The philosophy that made
your practice
In collaboration with Samskriti Foundation, Mysore
What you find here is a collection of education gathered over many years, offered in service to students and in gratitude to the teachers who made it possible.
What is this lineage? →Why Mysore
Mysore is a city in southern India where, for a very long time, people have taken the study of texts seriously. The Wadiyar kings kept scholars at court for centuries and went on paying for their work in lean years as well as good ones. The palace collected manuscripts, among them manuals of yoga: an eighteenth-century handbook of dynamic postures sits in that library still, and the illustrated asana plates of the Shritattvanidhi were made here under the kings. A Sanskrit college was founded and filled. Around it grew the ordinary furniture of a learned town: mutts, temples, libraries, and teachers who took students at home.
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What holds all of that together is argument. The largest questions were live here, and they were argued in public by people expected to give reasons. Is the self the same as God, or eternally distinct? The three answers (Advaita, Visishtadvaita, Dvaita, the schools of Shankara, Ramanuja, and Madhva) were contested on logic and scripture rather than on assertion, and the contest ran for centuries. Dr. Nagaraj Rao, who translated his lectures, recalls that Maharaja Jayachamarajendra Wadiyar kept three tutors in philosophy, one from each school. A scholar trained in that climate is expected to state his opponent's position better than the opponent can before he answers it. That habit is still in the room when one of them opens a text, and it is the best reason we know to study there.
The teachers who carried yoga out to the rest of the world in the last century came from this city, and their names are well known. That story has been told many times and we will not tell it again here. What is less known abroad is simply that the world which produced them is still going.
The courses gathered here are taught by scholars from that world. Dr. M. A. Alwar and Dr. H. V. Nagaraj Rao were each trained in the traditional gurukula and in the university, and each has spent a working life inside these texts. They teach the Bhagavad Gita, the Yoga Sutras, and the Sankhya Karika the way those texts are read in Mysore: verse by verse, in the tradition's own terms, with the commentaries in the room.
We are students in Mysore, not custodians of it, and we offer these courses for a plain reason. It is difficult to study this way from abroad. We were given the chance, and it seemed better to open the door than to hold it.
What follows are the ways in: an open video library, focused study of a single text, and the full 200-hour training. They differ in depth and in commitment, not in who is teaching.
"The Indian tradition is essentially a human tradition."
Śrī U.Ve. Prof. M.A. Lakṣmīthāthāchārya Swami
The Library
The simplest way inside this tradition. A growing video library of teachings recorded with the scholars of Mysore, organized by text and by teacher, open to you for as long as you are a member.
Membership opens the full recorded library: talks and teaching sessions on the Yoga Sūtras, the Bhagavad Gita, Sankhya, prāṇāyāma, chanting, and the philosophy that holds them together. New material is added over time. Everything is arranged by text and by scholar, so you can follow a single teacher, study one text in depth, or simply wander.
It is the low, open door. You do not have to decide what you want to study or commit to a single course. You step inside the world first, learn from the scholars at your own pace, and go deeper into a specific text whenever you are ready.
Note: the library is its own membership. It does not include the focused flagship courses below, which are purchased individually and yours to keep.
Live Courses
These meet in real time, on a schedule, with the scholar present to answer what you ask. The courses in The Texts below are prerecorded and open whenever you are.
The Taittirīya Upaniṣad sets out the self in five sheaths, beginning with the one made of food and ending with the one made of bliss. It is among the principal Upaniṣads.
Ten Sundays with Dr. Nagaraj Rao, taught live. Each lecture runs at least an hour, with time for questions afterward. The recordings are yours to keep once the course is complete.
- Ten Sundays, August 30 to November 1, 2026
- 6:30 PM India · 8:00 AM US Central
- One hour minimum per lecture, plus questions
- Video, audio, and a written essay each lesson
- Recordings yours to keep
- Times shift with daylight saving in the final two weeks
The course has already begun, and you are still welcome to join. Everyone receives permanent access to all the course material.
The Texts
For those who want to study one text closely rather than range across the library. Each course is a complete study of a single teaching with the scholar who carries it, yours to return to whenever you wish.
The Yoga Sūtras are the quiet architecture beneath everything you practice: every breath linked to movement, every instruction to still the mind.
Dr. Nagaraj Rao takes the text one verse at a time, showing the actual workings of the mind. A coil of rope on a dark path is seen as a snake, and the body floods with real fear over a thing that was never there. So much of what troubles us, the Sūtras show, is a misreading of this kind, and seeing it clearly is the beginning of freedom. He carries the living transmission and the full rigor of a Sanskrit scholar, and reads the text as this lineage always has.
- Complete verse-by-verse study
- Video, audio & written notes
- Permanent access
- Study at your own pace
- Samskriti Foundation certificate
- Yoga Alliance CEUs
The Bhagavad Gita is the most widely read philosophical text in the yoga world, and the most frequently misunderstood. Stripped of its context, it becomes a collection of inspiring passages.
Dr. Alwar teaches it as it has long been taught within this paramparā: through stories that stay with you. The tradition speaks of two ways a soul may reach the divine. The kitten is carried in its mother's mouth and need only surrender; the baby monkey must hold on by its own effort. Both arrive. The Gita holds the path of surrender and the path of effort together, and Dr. Alwar opens that to a practitioner standing at the threshold of practice, with the depth and warmth of a scholar who has lived inside the text his entire life.
- Complete study of all 18 chapters
- Video, audio & written notes
- Permanent access
- Study at your own pace
- Samskriti Foundation certificate
- Yoga Alliance CEUs
Sankhya is the floor the whole of yoga is built on. Its vocabulary (puruṣa, prakṛti, the three guṇas) runs through the Yoga Sūtras, the Bhagavad Gita, and everything you practice.
Its oldest teaching is that the effect already rests in its cause: the figure is already in the uncut stone, and the sculptor adds nothing, only removes what was never the figure. The practice works the same way. Nothing is poured into you from outside; what it offers was always there, and the work only sets aside what hides it. Dr. Rao teaches the Sankhya Kārikā one verse at a time, making this precise system genuinely clear.
- Verse-by-verse Sankhya Kārikā
- 12 hours video & audio
- Written summaries every lesson
- Downloadable original text
- Private 1-on-1 with Andrew Eppler
- Permanent access
- Samskriti Foundation certificate
- Yoga Alliance CEUs
The Yoga Sūtras, the Bhagavad Gita, and the Sankhya Kārikā are not three separate texts. They are three angles on a single integrated understanding, one that the tradition has always taught together. The Trilogy brings them into conversation with one another, taught by the scholars who have spent their lives inside all three.
If you want to understand not just what these texts say but how they form a complete system of practice, philosophy, and liberation, this is where that study begins.
These lessons teach prāṇāyāma, the regulation of the breath, drawing on three decades of Andrew's own practice. The course is inspired by Śrī B.N.S. Iyengar, his teacher in Mysore. Every technique is shown on video and explained in writing, so the practice can continue on its own long after the four weeks end.
- Nine videos, 4.5 hours in all
- The complete written curriculum, week by week
- A full guided practice to follow along with
- The history, philosophy, and energetic framework
- Direct correspondence with Andrew, and a call if you want one
- Certificate of completion · 40 hours Yoga Alliance CE
Four weeks, self-paced. These are strong practices. The classical suggestions for beginning prāṇāyāma are firmness in āsana practice and control of the senses and food habits, and the course assumes a body already comfortable with a full Primary Series.
The 200-Hour Training
The complete training, online and self-paced. Start whenever you are ready and study at your own rhythm, with no cohort to wait for and no schedule to keep.
This training carries the practice as Guruji Śrī B.N.S. Iyengar received it from Śrī Kṛṣṇamācārya: āsana and its foundations, prāṇāyāma, and the philosophy that gives the practice its meaning, taught so that you can study from anywhere and return to the material as often as you need.
Guruji taught that four things turn mere movement into āsana: the count, the gaze, the posture, and the breath. Without them a person only moves the body; with them the body begins to mature into yoga. That care, the difference between exercise and practice, runs through the whole of this training.
"His approach to the Yoga is level-headed, down-to-earth, and very sincere. I especially appreciated his commitment to ensuring that students are exposed to the philosophical traditions of the lineage."
Homer WhiteAll courses are offered in collaboration with the Samskriti Foundation, Mysore. Certificates are issued by the Samskriti Foundation and recognized by Yoga Alliance as Continuing Education.
This work is offered in service to students and in gratitude to the teachers who carry the tradition, not as a business first. We do not believe a sincere student should be kept from this study by money. If a fee is a genuine difficulty, write to us and we will find a way.
These courses are an invitation to understand the world you have been practicing in. The texts are precise. The tradition is living. The scholars are generous. Come as you are, with whatever background, whatever questions, whatever gaps in your knowledge. That is exactly who these teachings are for.
If it is calling you, come.
Questions? Reach Andrew Eppler at andrew@ashtangayogastudio.com or on WhatsApp +1 (405) 503-7779.