Mysore Yoga Traditions
Mysore Video Library
A growing library of recorded teachings from elders, scholars, and senior practitioners who carry the tradition that shaped modern yoga.
What follows are a few places to begin. A documentary filmed in Mysore over several years, the full library of recorded teachings behind it, a lecture on the inner life from one of Śrī Kṛṣṇamācārya's earliest students, and a long interview with the son of Śrī K. Pattabhi Jois.
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Feature Documentary
Mysore Yoga Traditions
A film, 90 minutes
What we now call Ashtanga Yoga did not arise in isolation. It grew from a particular community in Mysore where temple ritual, Sanskrit scholarship, and daily sādhanā have coexisted for centuries.
The film follows that thread. Elders, scholars, Sanskrit teachers, and religious figures speak in their own voices about the world that produced Śrī Kṛṣṇamācārya and the practice tradition that came after him. There are interviews, ritual footage, and quiet observation, no narration overlaying it.
For practitioners who want the cultural ground their practice stands on, this is a good place to start.
The Full Library
The Video Library
Monthly access · $24.99 · cancel any time
Explore the rich intellectual culture of Mysore. The library gathers recorded lectures, interviews, and long conversations with the scholars and elders who carry the tradition, drawn from years of return visits.
It is the complete record the film only begins: the same voices, at length and in their own time. New talks are added as the work continues, and you can step away whenever you wish.
Lecture
Dr. T. R. S. Sharma
On Human Emotion
Dr. Sharma was one of Śrī Kṛṣṇamācārya's earliest students. The boy standing on his teacher's shoulders in the well-known 1930s Mysore yoga demonstration photograph is him. He is now in his late 90s, and has spent his life moving across the philosophical systems of India.
"Alienation is a Western man's disease."
The lecture begins from that observation and moves outward. He reads emotion the way the Indian tradition has long read it, as something the practitioner must understand structurally before working with it, and he draws on Sankhya, Vedānta, and yoga to do that work.
It is a long, careful talk. Worth your time.
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Interview
Manju Jois
The Story of Ashtanga Yoga
Manju Jois grew up watching his father, Śrī K. Pattabhi Jois, teach foreign students in Lakshmipuram in the 1960s and 1970s. He began the practice as a child and has been teaching it most of his life.
In this long interview he tells those stories directly. He has the candor of someone who watched Ashtanga Yoga move from a small Mysore practice into a global one, and who holds his own settled views on what was kept and what was lost along the way. He is funny, blunt, and unwilling to pretend.
"Don't be serious. Be curious."
That line carries the tone of the whole conversation.
ॐ
अथ योगानुशासनम्
atha yogānuśāsanam
now, the teaching of yoga