T.K.V. Desikachar – Vini Yoga

T.K.V. Desikachar

(1938-2016) is the fourth child of Sri Tirumalai Krishnamacharya.

He experienced his father’s career and his yoga up close. However, this was initially as a son and not as a student, as he first worked as an engineer. He only became interested in yoga as an adult when he saw how his father healed sick people. He then trained with his father during the last 29 years of his father’s life.

He probably experienced and internalized his father’s values, the use of yoga exercises and their healing effects most intensively among his students. In his honor, he founded the “Krishnamacharya Yoga Madiram” in 1976 and eventually worked as a yoga teacher. His father died in 1989 at the age of 101.

An impression of his person:

Vini-Yoga describes Krishnamacharya’s approach to the Hatha yoga exercises: they are not performed statically as a position, but in a flowing manner. It is also characteristic that the exercise sequences are individually adapted and developed to the current needs and possibilities of the student in class. This takes place in individual lessons or in small groups – following the example of Krishnamacharya’s work in Madras.

In an interview Desikachar described his astonishment when he first came to the West and saw that people were taught in groups and in fixed yoga exercise series. This was completely foreign to him, as the individual relationship between the yoga teacher or therapist, as well as the individual adaptation of the exercises to the current situation of the practitioner, was an essential part of Vini-Yoga. Desikachar takes a critical view of the term Vini-Yoga, as he does not want the term to become a trademark and the living practice to be reduced to a term.

Disciple of Desikachar
A well-known disciple of Desikachar is the Indian R. Sriramwho lives and works in Germany. Imogen Dalmann and Martin Soder, who wrote in the journal Viveka magazine, also belong to this group.

Click here for the practical examples

Go to page: B.K.S. Iyengar – Yoga