36 Facts About Tirumalai Krishnamacharya

Tirumalai Krishnamacharya was an Indian yoga teacher, ayurvedic healer and scholar.

Tirumalai Krishnamacharya is seen as one of the most important gurus of modern yoga, and is often called "Father of Modern Yoga" for his wide influence on the development of postural yoga.

Tirumalai Krishnamacharya is widely considered as the architect of vinyasa, in the sense of combining breathing with movement; the style of yoga he created has come to be called Viniyoga or Vinyasa Krama Yoga.

Iyengar, his brother-in-law and founder of Iyengar Yoga, credits Tirumalai Krishnamacharya with encouraging him to learn yoga as a boy in 1934.

Tirumalai Krishnamacharya was born on 18 November 1888 in Muchukundapura, situated in the Chitradurga district of present-day Karnataka, in South India, to an orthodox Telugu Iyengar family.

Tirumalai Krishnamacharya's parents were Tirumalai Srinivasa Tatacharya, a well-known teacher of the Vedas, and Ranganayakiamma.

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

Tirumalai Krishnamacharya continued his studies under his great-grandfather's guidance and at Mysore University.

Tirumalai Krishnamacharya spent much of his youth traveling through India studying the six darsana or Indian philosophies: vaisesika, nyaya, samkhya, yoga, mimamsa and vedanta.

In 1906, at the age of eighteen, Tirumalai Krishnamacharya left Mysore to attend university at Banaras, known as Varanasi, a city of hundreds of temples and a highly regarded North Indian center of traditional learning.

Tirumalai Krishnamacharya learned the Mimamsa from Brahmasri Trilinga Rama Shastri.

Tirumalai Krishnamacharya eventually left Queens College to study the saddarsana in Vedic philosophy at Patna University, in Bihar, a state in eastern India.

Tirumalai Krishnamacharya claimed that he was invited to the coronation of the Rajah of Dikkanghat, at which he defeated a scholar called Bihari Lal in a debate, and received rewards and honors from the Rajah.

Tirumalai Krishnamacharya stated that his stay in Banaras lasted 11 years.

Tirumalai Krishnamacharya further claimed that he studied with the yoga master Sri Babu Bhagavan Das and passed the Samkhya Yoga Examination of Patna, and that many of his instructors recognized his outstanding abilities in yoga, some asking that he teach their children.

Tirumalai Krishnamacharya told his pupils, including Iyengar, "an imagined history, it turns out, of thousands of asanas".

Tirumalai Krishnamacharya claimed in his Yoga Makaranda that at the suggestion of Ganganath Jha, 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.

At the request of the Viceroy, Tirumalai Krishnamacharya travelled to Simla and taught him yogic practices for six months.

Tirumalai Krishnamacharya was supposedly made to memorize the whole of the Yoga Korunta in the Gurkha language, though no evidence of that text exists.

The master responded that Tirumalai Krishnamacharya was to "take a wife, raise children and be a teacher of Yoga".

The Maharajah of Jaipur called him to serve as principal of the Vidya Sala in Jaipur; but as he did not like being answerable to many people, Tirumalai Krishnamacharya shortly returned to Varanasi.

In 1926, the Maharaja of Mysore, Krishna Raja Wadiyar IV was in Varanasi to celebrate his mother's 60th birthday and heard about Tirumalai Krishnamacharya's learning and skill as a yoga therapist.

The Maharaja met Tirumalai Krishnamacharya and was so impressed by the young man's demeanor, authority, and scholarship that he engaged Tirumalai Krishnamacharya to teach him and his family.

In 1931, Tirumalai Krishnamacharya was invited to teach at the Sanskrit College in Mysore.

Tirumalai Krishnamacharya was equally bad-tempered at home with his family.

Funding for the yoga school was cut off, and Tirumalai Krishnamacharya struggled to maintain the school.

At the age of 60, Tirumalai Krishnamacharya was forced to travel extensively to find students and provide for his family.

In Madras, Tirumalai Krishnamacharya accepted a job as a lecturer at Vivekananda College.

Tirumalai Krishnamacharya 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.

Tirumalai Krishnamacharya "possessed enormous knowledge of nutrition, herbal medicine, the use of oils, and other remedies".

At some point during or after an initial examination, Tirumalai Krishnamacharya would ask if the patient was willing to follow his guidance.

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

Tirumalai Krishnamacharya based his teachings on the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali and the Yoga Yajnavalkya.

Whereas Tirumalai Krishnamacharya was deeply devoted to Vaishnavism, he respected his students' varying religious beliefs, or nonbeliefs.

Tirumalai Krishnamacharya earned degrees in philosophy, logic, divinity, philology, and music.

Tirumalai Krishnamacharya was twice offered the position of Acharya in the Srivaishnava sampradaya, but he declined in order to stay with his family, in accordance with his guru's wishes.