Tirumalai Krishnamacharya Biography

Tirumalai KrishnamacharyaKrishnamacharya was born on 18 November 1888 in Muchukundapura, Chitradurga district of Karnataka, in South India, to an orthodox Iyengar¹ family.

His parents were Sri Tirumalai Srinivasa Tatacharya, a well-known teacher of the Vedas, and Shrimati Ranganayakiamma. Krishnamacharya was the eldest of six children. He had two brothers and three sisters. At the age of six, he underwent upanayana².

He then began learning to speak and write Sanskrit, from texts such as the Amarakoṣa³ and to chant the Vedas under the strict tutelage of his father.

When Krishnamacharya was ten, his father died, and the family had to move to Mysore, the second largest city in Karnataka, where Krishnamcharya's great-grandfather H.H. Sri Srinivasa Brahmatantra Parakala Swami, was the head of the Parakala Math ⁴

Krishnamacharya spent much of his youth traveling through India studying the six darśana or Indian philosophies: vaiśeṣika⁵, nyāya⁶, sāṃkhya⁷, yoga, mīmāṃsā⁸ and vedānta⁹.

In 1906, at the age of eighteen, Krishnamacharya left Mysore to attend university at Benares (Vārānasī, the city of hundreds of temples), the highly regarded North Indian center of traditional learning. While at university, he studied logic and Sanskrit, working with Brahmashri Shivakumar Shastry, "one of the greatest grammarians of the age". He also learned the Mīmāṃsā from Brahmasri Trilinga Rama Shastri.

In 1914, he once again left for Benares to attend classes at Queens College, where he eventually earned several teaching certificates. During the first year he had little or no financial support from his family. In order to eat, he followed the rules that were laid down for religious beggars: he was to approach only seven households each day and offer a prayer "in return for wheat flour to mix with water for cakes". Krishnamacharya eventually left Queens College to study the ṣaḍdarśana (six darshanas) in Vedic philosophy at Patna University, in Bihar, a state in eastern India. He received a scholarship to study Ayurveda under Vaidya Krishnakumar of Bengal.

Krishnamacharya was invited to the coronation of the Rajah of Dikkanghat (a principality within Darbhanga), at which he defeated a scholar called Bihari Lal in a debate and received rewards and honors from the Rajah. His stay in Benares lasted 11 years.

Tirumalai Krishnamacharya performing Matsyendrāsana. He studied with the yoga master Sri Babu Bhagavan Das and passed the Samkhya Yoga Examination of Patna. Many of his instructors recognized his outstanding abilities in the study and practice of yoga and supported his progress. Some asked that he teaches their children.

Krishnamacharya told his pupils, including Iyengar, "an imagined history, it turns out, of thousands of asanas". Mark Singleton and Tara Fraser note that he provided contradictory descriptions of the facts of his own life, sometimes denying tales he had told earlier, and sometimes mischievously adding new versions.

According to one such tale, recounted by Mohan, during the vacations, which would last about three months, Krishnamacharya made pilgrimages into the Himalayas. Krishnamacharya claimed in his Yoga Makaranda that at the suggestion of Gaṅgānāth Jhā, he sought to further his yoga studies by seeking a master named Yogeshwara Ramamohana Brahmachari, who was rumored to live in the mountains beyond Nepal and had supposedly mastered 7000 asanas.

For this venture, Krishnamacharya had to obtain the permission of the Viceroy in Simla, Lord Irwin, who was then suffering from diabetes. At the request of the Viceroy, Krishnamacharya travelled to Simla and taught him yogic practices for six months. The viceroy's health improved, and he developed respect and affection for Krishnamacharya. In 1919, the Viceroy made arrangements for Krishnamacharya's travel to Tibet, supplying three aides and taking care of the expenses.

After two and a half months of walking, Krishnamacharya arrived at Sri Brahmachari's school, supposedly a cave at the foot of Mount Kailash, where the master lived with his wife and three children.

Under Brahmachari's tutelage, Krishnamacharya claimed to have spent seven and a half years studying the Yoga Sūtras of Patañjali, learning asanas and pranayama, and studying the therapeutic aspects of yoga. He was supposedly made to memorize the whole of the Yoga Korunta in the Gurkha language, though no evidence of that text exists.

As tradition holds, at the end of his studies with the guru, Krishnamacharya asked what his payment would be. The master responded that Krishnamacharya was to "take a wife, raise children and be a teacher of Yoga".

According to the tale, Krishnamacharya then returned to Varanasi. The Maharajah of Jaipur called him to serve as principal of the Vidyā Śālā in Jaipur; but as he did not like being answerable to many people, Krishnamacharya shortly returned to Varanasi. In accordance with his guru's wish that he lives the life of a householder, Krishnamacharya married Namagiriamma in 1925.

After his marriage, Krishnamacharya was forced by circumstance to work in a coffee plantation in the Hasan district. It was after a lecture on the Upanishads in Mysore town hall in 1931 that he attracted the attention as a learned scholar that eventually led to his employment at the palace.

In 1926, the Maharaja of Mysore, Krishna Raja Wadiyar IV (1884–1940) was in Varanasi to celebrate his mother's 60th birthday and heard about Krishnamacharya's learning and skill as a yoga therapist. The Maharaja met Krishnamacharya and was so impressed by the young man's demeanor, authority, and scholarship that he engaged Krishnamacharya to teach him and his family. Initially, Krishnamacharya taught yoga at the Mysore Palace.

He soon became a trusted advisor of the Maharajah and was given the recognition of Asthana Vidwan¹⁰. Krishnamacharya held many demonstrations to stimulate popular interest in yoga. The Palace archive records show that the Maharaja was interested in the promotion of yoga and continually sent Krishnamacharya around the country to give lectures and demonstrations.

In 1931, Krishnamacharya was invited to teach at the Sanskrit College in Mysore. The Maharaja, who felt that yoga had helped cure his many ailments, asked Krishnamacharya to open a yoga school under his patronage and was subsequently given the wing of a nearby palace, the Jaganmohan Palace, to start the Yogashala, an independent yoga institution, which opened on 11 August 1933.

In 1934, he wrote the book Yoga Makaranda ("Essence of Yoga"), which was published by Mysore University. In the introduction to Yoga Makaranda, Krishnamacharya lists the Śrītattvanidhi¹¹, as one of the sources for his book.

In “The Yoga Tradition of the Mysore Palace,” Norman Sjoman¹² asserts that Krishnamacharya was influenced by the Śrītattvanidhi and by the Vyayama Dipika, a Western-based gymnastics manual written by the Mysore Palace gymnasts.

Krishnamacharya, unlike earlier yoga gurus such as Yogendra, "severely criticized his students" including his young brother-in-law, B. K. S. Iyengar. He was equally bad-tempered at home with his family. In the view of the historian of yoga Elliott Goldberg, Iyengar "would never recover from or anywhere near comprehend the damage inflicted on him by Krishnamacharya's abuse" during his teenage years.

In 1940, Krishna Raja Wadiyar IV died. His nephew and successor, Jayachamarajendra Wadiyar (1919–1974), less interested in yoga, no longer provided support for publishing texts and sending teams of teachers to surrounding areas. Following political changes in 1946, around the time that India gained independence, a new government came into being and the powers of the maharajas were curtailed. Funding for the yoga school was cut off, and Krishnamacharya struggled to maintain the school.

At the age of 60 (1948), Krishnamacharya was forced to travel extensively to find students and provide for his family. The yogashala in Mysore was ordered to be closed by K.C. Reddy, the first Chief Minister of Mysore State, and the school eventually closed in 1950.

After leaving Mysore, Krishnamacharya moved to Bangalore for a couple of years and then was invited in 1952 to relocate to Madras, by a well-known lawyer who sought Krishnamacharya's help in healing from a stroke. By now, Krishnamacharya was in his sixties, and his reputation for being a strict and intimidating teacher had mellowed somewhat.

In Madras, Krishnamacharya accepted a job as a lecturer at Vivekananda College. He also began to acquire yoga students from diverse backgrounds and in various physical conditions, which required him to adapt his teaching to each student's abilities. For the remainder of his teaching life, Krishnamacharya continued to refine this individualized approach, which came to be known as Viniyoga.

Many considered Krishnamacharya a yoga master, but he continued to call himself a student because he felt that he was always "studying, exploring and experimenting" with the practice. Throughout his life, Krishnamacharya refused to take credit for his innovative teachings but instead attributed the knowledge to his guru or to ancient texts.

In 1965 Jiddu Krishnamurti, the world-renowned philosopher and spiritual guide requested an audience with Krishnamacharya after learning of his abilities from a student. Krishnamurti had been practicing yoga for years and he was looking for someone to help him with his practice. They met at Vasant Vihar, the headquarters of Krishnamurti Foundation in Madras. Krishnamacharya arranged for his son Desikachar to teach Krishnamurti. The two became close friends.

At the age of 96, Krishnamacharya fractured his hip. Refusing surgery, he treated himself and designed a course of practice that he could do in bed. Krishnamacharya lived and taught in Chennai until he slipped into a coma and died in 1989, at one hundred years of age. His cognitive faculties remained sharp until his death; and he continued to teach and heal whenever the situation arose.

Although his knowledge and teaching has influenced yoga throughout the world, Krishnamacharya never left his native India. Yoga Journal wrote:

You may never have heard of him but Tirumalai Krishnamacharya influenced or perhaps even invented your yoga. Whether you practice the dynamic series of Pattabhi Jois, the refined alignments of B. K. S. Iyengar, the classical postures of Indra Devi, or the customized vinyasa¹³ of Viniyoga, your practice stems from one source: a five-foot, two-inch Brahmin born more than one hundred years ago in a small South Indian village.

By developing and refining different approaches, Krishnamacharya made yoga accessible to millions around the world.

Krishnamacharya was a physician of Ayurvedic medicine. He "possessed enormous knowledge of nutrition, herbal medicine, the use of oils, and other remedies". Krishnamacharya's custom as an Ayurvedic practitioner was to begin with a detailed examination to determine the most efficient path to take for a patient.

According to Krishnamacharya, even though the source or focus of a disease is in a particular area of the body, he assumed that many other systems in the body, both mental and physical, would also be affected. At some point during or after an initial examination, Krishnamacharya would ask if the patient was willing to follow his guidance. This question was important to a patient's treatment, because Krishnamacharya felt that if the person could not trust him fully there was little chance of his or her being healed.

Krishnamacharya at 100 years (1988)Krishnamacharya emphasized the use of three of Patanjali's eight limbs of yoga, not only āsana but also prāṇāyāma and dhyāna.

Once a person began seeing Krishnamacharya, he would work with him or her on several levels including adjusting their diet; creating herbal medicines; and setting up a series of yoga postures that would be most beneficial.

When instructing a person on the practice of yoga, Krishnamacharya particularly stressed the importance of combining breath work (prāṇāyāma) with the postures (āsana) of yoga and meditation (dhyāna) to reach the desired goal.

Krishnamacharya "believed Yoga to be India's greatest gift to the world." His yoga instruction reflected his conviction that yoga could be both a spiritual practice and a mode of physical healing. His style of yoga is now known as Vinyāsa Krama Yoga. Krishnamacharya based his teachings on the Yoga Sutras of Patañjali and the Yoga Yājñavalkya. Whereas Krishnamacharya was deeply devoted to Vaishnavism, he also respected his students' varying religious beliefs, or nonbelief.

A former student recalls that while leading a meditation, Krishnamacharya instructed students to close their eyes and "think of God. If not God, the sun. If not the sun, your parents." As a result of the teachings he received from his father and other instructors, Krishnamacharya approached every student as "absolutely unique", in the belief that the most important aspect of teaching yoga was that the student be "taught according to his or her individual capacity at any given time".

For Krishnamacharya, the path of yoga meant different things for different people, and each person ought to be taught in a manner that he or she understood clearly.

Krishnamacharya's students included many of 20th century yoga's most renowned and influential teachers: Indra Devi; K. Pattabhi Jois; B. K. S. Iyengar (Krishnamacharya's brother-in-law); T. K. V. Desikachar (Krishnamacharya's son); Srivatsa Ramaswami; and A. G. Mohan.

Krishnamacharya was highly regarded as a scholar. He earned degrees in philosophy, logic, divinity, philology, and music. He was twice offered the position of Acharya in the Śrīvaiṣṇava Saṃpradāya¹⁴, but he declined in order to stay with his family, in accordance with his guru's wishes.

He also had extensive knowledge of orthodox Hindu rituals. His scholarship in various darśana¹⁵ of orthodox Indian philosophy earned him titles such as Sāṃkhya-yoga-śikhāmaṇi, Mīmāṃsā-ratna, Mīmāṃsā-thīrtha, Nyāyācārya, Vedāntavāgīśa, Veda-kesari and Yogācārya. (Wikipedia)

Footnotes

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