B. K. S. Iyengar's teacher T. Krishnamacharya: The father of modern yoga

NEW DELHI: B.K.S. Iyengar and Shri K. Pattabhi Jois can be said to have brought yoga to the West, but the international character of yoga, and perhaps even its modern form, can be attributed to the unassuming man who taught these two men - Thirumalai Krishnamacharya.
Krishnamacharya, the Tamil Brahmin yoga master was born in British India and his stature in the community of serious yoga practitioners is matched in greatness only by his legendary dedication to his art.
An extraordinary apprentice
The website of the Krishnamacharya Yoga Mandiram (KYM), the Chennai-based yoga therapy and training center, tells the extraordinary story of his quest. Born in a small South Indian village in 1888, Krishnamacharya learned the Vedas and Sanskrit grammar when he was barely six years old.
His search for wisdom took him to Mysore, Patna and Benaras, where he learned Nyaya, Mimamsa, and Ayurveda from renowned teachers. But it was in the unforgiving conditions of Mansarovar, in the Himalayas, that Krishnamacharya would spend over seven years studying Patanjali's Yoga sutra and yoga therapy under the tutelage of Shri Ramamohana Brahmachari. It was the apprenticeship that inspired his life's work. Every day, until he died in 1989 at the age of 100, he placed his teacher's sandals on his head in a gesture of reverence.
A devoted teacher
Devotion - to his teacher, to his beloved Lord Narayana, to his personal practice of yoga, and to his students - defined Krishnamacharya's personality. He was an uncommonly attentive teacher.
When his students - at the Mysore Jagamohan Palace's Yogashala or later, at his home in Madras - performed asanas, he observed them closely, instead of doing the poses with them. A good teacher "should understand how the body, breath, and mind interact" during the execution of a yoga posture, says Dr. Latha Satish, a veteran teacher and psychologist, and KYM Trustee. For her, the namesake of her institution epitomised that definition.
If Krishnamacharya was an unusually observant teacher, he was also an extraordinarily strict one. He could tell from the way a student walked whether they had been practicing, and cancel classes if students arrived five minutes late, regardless of who the student was, says Dr. Satish.
Krishnamcharya did not even spare his own son. T. K. V. Desikachar, the world-renowned teacher who founded the KYM. When Desikachar - an engineer by training - asked Krishnamachaya if he could become his shishya, his father asked him to get up at 3 am the next day and report for practice.
Putting the student first
However, for all his storied strictness, Krishnamacharya believed in adapting yoga to the student's needs, and his knowledge was so marvellously expansive that he could find ways to do so, says the KYM website. His essays on yoga from the 1930s reflect his efforts to modernize yoga, says Dr. Satish. He also expanded the scope of yoga instruction, and "integrated ayurveda and ritualistic practice" with it. "He was a holistic yogi," she sums up.
At his hundredth birthday celebrations, Krishnamacharya was asked if he had any comments to make. He simply recited "Aum" on a single breath, for more than a minute, says Dr. Satish. "It was such a pleasure to see such a great man sitting there quietly, holding his japa mala." she remembers. "There was something very powerful and spiritual about him."
Krishnamacharya was an intense, purposeful man, and through the great yogis who were fortunate enough to learn from him, he preserved and popularized a vast corpus of knowledge that he had so painstakingkly acquired, adapted, and added to over the better part of a century.