He Was Radical

I’ve been thinking about my late teacher Sharath Jois a lot lately. Last Tuesday marked the one year anniversary of his death. I sift through memory. I am aware that I am not a loud and leading voice in the greater Ashtanga-verse. I know that this time I didn’t join my peers in posting an Instagram photo on the day of his death. I didn’t make an audible comment on his birthday not long past either.

I know I’m quiet.

You see, I really don’t want to perform my connection to my teacher and to my lineage. I don’t want to criticise others. I want to be true to my own heart. And as I reach out to you, my small and greater world, I want to stay true to how I understood my teacher.

And he was radical. Sharath was the person in the Ashtanga yoga world who could assess advanced asana more than almost anyone. He supported us to be committed and present, to show up to the difficulty, to stay with it. And, at the same time, he was unimpressed by our fancy backbends. He would say, “You want to impress me? Then be a good person.”

I suppose people might understand this in different ways. But I understood it as a call to kindness and care, to good relating. I saw this a challenge to look past the body shapes of yoga and seek depth in our understanding, to mature, to love and support others. To be blissful in this life.

I really don’t know what the right way to understand this modern yoga thing is. I’ve heard it said that yoga is falling out of fashion. If that’s true, I kind of hope the one where we perform a bunch of shapes and impress ourselves is on the way out.

Whilst at Mysore Melbourne we do work with our bodies in their physical form, I want you to know that you have my ongoing commitment to look beyond the business of making shapes and support the fullness of human life in the best ways I know how, and in the ways that resonate with my understanding of what yoga is.