TKV Desikachar, who was in SF last Sunday giving a lesson on vedic chanting, is the son of Krishnamacharya, a great yoga master of the old school, who lived to the age of 101 and passed away in 1989. In addition to ensuring that the ancient yoga practices not only survived, but indeed thrived, Krishnamacharya was also the first Indian yoga guru to openly teach to women, and in fact, he encouraged women to take up yoga. Before Krishnamacharya, this was simply not done. Krishnamacharya was also the primary teacher of both BKS Iyengar and Sri K Pattabhi Jois, both of whom went on to introduce yoga to the Western masses, via Iyengar Yoga and Ashtanga Yoga, respectively. Iyengar studied with Krishnamacharya for just a few years and Pattabhi Jois stayed with the master for 10 years. Meanwhile, Desikachar studied with Krishnamacharya the longest, for much of his life in fact, and yet this length of study has thus far, at least on the surface, proven largely fruitless in his attempts to bring his unique style of yoga to the Western masses, at least compared to Iyengar and Jois. Last night's audience with Desikachar, at the humble countrified dwellings of the Noe Valley Ministries, left me wondering though, if Desikachar's approach is just perhaps more subtle, and like the age-old story of the tortoise and the hare, it could well be that his approach is the most overtly spiritual and even the most successful in the long run. I can't help but wonder if, like Gandhi's five-point plan, which largely to this day has also seemingly failed, at least on a gross surface level, I sense something too about this Desikachar that he is already succeeding very well on some deep spiritual level, and is thus having a profound effect on the greater yoga communities, and ultimately all people, whether they know it or not.

Desikachar's teachings of yoga differ primarily from the other more popular yoga schools on the block, in three significant ways. The first notable difference is his insistence that yoga be taught and learned one on one, as it has been done traditionally in India until very recently, and almost never in the West. The second way in which Desikachar's yoga differs from most others is his integration of vedic chanting into the yogic process of study. And the third way that sets Desikachar's teachings apart from the others, is his efforts to provide yoga to underserved and disadvantaged populations. In fact, the Healing Yoga Foundation (www.healingyoga.org), Desikachar's hub here in San Francisco, is already busy at work offering yoga to homeless pregnant women, via Compass Community Services (www.compass-sf.org).

Desikachar's Viniyoga may seem new to the scene, though his Krishnamacharya Yoga Mandiram in Chennai, India, was founded more than 30 years ago, in 1976. Desikachar has always had some proponents and students in the West, most notably Gary Kraftsow and Mark Whitwell. Viniyoga on the whole, however, has not succeeded in the same ways as the other yoga disciplines, precisely because of this one-on-one approach, one student to one teacher, with the student being given a very specific routine or sequence of poses based on his or her constitution and individual makeup. For this reason alone, you don't see any Viniyoga studios or classes, which somehow just makes it less glamorous, because for Western students, it is usually a lot to do with making the scene, not just about the yoga or the class itself. So then, yoga becomes more about going to the cool studios where lots of people go and showing off your latest $300 Lululemon yoga outfit, and not necessarily so much about just the yoga itself. As if to illustrate this class contrast in the yoga communities, I am not saying there is anything wrong with this approach per se, though it does run the risk of watering down some of the more traditional aspects of yoga in favor of the latest newest style.

Another way that Desikachar sets his teachings apart from the others is through the weaving of Vedic chanting and Sanskrit studies into the greater thread of yoga practice. This approach seems to be his way of overtly spiritualizing the practice, as if to say, yoga is a spiritual practice and any attempt to downplay this is futile and possibly even counter-productive in the long run. Interestingly, TKV's approach is also less focused on asana than the others, in favor of more chanting and a more holistic philosophical perspective.

Mr. Desikachar made great notice at the beginning of the evening's program that yoga and vedic chanting are not in any way a religion. He used the story of Shiva, the great dancer, to illustrate that spirituality is more based on a sort of archetypal mythology vs. religion which is more dogmatic. He said the story goes that Shiva played his musical instrument 14 times and this is how the Sanskrit language came into being.

Desikachar focused primarily on Vedic chanting, which, he explained to us, is based on six principles: (1) correct pronunication (varanam), (2) use of three tones: high base & low, (3) length of notes, (4) aspiration or accent, (5) musical quality, & (6) continuity of sound. TKV then demonstrated these six principles, singing beautifully to us, and even being so quick as to flow into talking very quickly after the singing ends, as if to say, they are really the same lesson, none of this pseudo-spiritual long reverential Western pause, which has the same quality as the long drawn out OM that Westerners are so fond of, whereas in India, it's really all quite matter of fact, and the OM might last for a second or so, no big deal. This is a similar vibe to the Western interpretation of what is appropriate behavior before a yoga class, usually very quiet like a church, whereas in India, it's really very loud on many levels and this is just not a problem.

TKV taught us many chanting methods, one of which was a quite gorgeous dance that we accompanied him with as he sang, afterwards he noted that the gestures of the dance are like a link with the higher being so that others can also benefit from the dance. Lovely. Then he and his beautiful wife Minika, who was decked out in the most beautiful multi-colored sari I've ever seen, showed us a way of Sanskrit chanting that is call and response like kirtan, but also riffing like jazz, and interpretive like hip-hop. I was like, damn I gotta learn this style, but I don't even know what it's called.

In conclusion, I would like to thank Joey for accompanying me to this program. And I would suggest that those of you who have an interest in Vedic chanting, check out the Healing Yoga Foundation to learn more, and by all means, come to my Blue Full Moon Chanting evening on May 31 in SF, where we will chant the Maha Mrtyunjaya Mantra 108X.