properly as I had lost the habit of writing using a pen as most of the time I was using only the Computer to type my letters and I was using the pen only for signing cheques / credit card bills , filling forms and  making short notes and it was years since I wrote a letter to my family / friends as all communications were only through net / emails /phone /cell phones etc . There was heavy mental resistance to writing and I just wrote some short notes for the sake of writing . My  handwriting was horrible and there was no focus on what I wrote and I was just writing for the sake of writing . I wanted to find whether there was any course related to Journal writing for me to get some basic inputs about how to write and maintain a journal as I felt I was not progressing much in my journaling and it was during that time I came across the book "Journal to The Self :by Kathleen Adams " from amazon.com . After reading the initial pages of the book from amazon.com  called" The 79 Cent Therapist " I was totally blown over as to what a powerful tool this journaling was for my own self growth .I immediately got that book and started going over that to see whether there are any rules for maintaining a journal and I was surprised by Kathleen Adams advice is that even though she has suggested various formats and styles for journal writing in her book , in reality there are no rules for journal writing and one just need to write naturally and enjoy the same and that one need not bother about handwriting , grammer , spelling mistakes ,style etc etc . This was a huge relief to me as I all along believed that journal writing should be neat , organized and focused etc etc .So I continued to keep writing whatever came to me and sometimes I wrote short notes , sometimes long notes and sometimes there was a long gap between 2 notes and here again Kathleen Adams advised one need not worry about writing daily or keeping a quota for month or week as journal writing is purely to communicate with ourselves and not to meet any deadlines or win a prize or to fulfill some one's expectation .In that book regarding this  there was an excellent quote from Jim Rohn , the popular motivational speaker and he says " There are 2 things to avoid with your journal .One is never writing in it ; the other is always writing in it . In the first case ,you participate in life without observing it .In the second case , you observe life without participating in it ."

So again I was relaxed that having gaps between 2 journal entries is not a sin and it is perfectly natural . So as I was going through this process of journal writing I felt that I  was only writing randomly on issues that come to my mind but I have not yet developed the discipline of maintaining a proper personal diary of my  yoga practice / teaching and here again I started reading an article from a  magazine called Frozen Thoughts Magazine September 2008 by Lata Krishnaswamy titled "Practicing towards Perfection" pg.52 . She  describes how her Bharatanatyam  Dance teacher Vasanthalakshmi would ask her to maintain a practice notebook where she would be asked to record her practice schedules and what she did and she would always give excuse for not doing that but later felt quite ashamed of it and started practicing regularly . I too felt that it is high time I also maintain a dedicated practice journal to document what I did , what insights I learned , what was my mental state during my practice etc etc and I had the perfect opportunity for the same when I enrolled for the Sadhana Intensive Program in the Sivananda Ashram in Madurai in Jan 2009 . One beauty of this program was that it was purely a personal practice and except for the instructions and basic guidelines each participant had to do their practice independently and also maintain a record of the same and later share their experiences in the afternoon group discussions .I started maintaining a very meticulous record of my own personal practice along with my own mental states of how they were during each practice session . Since it was an intense practice of pranayama ,it gave an excellent opportunity to observe my own mood during the practice as prana and mind originate from the same source .I not only documented my practice sessions but also what happened during discussions and the satsangs , what sort of food was offered to us  each day (  as it was a strict diet conducive for advanced pranayama practice ) .So by the end of the 14 day course I had my entire journal book complete with all details about my practice and other details I observed in the course and was thrilled to have maintained a full comprehensive document of my intensive sadhana .So these 14 days were an excellent training period for me in not only focusing my mind but also in developing a discipline of maintaining a personal journal both for my practice as well as for my own self growth .Apart from my written journal I also started a private  online journal to record my thoughts and feelings and used to alternate between writing on note book  to writing on my online journal .The entire 2009 went like this though there were gaps in between .I got an opportunity to rekindle my Sadhana in 2010 as  I once again redid the Sadhana Intensive Course in  Jan 2010 at the Sivananda Ashram in Madurai and this time it was more easy both during my practice as well as in maintaining my own journal during the course and once again by the time the course was over I had m journal fully filled with all the details about my practice , the discussions , the diet etc .Now I knew that no longer I need to fight in maintaining my journal and that it has become a part of my life .It was at this juncture that on coming back home I bought my first new spiral journal on Feb 2010 exclusively for my journaling and till date I have been quite consistent in my journal writing and while I write more offline in my personal journal I do at times write in my online private journal apart from making entries in my 3 blogs .I am not yet a serious blogger but I am happy to have finally developed a good journaling practice and I can see my own improvement in my writing and like my own personal yoga practice I have started to give equal importance to my journaling activity and consider it to be a very excellent tool for helping me develop more clarity with regard to my life and as I do not have any personal real life Gurus /Mentors I find my journals themselves apart from my extensive reading of books to be good tools to help me evaluate myself and check my own progress and help me move ahead .Though I missed out in documenting my first decade of Yoga Journey i.e 1999-2009  ( tlhough I remember many of them ) I intend not to miss  documenting the next phase of my yoga journey i.e from 2010 (  my Ashtanga Vinyasa Yoga journey also started seriously from 2010)  and happy that I have made journaling a very important aspect of my life from 2010 onwards and so far I have maintained up to date accounts of my Ashtanga Vinyasa Practice and hope to maintain the same .

6) Book Review : World Peace Diet: Eating for Spiritual Health and Social Harmony

Product Description
Food is our most intimate and telling connection both with the living natural order and with our living cultural heritage. By eating the plants and animals of our earth, we literally incorporate them. It is also through this act of eating that we partake of our culture’s values and paradigms at the most primal levels. It is becoming increasingly obvious, however, that the choices we make about our food are leading to environmental degradation, enormous human health problems, and unimaginable cruelty toward our fellow creatures.

Incorporating systems theory, teachings from mythology and religions, and the human sciences, The World Peace Diet presents the outlines of a more empowering understanding of our world, based on a comprehension of the far-reaching implications of our food choices and the worldview those choices reflect and mandate. The author offers a set of universal principles for all people of conscience, from any religious tradition, that they can follow to reconnect with what we are eating, what was required to get it on our plate, and what happens after it leaves our plates.

The World Peace Diet suggests how we as a species might move our consciousness forward so that we can be more free, more intelligent, more loving, and happier in the choices we make.
About the Author
Will Tuttle has a master’s degree in humanities from San Francisco State University and a Ph.D. in the philosophy of education from the University of California. A professional pianist and teacher, he has for the last thirteen years toured progressive churches, vegetarian and macrobiotic conferences, and intentional communities throughout the country. He trained in Korea as a Zen Buddhist monk and has worked extensively in Tai Chi, yoga, massage, and dance and movement. He lives in Healdsburg, California.

Book review :

Various review exists for this book but I am presenting here one excellent review from amazon.com by a person named Delisa Renideo that expresses wonderfully what this book contains and why one must buy and read the same and imbibe the principles in our life .Here is the review below :

This book is a must-read for anyone who wants to grow spiritually, who wants to live a conscious and compassionate life, and who wants to contribute to world peace. I have read many books on the topic of vegetarianism, animal rights and animal welfare, spiritual growth, and peace and nonviolence. This book stands alone in its ability to make the connection between all of these subjects.

Will Tuttle, Ph.D. is a rare combination of extraordinary compassion, scholarly research and education, spiritual commitment and wisdom, intuitive insights, and the courage to challenge a worldview which goes back 10,000 years

In this book, Tuttle explores humanity's relationship with the foods we eat. He points out, very convincingly, that when humans began herding animals, it began to create a consciousness of exploitation which then spread to the control and domination of other humans, as well as animals. So the roots of human's violence to humans are found in the practice of seeing animals as objects to exploit for our own purposes: for food, furs, labor, entertainment, "sport" and experimentation. The use of humans as slaves and the subjugation of women followed the subjugation and enslavement of animals.

One thing that sets this book apart from any of the others that describe the problems associated with a meat-based diet is the focus on the spiritual aspects of our diet. When we take food into our bodies, we are also ingesting the energy contained in this food. Animals that are tortured and filled with terror and agony as they are killed are filled with this very negative energy. When humans eat their flesh, we are also ingesting this fear and anger. This affects us deeply. We cannot live with peace in our hearts as long as we are filling our bodies with the pain and suffering of other beings.

Tuttle helps us to see that none of us have actually chosen a diet based upon meat. Our mothers fed us meat from our infancy. As we got old enough to understand that we were eating animals, we were told that animals were put here for us to eat, so it was okay. We didn't question this, any more than we questioned wearing clothes or taking baths. Thus, we absorbed the acceptance of exploitation of animals so naturally that we didn't know it was happening. And being unconscious, it is hard to recognize the violence that is part of our everyday lives through the eating of animals. Therefore, it is also hard to recognize how insensitive we have become to violence, because we have to protect ourselves from an awareness of the violence we are part of 3 times a day.

This is a very important book for everyone who wants their lives to contribute to more peace in the world, rather than more suffering and violence.

5) My first Yoga Inspiration : Sri Krishnamacharya

Even though I have been involved as a teacher /student with the Sivananda System of Classical Hatha Yoga ( founder Swami Vishnu devananda )  right from 1997 , my first Yoga inspiration was not Swami Vishnu devananda but Sri Krishnamacharya . I have never met Sri Krishnamacharya but used to see his pictures in many local magazines doing amazing asanas even at his old age . During those time I was not motivated in to yoga much .But there was once a special edition of a local magazine in Tamil language which was in the form of a question and answer session by Sri Krishnamacharya's son Sri Desikachar ( who founded KYM ) and there in he described the origins of yoga , various health and spiritual benefits of yoga , what makes Sri Krishnamacharya so special and why is yoga so popular these days and other related questions .Since that book had a vast variety of questions from many common people ,I felt as though those were the questions I wanted to ask for which Sri Desikarchar's answers were really excellent and motivating . 

Some of the things I found motivating in that book are :

1) How Sri Krishnamacharya  cured the 20 year insomnia problem of an English women in just one session of yoga .

2) How J Krishnamurti came to learn yoga from Desikachar and how much respect  J Krishnamurti gave him inspite of the fact that J Krishnamurti was already a world famous spiritual teacher .

3) How Yoga therapy under Sri Desikachar's guidance  helped one famous sports person in Chennai who was affected by a wrong medical treatment to develop self confidence and start facing life positively inspite of the fact that wrong treatment crippled him from playing competitive sports again .

4) Most motivating for me was Sri Krishnamacharya's daily yoga sadhana in spite of his old age  and Sri Desikachar had mentioned that Krishnamacharya used to get up early morning before 3 a.m and do his own yoga sadahana first and also his morning worship to the Gods and finish them before people got up .This was very motivating for me as Krishnamacharya's house was hardly 2-3 km from my house and yet he was doing this daily Yoga sadhana inspite of his old age and inspite of being a family man with wife ,kids and grand kids  . So I thought that to be a Yogi one need not run to Himalaya's but that one can very well practice yoga sadahana being in the city and this was what got me hooked on me to start trying Yoga . So I would say that Sri Krishnamacharya was my first Yoga inspiration but I could never meet him personally as by the time I got really interested in yoga i.e in 1997 he was no longer alive and fate pushed me to learn yoga from the Sivananda Yoga Vedanta Centre in Chennai and that was one of the biggest blessings in my life as it turned me from a Yoga practitioner to a yoga teacher to a person who did a Yoga TV show .Though Sri Krishnamacharya was my first Yoga inspiration , it was Swami Vishnu devananda ( founder Sivananda Yoga Vedanta Centre ) who was my main guiding force for all the Yoga sadahana and Yoga teaching I did so far .More about that later in another post .

4) Inspiration from Senior Ashtanga Yoga Teachers

Most people get attracted to Ashtanga Vinyasa Yoga due to the intensity of its practice and the wonderful benefits it gives to its practitioners . While that may be true , I got motivated to try Ashtanga after reading about the lives of many senior Ashtanga teachers  .One thing that I noticed in the lives of these senior Ashtanga Teachers was that they had a very deep commitment to their own daily practice before they started teaching and some even spent nearly 10 years of dedicated practice before they started to teach professionally outside .More that that they still continue to maintain a high degree of their own personal practice in spite of their hectic teaching schedule .Many of them have made 7-8 trips to Mysore and stayed in Mysore for 2-3 months during each trip  to practice under the  guidance of Sri.K.Pattabhi Jois and his grandson Sharath and they did this inspite of the fact that they were well established as Yoga teachers in their respective countries . It is not that these people were super rich or were earning a lot .They saved money to visit Mysore and went back again to earn to come back again next year . This definitely involved investing lot of time ,money and energy and sacrificing lot of personal comforts . Also one of the other important trait that I found in these senior Ashtanga teachers was that they get up early  in morning  around 3 a.m and finish their intensive Ashtanga practice for 2 hrs or so before they start giving their first Yoga class at 5.30 or 6 a.m . This really demonstrates a high degree of commitment to the Ashtanga Vinayasa Yoga system and this is what made me admire these Ashtanga teachers as well as the Ashtanga Vinayasa  Yoga system .Some of the senior Ashtanga Teachers who impressed me most were Sharath , David Williams , Nancy Gilgoff , Louise Ellis ,Danny Paradise , Hamish Hendry ,Govinda Kai and many more can be found in the book Guruji : A Portrait of Sri K.Pattabhi Jois through the eyes of his students by Guy Donahaye , Eddie Stern. I read this book only later but even before that I came to know of some of the senior Ashtanga Teachers through internet and was amazed by their personal commitment to the Ashtanga Vinayasa Yoga system and the book Guruji only amplified the same through many more examples of senior students who are currently keeping the flame of Ashtanga Vinayasa Yoga tradition alive . Except for Louise Ellis ( who was my first Ashtanga Yoga Teacher ) I have never met any of these other Ashtanga Teachers in real life and I do not know how they are in real life and  do not know how  far they carry on the principles of Yoga beyond the Yoga Mat /Yoga Class . Whatever  that may be I admire them for their dedication to their personal practice and for living the message of Sri K Pattabhi Joise that Yoga is 99% practice and 1% theory .  This is what impressed me most in them and this is what inspired me to take up Ashtanga Vinyasa Yoga seriously and I hope that I too will live by  the same standards as set by these senior Ashtanga teachers .