R. Sharath Jois
| R. Sharath Jois | |
|---|---|
| Born |
Rangaswamy Sharath September 29, 1971 |
| Residence | Mysore, India |
| Occupation | Teacher |
| Known for | Ashtanga yoga |
| Spouse(s) | Shruthi Jois |
| Children | 2 |
| Relatives |
K. Pattabhi Jois (grandfather) Rangaswamy (father) Saraswati Jois (mother) Sharmila Mahesh (sister) |
| Website | kpjayi |
R. Sharath Jois (born September 29, 1971) is a teacher, practitioner and lineage holder (paramaguru) of Ashtanga Yoga, in the tradition of K. Pattabhi Jois. He is the director of the Shri K. Pattabhi Jois Ashtanga Yoga Institute (KPJAYI), formerly Ashtanga Yoga Research Insttitue (AYRI)), in Mysore, India. He is an author, the subject of several documentaries, and is known for his expertise in Ashtanga yoga.
Jois was born on September 29, 1971 in Mysore India to Saraswati Rangaswamy, daughter of K. Pattabhi Jois. Jois was born into a family dedicated to the practice, preservation and teaching of Ashtanga yoga as his grandfather had learned from his teacher, T. Krishnamacharya. Jois, being exposed to yoga since birth, began practicing asanas informally around seven years old and continued non-committally until age 14. At the age of 19, he began formal study of the Ashtanga yoga system with his grandfather and is the lineage holder of Ashtanga yoga today.
Jois' grandfather, K. Pattabhi Jois, began studying yoga with T. Krishnamacharya at the age of 12, in 1927, and continued his formal study with his teacher until 1954. Pattabhi Jois spent more than 70 years of his life dedicated to practicing and teaching Ashtanga yoga. He established the Ashtanga Yoga Research Institute, his first yoga school, in his home in Lakshmipuram in 1948. To accommodate the increasing number of students coming to study, he opened a new school in Gokulam in 2002.
Jois was beset by many illnesses when he was a child. When he was four years old, he contracted an infection while in Northern Karnataka, where his father was working. It turned out to be glandular fever, which required a one-year treatment. When he was seven, he fell down during the construction of Pattabhi Jois’s new yoga school, and broke his leg. The resulting bed-rest left him with low hemoglobin, which resulted in rheumatic fever. His mother, Saraswati Jois, said, "From ages four through fourteen, [it was] one thing after another." When Jois turned fourteen, he became focused on his scholastic education, earning a diploma in electronics from JSS in Mysore.
Jois learned his first asanas at age seven. His grandfather, K. Pattabhi Jois, used to say that young children could play with postures from the primary and intermediate series, as many of them are easy for children to do. Growing up in a house full of yoga practitioners and teachers, he was bound to do the same.
When he was 19 years old, his mother told him that he should begin assisting his grandfather in the yoga shala, as there were many students, and his grandfather was not a young man anymore. From that time, he became Pattabhi Jois’s full-time assistant. It was during these years that Sharath’s devotion to the practice deepened and he began to intuit its transformative power.
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