The Ashtanga Primary Series, the breath, and the philosophy held by the Sanskrit scholars of Mysore. One path, studied at the pace your life allows, with a teacher who has been studying yoga in Mysore since 1990.
The program, in brief
The essentials, before anything else.
What is this?
A complete online 200-hour Ashtanga training. You learn the whole Primary Series and how to share it with grace and ease, and you study the philosophy with the Sanskrit scholars of Mysore. Registered with Yoga Alliance as an RYS 200.
What do you get?
A full set of video lessons and study sheets, a live Primary Series class every Sunday, monthly live weekends, personal time with Andrew, and a 200-hour certificate from Mysore Yoga Traditions (a Yoga Alliance RYS 200) and the Saṃskṛti Foundation, with eligibility to register as an RYT 200.
Why do it?
It is a deep immersion in the whole of Ashtanga Yoga, postures and philosophy as one path, in the form it was handed down. Whether or not you ever share it with others, you come away with a far richer relationship to the practice, studied from anywhere in the world.
Who is it for?
Any sincere student who wants to deepen their practice and their knowledge of yoga. Long-time practitioners and those newer to the practice both have a place here.
What does it cost?
$1,700 in full, or $165 a month over twelve months.
A required $108 final-examination fee is paid later, supporting the Saṃskṛti Foundation. Seven-day money-back guarantee. If the cost is out of reach, write to Andrew and we will find a way.
What it is like
Here is what it actually looks like. You roll out your mat in the early quiet and move through the Primary Series, breath by breath, until the sequence lives in your body and not only in your memory. Later, out walking with a lecture playing in your earbuds, you hear a scholar in Mysore move slowly through a single line of the Yoga Sūtras, the way it has been studied there for generations, and an idea you have been turning over for weeks quietly settles into place. None of it arrives all at once. It accumulates.
What this actually is
One path with three studies.
This training treats the postures as a doorway, not the whole house. You learn every posture of the Ashtanga Primary Series and how to share it with poise and care, and you also study the three texts the practice rests on, opened by the Sanskrit scholars of Mysore, so that you understand what you are doing and why.
The aim of the philosophy is one quiet faculty: viveka, the power to tell the real from the unreal, the lasting from the passing. It is a practical skill, not a belief. Yoga is not a religion. The scholars hold their philosophy open and their religion private, and they will quote the Buddha, Plato, and Aristotle in the same breath as Patañjali. The three studies run together across the year.
Study One
History and Philosophy
A full series of video lessons, each with a written introduction, so it plays like a podcast you can take on a walk. The three texts in a teachable order: Sankhya as the map of how a person is made, the Yoga Sutras as the method, opened a verse at a time by Dr. H.V. Nagaraj Rao, and the Bhagavad Gita, the text closest to the heart of Mysore, opened by Dr. M.A. Alwar.
The whole study trains one faculty: viveka, learning to see clearly.
Study Two
Yoga Methodology
Every posture in the Primary Series: how to practise it, and how to share it. The vinyāsa count built up from Sūrya Namaskāra, so the whole sequence makes sense from the ground. Adjusting, prāṇāyāma, and mudrā. We also cover the chakra, and the word here simply means the circle, nothing to do with energy centres. You leave with study sheets, including the 1973 syllabus of Pattabhi Jois passed on through Nancy Gilgoff.
First you practise. Then, when you are asked, you learn to share it.
Study Three
Yoga Chikitsa
The healing art. The practice is made to fit the person, never the person bent to fit the practice. This study sharpens your awareness and gives you the tools to observe a body closely and read it with care, so that what you offer truly supports the person in front of you. You learn to look after the back, to work both in self-care and with your hands, and the groundwork of Ayurveda that informs it all.
The first rule of the work: never tell anyone you can fix them.
How the year works
A year of study, in your own hands.
The program is built for twelve months, and everything below is included for that year. There is roughly nine months of material, with the rest left in your hands, because there is no prize for haste. You move through it on your own clock, with the live and personal support woven through.
The daily practice
Each day rests on three simple things.
One
Therapeutic movement
A short routine to open the body and care for it, so the practice gives more than it takes.
Two
Āsana
The Primary Series and Sūrya Namaskāra, grown steadily over the year rather than rushed.
Three
Breath and stillness
Prāṇāyāma and meditation, the quiet end of the practice where the rest of it is heading.
A journal you keep by hand
You write the practice down as you go. The point is retention, not access. What you copy out by hand becomes yours in a way a saved file never does.
The philosophy with the scholars
The core philosophy is included, recorded for you: Dr. H.V. Nagaraj Rao opening the Sankhya Karika and the Yoga Sutras, and Dr. M.A. Alwar opening the Bhagavad Gita. When the scholars run a live online course during your year, you are welcome to join it; write to me to register. The separate Mysore Online Studies subscription library is not part of the training.
A live Primary Series class every Sunday
I teach a live Primary Series class on Zoom every Sunday at 11am US Central time, open to everyone. Monthly live weekends go deeper into practice and philosophy together.
Personal time with me
Up to three one-on-one calls with me over the year, plus an ongoing WhatsApp group where questions get answered and you are not studying alone.
The examinations
Not a hurdle. A way to make it yours.
The examinations are not there to filter anyone out. They are there to make sure the teaching settles in deep enough that you can carry it on your own. There are five parts.
- Two written essays, one on the Bhagavad Gita and one on the Yoga Sutras, written in your own words from what you have studied.
- The Primary Series by heart, every posture in order. Learning the sequence is asked of everyone, without exception.
- The eight limbs of yoga, including the yamas and niyamas, held in memory.
- An oral examination with me, a conversation about the practice and how you would share it.
- The philosophy examination with Dr. M.A. Alwar, taken when you are ready, which is the moment the study comes full circle back to Mysore.
We also work with Sanskrit and its pronunciation through the year, and you are warmly encouraged to learn the Sanskrit names of the postures. Some students take to it easily, and some find it genuinely hard. No one is turned away for finding it difficult. The sequence itself, though, everyone learns by heart.
Study with the Sanskrit community of Mysore
Certification
Recognised, and rooted.
On completion you receive a 200-hour certificate issued by Mysore Yoga Traditions, a Yoga Alliance Registered Yoga School at the RYS 200 level, together with certification through the Saṃskṛti Foundation in Mysore. With that certificate you are eligible to apply to Yoga Alliance for RYT 200 registration. The separate examination fee supports the Saṃskṛti Foundation and the scholars whose work this study rests on.
An honest word
What 200 hours can and cannot do.
Becoming a yoga teacher is the work of many years. Real teaching comes from long practice, careful attention to other people, and study that does not end. No certificate produces that, and we will not pretend otherwise. We give the Yoga Alliance 200-hour credential because it is useful and widely recognised, along with a certificate directly from the Saṃskṛti Foundation, which sits at the centre of Mysore's scholarly community.
What this training gives, in our experience, is a thorough education in āsana, methodology, adjustment, and the philosophy and culture that produced the practice. Teachers with years behind them and people newer to yoga both tend to find something here they had not had before. Whether or not you ever share it with others, what you take from this year is a deeper relationship to a practice that asks for the rest of your life.
The tradition behind it
Who you study with.
You learn the practice from Andrew Eppler, the founder of Mysore Yoga Traditions, and you receive the philosophy from the Sanskrit scholars of Mysore themselves, in their own words.
Śrī B.N.S. Iyengar
Andrew's primary teacher in Mysore
Andrew's primary teacher in Mysore for the last thirty-five years, and a direct student of Śrī Kṛṣṇamācārya. Now one hundred years old, he is the oldest living teacher of Ashtanga Yoga, and the vinyāsa method at the centre of this training comes from him.
Dr. M.A. Alwar
Senior Professor, Maharaja's Sanskrit College
A Senior Professor at the Maharaja's Sanskrit College and an authority on Viśiṣṭādvaita. He opens the Bhagavad Gita, the text closest to the heart of Mysore, and he gives the philosophy examination at the close of your study.
Dr. H.V. Nagaraj Rao
Sanskrit scholar
A grammarian of rare patience who opens the Sankhya Karika and the Yoga Sutras one verse at a time, so the texts arrive not as doctrine but as something you can think with.
Andrew Eppler
Andrew Eppler is the founder of Mysore Yoga Traditions. He has practised yoga for forty years and taught for thirty-five, and first travelled to Mysore in 1990, where he has studied ever since with Śrī K. Pattabhi Jois, with Śrī B.N.S. Iyengar, and with the Sanskrit scholars of the city. An E-RYT 500, he built the annual Mysore Yoga Conference and has gathered an archive of teaching across decades, and much of his working life has gone to carrying this study to people who cannot travel to Mysore themselves. Read his full biography.
The lineage reaches back through Andrew's late teacher, Śrī Lakṣmīthāthāchārya Swami, Dr. Alwar's father, who held the Nāthamuni Sampradāya as its head until his final samādhi in May 2021.
The Indian tradition is essentially a human tradition.
Śrī Lakṣmīthāthāchārya Swami
In their words
From students.
Studying online with Andrew gave me something I never expected to have from my own home: a real seat with the scholars of Mysore, and a practice that finally made sense as a whole.
Lea Bender
I have studied in Mysore in person, and the care here is the same. The philosophy is not watered down for a Western audience. It is the real thing, taught by the people who hold it.
Kiki Flynn
See it for yourself
Mysore Yoga Traditions, the film.
Before you decide anything, watch the people you would be studying with. Our documentary brings you into the rooms where this tradition is still taught and still alive.
Questions
Before you enrol.
Do I need to be an experienced practitioner?
No. You need a sincere wish to study and the willingness to practise. The training builds the Primary Series up gradually from Sūrya Namaskāra, so you are not thrown into the deep end. Newer students and long-time practitioners both have a place here.
How much time does it take each week?
Plan on a daily practice of an hour or so, plus a few hours a week with the video lessons, which are made to play like a podcast while you go about your day. The program holds about nine months of material across a twelve-month window, so you set the pace.
Is the live teaching scheduled, or can I study on my own clock?
Mostly your own clock, and that is one of the best things about it. Everything you need to study is there in the materials, ready whenever you are. The video lessons and study sheets are yours to work through at any hour, in any time zone.
The live sessions are an invitation, not an obligation. I teach a live Primary Series class every Sunday at 11am US Central, and we hold a live training weekend once a month. You are welcome to drop in for as much as suits you. Depending on your time zone a whole weekend may not be realistic, and that is fine. Come for any part of it, and we would love to see you there.
How do I study the philosophy with the scholars?
The core philosophy is included as recorded lessons with Dr. H.V. Nagaraj Rao and Dr. M.A. Alwar. You may also join any live scholar course running during your year; write to me to register.
What do I get when I finish?
A 200-hour certificate from Mysore Yoga Traditions, a Yoga Alliance RYS 200, together with certification through the Saṃskṛti Foundation. With it you are eligible to apply for RYT 200 registration. More than the paper, you leave able to practise and to share the Primary Series with the philosophy behind it.
Can I pay monthly?
Yes. Tuition is $1,700 in full, or $165 a month across twelve months. A required $108 final-examination fee is paid later, supporting the Saṃskṛti Foundation.
What if it is not the right fit for me?
There is a seven-day money-back guarantee, so you can begin and see how it sits with you. And if cost is the obstacle, write to me before you decide. We keep a real open door, and we will try to find a way.
Enrol
Take up the practice.
One path, three studies, a year of it, with the elders and scholars of Mysore and a teacher who has kept their company since 1990.
Two ways to pay
A required $108 final-examination fee is paid later, when you schedule the philosophy examination with Dr. Alwar; it supports the Saṃskṛti Foundation.
Choose to pay in full or monthly at checkout. Seven-day money-back guarantee. If the cost is out of reach, write to me and we will find a way.
If it is calling you, come.
Prefer to talk first? Write to andrew@ashtangayogastudio.com or message +1 405 503 7779 on WhatsApp.
You can also study in person in Oklahoma, or join us for the immersion in Mysore.