T.K.V Desikachar who just turned 78, son and the student of Indian yoga master T.Krishnamacharya , popularly known as the ‘father of modern yoga’ passed away in Chennai on Monday. He had been battling a decline in his mental health for the past several years.

He completed college and got a bachelor’s degree in civil engineering.   By the age of 30 he began to immerse himself in his father’s teachings and ended up studying with him until Krishnamacharya’s death in 1989.

Within that time Desikachar helped to found The Krishmacharya Yoga Mandiram trust in Chennai (1976) to continue his father’s teachings. This institute is still functioning today.

An international memorial meeting to honor Desikachar will be conducted later in the year, said the Trust as reported by a local newspaper.

He authored several books including The Heart Of Yoga and Health, Healing, and Beyond: Yoga and the Living Tradition of T. Krishnamacharya, and fine-tuned his father’s teachings into his own therapeutic approach, he referred to as viniyoga.

In the 60s and 70s, when yoga was practiced only by a small section of people, even in India, T.K.V. Desikachar quit his job as an engineer and began on a journey in yoga.

Mr. Desikachar formulated the system of teaching yoga by drawing stick figures to convey various postures.

Mr. Desikachar was also involved in the philosophy of yoga. Apart from teaching yoga, the institute was also involved in yoga research and had programmes for children with special needs.

The  site ‘Centre of  Yoga Studies’ has this story :

This happened in 1961, when Desikachar was visiting his parents’ house in Madras on route to northern India. One morning about 6.00am he was awakened by the sound of a foreign woman knocking at the door and demanding to see “the professor”. Before he could take stock of what was happening, Desikachar was astonished to see this Western woman run down the path, and fling her arms around Śrī Krishnamacharya as he emerged from his quarters while exclaiming, “I slept! I slept!”

Despite his Western style education, the young Desikachar was unprepared for the sight of a foreign woman hugging the austere and reverential figure of his South Indian Brahmin father. Witnessing her relief at overcoming her chronic and severe insomnia led Desikachar to appreciate the healing power of Yoga and Krishnamacharya’s extraordinary mastery of its art and application. He determined to find out more about it, and very soon thereafter gave up his engineering pursuits in favour of extensive studies with his father. He continued with his studies for nearly three decades, and went on to co-found an Institute that bears his father’s name.

(Prepared fom media sources by Seema Kumari)

  T.K.V Desikachar, Tamil Nadu, The Krishmacharya Yoga Mandiram, Yoga