Paul has been a student and teacher of Yoga, as well as other Indian traditions such as Vedic Chant, Samkhya, Bhagavad Gita and Ayurveda lifestyle skills for several decades. Undertaking a personal inquiry and formal Yoga practice in 1972 he began meeting teachers and exploring the practice and theory of asana and pranayama.

Following this search he met and commenced personal lessons with TKV Desikachar's student Ian Rawlinson in Spring 1975. Through his contact with Ian he also worked through Seminars with Desikachar's leading Western students Claude Marechel in1975 and Francois Lorin in 1976 and 1977.

However it was when Paul met and worked in England with his root teacher TKV Desikachar in 1976 and again in 1978 studied in Switzerland with both TKV Desikachar and his brother TK Sribashyam, that he realised the deeper potential of Yoga through the approach of their father and teacher the eminent T Krishnamacharya.

This led in 1979, after a formal request and acceptance by Desikachar as a student, to a two year residence in South India studying and practising within the traditional setting of teacher and pupil meeting together one to one.

During this prolonged stay in Madras (as it was called then) he studied many aspects of Yoga, as well as other facets of Indian traditions, both directly under his teacher and through his guidance and recommendation with other students of T Krishnamacharya, namely S Ramaswami and AG Mohan, as well as Desikachar's own students in India including R Prabhakar, Indra Mohan, TV Ananthanarayanan and AV Balasubramanian.

1981 Bath Yoga Centre

Returning to the UK in 1981 Paul started the Bath Yoga Centre, which evolved over 20 years to the Association for Yoga Studies or aYs. The common thread within all these various organisations was the committment to the spirit of the teachings from TKV Desikachar as received from his teacher and father T Krishnamacharya. They were all originally founded to develop study and training options in the UK.

1985 Centre for Yoga Studies

Paul's study of Yoga and the Vedic tradition through the teachings of T Krishnmacharya was further complemented by study with Desikachar's Western students such as Peter Hersnack, Laurence Maman and Bernard Bouanchaud. Plus during numerous return visits to India, between 1983 and 2002, by the study of Sanskrit, Vedic Chant, Mantra, Ayurveda pulse diagnosis and Yoga Cikitsa (Therapy) with his teacher and personal lessons on Ayurveda philosophy and lifestyle application with K S Viswanatha Sarma, the Principal and Chief Physician at The Venkataramana Ayurveda College in Chennai.

1992 Viniyoga Britain

Between returning to India and establishing a teaching practice in the UK he developed a six year, four level, study and training programme. The Programme extended across all aspects of Yoga, including asana, pranayama, meditation, recitation, sanskrit, ayurveda and a detailed study of the primary Yoga text, the Yoga Sutra, as well as an overview of other important Yoga texts such as the Yoga Rahasya, Yoga Yajnavalkhya and Hatha Yoga Pradipika. This is complemented by appreciating traditional Indian teachings such as the Upanishads, Bhagavad Gita, Samkhya Karika, Caraka Samhita and other texts informing the application of Yoga practice and theory.

The four levels ranged from Introductory Workshop and Foundation Study Courses which can be covered in one year and focus on developing a personal practice and appreciation of the possibilities that Yoga can offer. The Practitioner and Further Studies Programmes cover, over three and two years, professional training for those students who wish to teach Yoga in small groups, specialise in one to one tuition or therapy and develop skills in running workshops, seminars and study courses.

The UK Yoga Teacher Training qualification is fully accredited by the National Governing Body for Yoga in the UK the British Wheel of Yoga as well as being validated to the European Minimum Standard set by EUFNY the European Union of Yoga.

1996 Viniyoga Britain

Although Director of Studies for the various organisational bodies, over the next decade Paul started to de-evolve away from being the main Director and primary teacher. From 1996 he began to extend the teaching faculty and sharing the responsibilities for teaching the Introductory, Foundation, Teacher Training and In-Service Training Courses to include other senior teachers teaching them independently within an organisational framework.

Paul returned to Chennai (as it is called now) in South India over 20 times betwen 1979 and 2002, studying individually with his teacher TKV Desikachar. In addition Paul led some seven study groups to Chennai for special study meetings with Desikachar or to experience the teaching and Yoga therapy work at the Krishnamacharya Yoga Mandiram.

Paul hosted teaching visits by TKV Desikachar to the UK in 1992, 1996, 1997 and 2000. Paul also travelled to many countries in Europe as well the US to seminars with Desikachar as a student or support teacher or to participate in meetings with Desikachar and other of his senior Western students.

Paul has led his own workshops, seminars, retreats and study and training courses in the UK for many years. He has also been invited to teach in a number of countries within Europe, as well as Canada, the US and, at the invitation of The Israeli Yoga Teachers Association, initiated two One Year Foundation Courses in Israel.

In 2001 a book on Asana practice was published with the help of UK students (the book Yoga for Every Body was published in June 2001 by Readers Digest in North America and Time Life elsewhere).

2003 Centre for Yoga Studies

This period from 1996 through to 2003 also saw the appointment of an executive Director and the setting up of both Steering and Teaching Councils as well as the growth of the teaching faculty. The first bi-annual convention was held in 2002 as well as negotiating the shift away from the use of the name Viniyoga the following year.

This phase also saw Paul retiring in 2003 as the Director of Studies from aYs within a maximum of five years in order to focus more on his personal teaching needs emerging through this transition towards and elder in the Yoga community.

2004 association for Yoga studies

However entering his 60'th year through 2006 marked a number of personal changes and offered an appropriate moment after 25 years to handover over his chefs hat to the next generation and return to his teaching roots. With his formal retirement from aYs Director of Studies taken in April 2006 that phase is completed.

Now past his 60th Paul finds himself in this next stage of his life needing to be even freer of present and future organisational familial expectations and involvements in order to have more time to further refine his personal studies and practice.

Thus he is choosing to work without any further commitments to and constraints of involving himself, or seeking anticipation around others, in helping to sustain new organisational frameworks.

2005 processYoga

To complement his Eastern studies with his teacher and to examine the root influences within his own psychological background and upbringing, Paul undertook Foundation Courses in Focusing in 1985, Core Process Psychotherapy in 1986 and NLP in 1987 before going on to complete by 1992 a four year training with the Centre for Transpersonal Psychology as a counsellor and workshop facilitator.

This and his teacher's support for Paul‘s interest in both Eastern and Western approaches to philosophical psychology as a practice for life has enabled a further dimension in exploring how to better understand and integrate the Yoga teachings from the culture and attitudes of the East with the beliefs, culture and attitudes of the West today. 

It was with this background that Paul chose the name processYoga to facilitate his transition from aYs to a more low key teaching framework. However it became apparent, especially within the atmosphere of the change of attitude around the use of Viniyoga, that what was just a personal feeling was being viewed as if an alternative or new style name. This was not the intention and therefore a return to teaching roots in both name as well as situation is better expressed through cYs. The Centre for Yoga Studies is a Centre where Yoga can be studied.

2007 Centre for Yoga Studies

These days Paul's continuing journey as a student of Yoga, dharma as a Yoga teacher and feeling for expressing the spirit of his teachers message, offered for example in the quote below through a seminar by Desikachar in the US in May 2002,

“T Krishnamacharya, a yogi par-excellence,
immersed in the ocean of ancient Indian wisdom,
understood the wealth of teachings that yoga had to offer
and showed how each practitioner can choose
the right means for his or her own development.“

is more and more fulfilled within the space that the simpler, smaller and more personal practice and teaching environment offered within the Centre for Yoga Studies provides.

2007 Association for Yoga Studies

Meanwhile aYs continues in its role as a community support for those students who have studied with TKV Desikachar, or with any of his students, or their students, as well as offering annual meetings and conventions for its members.

“The target of Yoga is ‘svatantra’ which means to discover our own technique.
‘Sva’ means itself and ‘tantra’ means technique.
The techniques are in oneself and we must discover them;
if not we will depend on others.
I am sick and I go to the doctor;
but finally I must become my own therapist.
This is ‘svatantra’.”

1999 Yoganjali

Meanwhile Paul continues to be Director of Yoganjali, a Yoga practice and therapy centre in Bristol, whilst offering individual lessons, workshop courses and training ; plus continuing to explore his love of the Art of Mantra and Yoga Chanting through personal practice and teaching, as well as training students and teachers in soundwork, Mantra and Yoga Chanting.

It was during Pauls visits to study Yoga with Desikachar that he became exposed to the Art of Mantra and Yoga Chanting. It was taught by his teacher both as a method of transmission for sacred texts and teachings and as a practice through which one became deeply focused within oneself. This experience and the other benefits such as a deepening confidence in the message of the heart, improvements in memory through the teaching and learning processes, confidence and power arising in the sound of our own voice, led Paul in 1985 to begin a formal study with his teacher.

Though having had no prior training in singing, the use of the voice, in Western or Eastern music or ever having played a musical instrument, Paul began the formal study and practice of the art of Mantra and Yoga Chanting. Meeting within the traditional setting of teacher and student, the mantra would be taught based on the ancient method of transmission.

This would involve refining the art of listening and then repeating exactly what was chanted. Learning primarily under his teacher and through his guidance and recommendation also working with Desikachar's own students including Sujaya Sridhar and Menaka Desikachar, Paul's interest in this ancient art and practice flourished.

It is through personal transmission that the individual needs of the student can be met in terms of pronouncing and pitch, timing and strength, maintaining a note and continuity of breath and sound. A process possible with the help of a careful methodology and a persistent teacher. From this slow beginning Paul began to teach the art of Mantra and Yoga Chanting in the West from 1986. The influence and value of chanting to steady the mind and open the heart was soon appreciated by many and this has led to the story today with Vedavalli.

1999 Vedavalli

Vedavalli was established as a separate part of aYs in the UK in 1999 at the request of TKV Desikachar both in order to clarify the confusing boundaries appearing between Yoga practice and the Indian religious practices within which Vedic chanting resides and to offer and develop the teaching of Vedic Chanting as a practice for all interested in this ancient Indian tradition. It had as its core a group of students who studied Vedic Chanting for many years with Paul as well as with other students of TKV Desikachar.

As with other aspects of aYs evolving independently of Paul, experienced teachers now teach Vedic Chanting within their own aYs network either individually or through groups, workshops and seminars.

1993 Garuda Yatra

Paul's interest in personal journeys in India developed when he first travelled to India in 1979 to study Yoga with his teacher. During the years that followed he also had the opportunity to travel extensively in North India, Nepal and Tibet visiting Holy towns and Spiritual Centres in the Hindu, Sikh and Tibetan Buddhist traditions.

Over that time, in addition to his personal and group study visits to Chennai, he has made a number of pilgrimages to North India with the purpose of following sacred paths to sacred sites in the Himalayas.

In 1993 he travelled to the source of the Ganges. This was followed with further visits in 1998 and 2000 to all the other primary sources of the Ganges, known as the Char Dham or four sacred points.

These visits to India were complemented by a pilgrimage to Tibet in 1995 with a group including Dr. Robert Svoboda to make a parikrama (sacred circumambulation) around Mount Kailash walking up to 18,600 feet and visit the lake Manasarovar at 15,000 feet. It was here that his teacher's father and teacher T Krishnamacharya lived and studied Yoga for over 7 years.

Paul also travelled with his teacher in 2000 to Badrinath, a favourite pilgrimage place of T Krishnamacharya when he lived with his teacher Yogeswarar Rama Mohana Brahmacharya in Tibet in the 1920's.

2001 saw his first personal journey group to the Himalayas. The group went on a Panca Kedar in the Garhwal district of the Himalayas to visit the sacred sites of Siva as depicted in myths around the great Indian story the Mahabharata.

Further journeys with groups were planned to travel to sacred sites of rivers, mountains and temples in Assam and Mustang.

However the need to just travel lightly and freely to these sacred places many of which he had not been to yet has become the greater priority. So Paul decided not to put together any more groups for a while preferring to have the choice to catch these places as and when he wished over the next few years. Travelling lightly with only a small daypack offers the type nourishment that, at this point in time, co-ordinating a group around these mountains could not.

Meanwhile much gratitude for the support and interest and best wishes for your inner and outer journeys towards svatantra through 2007 and beyond.

“A guru is not one who has a following.
A guru is one who can show me the way.
Suppose I’m in a forest and somehow I’ve lost my way.
Then I meet somebody and ask,
“Can you show me the way home?”
That person might say,
“Yes, you go this way”.
I say
“Thank you,”
and I go on my way.
That is a guru.“

- TKV Desikachar