Mysore Yoga Traditions
Lectures, interviews,
and films from Mysore.
A growing archive of recorded teachings from elders, scholars, and senior practitioners who carry the tradition that shaped modern yoga.
What follows are three places to begin. A documentary filmed in Mysore over several years, a lecture on the inner life from one of Śrī Kṛṣṇamācārya's earliest students, and a long interview with the son of 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 VIDEO ARCHIVE includes additional lectures, interviews, and footage from across the project. Monthly access, cancel any time.
Archive · $19.99 / mo
Lecture
Dr. T. R. S. Sharma
On Human Emotion
Dr. Sharma was one of Śrī Kṛṣṇamācārya's earliest students. The boy standing on Kṛṣṇamācārya's shoulders in the well-known 1930s Mysore yoga demonstration photograph is him. He is 97 now, 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