Sri K. Pattabhi Jois

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Sri Krishna Pattabhi Jois, (born July 26, 1915) is an Indian yoga teacher. He was a student of Sri Tirumalai Krishnamacharya. He currently teaches at his school, the Ashtanga Yoga Research Institute, in Mysore, India.

[edit] Biography

Jois was born on July 26, 1915 (Guru Pūrṇimā, full moon day), in the village of Kowshika, near Hassan, Karnataka, South India.

In 1927, at the age of 12, Jois attended a lecture and demonstration in Hassan by Sri T. Krishnamacharya and became his student the very next day—the beginning of 25 years of study with him.

In 1929, Jois ran away from home to Mysore to study Sanskrit. 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 Krisnamacharya's patron and established a Yoga shala for him on the palace grounds. Krishnamacharya remained in Mysore with Jois until 1941, when he left for Madras after the death of the Maharaja.

Jois remained in Mysore and married a young woman named Savitramma (but who came to be known as Amma), in a love match (as opposed to an arranged marriage), on the full moon of June 1937 when Jois was 21 years old. In 1948 they, with the help of Sri K. Pattabhi Jois' students, purchased a home in the section of town called Lakshmipuram, where they lived with their children Saraswathi, Mañju and Ramesh.

He held a teaching position in yoga at the Sanskrit College of Maharaja for many years, and in 1956 he became a professor. In 1948, he established the Ashtanga Yoga Research Institute at their new home in Lakshmipuram.

In 1958, he began writing a book on yoga, Yoga Mālā ("Yoga Garland"). It was published in India in 1962 and first published in English in 1999.

In 1964, a Belgian named André Van Lysebeth (1919-2004) spent two months with Jois learning the primary and intermediate asanas of the Ashtanga Yoga system. Not long afterwards, van Lysebeth wrote a book called J'apprends le Yoga (1967, English title: Yoga Self-Taught) which mentioned Jois and included his address. This marked the beginning of westerners coming to Mysore to study yoga.

Jois continues to teach at the Ashtanga Yoga Research Institute in Mysore, now located in the neighbourhood of Gokulam, with his daughter Saraswathi Rangaswamy (b. 1941) and his grandson Sharath (b. 1971).

Jois' yoga shala attracts thousands of foreign yoga students every year. They come to practice in his presence, and to have the opportunity to learn from a master.