Yoga can be seen as having three aspects:

• Yoga as power

Yoga can be used to link the body and the mind. It is the ability to achieve something through intense physical and mental effort.

For instance, to cultivate and maintain a state of concentration or to develop the body and the breath through refinement of various postures and breathing techniques.

The consequences are power over and within the body and the mind. As such, Yoga can be seen as an art and offers a fascinating and helpful pursuit for many people looking to develop these qualities.

However, traditionally this aspect is only a means towards a more important goal.

• Yoga as self-inquiry

Yoga can also be used as a tool for a deeper understanding of ourselves by inquiring both into and beyond what we view as the everyday self, its actions and its motives.

Here Yoga can be utilised to appreciate and sustain a quality of attention. This attention offers a space that can allow our actions or especially reactions to be less influenced by the more usual patternings within the mind.

With sensitive and consistent attention we can lessen the effects of our conditionings. As a consequence we can experience a deeper sense of well being and have the potential for action with greater awareness within our life, work and relationships

However, we all experience problems, poor health or illness from time to time.

• Yoga as therapy

Yoga, as a restorative, support and preventative, can be a healing therapy to help us work at changing or anticipating the effects of problems and illness in our lives.

Here the approach must be different for each person as our potential will be affected by the problem, or the problem by our attitude towards working with it.

Also according to traditional Indian medicine those diseases that are chronic and cannot be cured by medicine alone can be helped by using Yoga techniques. So Yoga can support other forms of treatment.

Yoga texts also talk about the benefits of certain postures and breathing techniques.

Utilising these concepts it is possible, within a careful teaching situation and our wish to learn and help ourselves, to introduce practices that both respect the problems or illness and support our intention to reduce their negative effects in the future.

However, Yoga as a therapy also presumes that we are willing to accept responsibility for change within our own situation.

““The patient must be his own doctor, must observe himself,
use his own intelligence, and find the right tools.
Fundamentally, the solution is in the patient’s discernment.
No one can understand for the patient.“

- TKV Desikachar

These three aspects of Yoga, power, self-inquiry and therapy are mutually supportive in helping to maintain physical health, psychological vitality and spiritual purpose within the commitment and challenges of life, work and relationships.

TKV Desikachar's Teaching

Yoga offers many tools including body, breath and voice work, diet, meditation, study and reflection. This teaching is to teach a Yoga that is relevant to people and their lives.

Here Yoga is the appropriate application of these tools according to the person and their situation.

In modern life Yoga can be applied in many different ways, especially:

• To appreciate the intimate relationship between our body, breath and mind.

• To cultivate a quality of attention, clarity and thus skilful actions.

• As a therapy to help our health needs.

Teaching Yoga with this perspective respects differences in age, gender, mental and physical health, culture, religion, philosophy and occupation.

Care has been taken to preserve the spirit of transmission which emphasises:

• Adaptation of all aspects of Yoga to our needs and potential, integrating movement, breathing and attention, for better physical and mental health and awareness.

• A process that moves from a practice adapted to our limitations towards one that stretches our abilities.

• The precise use of the breath as a powerful tool to influence a person's mental and physical well being.

• The value of the relationship between the teacher, the teachings and the student and their practice.

What is the word Viniyoga as used in recent years within this country?

The term viniyoga had come to be associated with TKV Desikachar’s methods of teaching, adapted from his twenty-seven year long study with his father and teacher
T Krishnamacharya in order to make the essence and depth of the tradition available to Westerners.

TKV Desikachar had described it thus in May 1983 under the title
'THE VINIYOGA OF YOGA':

"Yoga is a mystery.
It does not mean the same thing to each and everyone.
In spite of the vast field it covers
- curing chronic ailments, extra-sensory perception, etc,
- hardly anyone is able to define it in simple terms.
Where is then the hope of experiencing its true significance?
What about the risks of inappropriate use of Yoga methods and practices?
Why are so many people all over the world taking the word
and the substance of Yoga so lightly, so ridiculously?
Like everything, Yoga must be presented intelligently.
It should be spoken of carefully and offered according to
the aspiration, requirement and the culture of the individual.
This should be done in stages.
Systematic application of Yoga
- be it concerned with physical exercises,
deep breathing, relaxation, meditation,
lifestyle, food, studies - is the need of the day.
This I believe - is what the word VINIYOGA represents."

However from 2002 Desikachar began to disassociate himself and his teacher's teaching from the word Viniyoga because of the embracing of the word around the world as a style or brand name, which he felt had replaced the word Yoga, rather than a name for an approach to teaching Yoga or possible tools for a Yoga teacher trained by T Krishnamacharya, TKV Desikachar, or one of his students, to draw from and apply as a teacher of Yoga rather than a "Viniyoga" teacher.

This view was expressed by Desikachar through a seminar in Omega, New York in May 2002 around the theme "The Ocean of Yoga - From the Parts to the Whole" as:

"The current world of yoga seems to be made up of many small parts,
each one competing with and often confusing the other.
This is not consistent with the spirit of yoga,
whose very meaning is "to unite“.

To download an interview with Desikachar conducted during this May 2002 seminar, and published in Yoga and Health magazine in the UK in July 2003, as a PDF file please click the logo

It was the replacing of the word Yoga by Viniyoga and his concern about the distortion and confusion where this had become the case within the wider field of Yoga that led to this re-appraisal of its choice, use and value and the consequent request not to use the word Viniyoga to represent his teacher's teaching.

He also emphasised through this interview that he did not wish the Viniyoga label to be replaced with either his or his teachers name.

Interviewer: What if people started calling it Desikachar Yoga?
Would that ruin it too because you suddenly have a label?
Desikachar: It is really murdering - they are murdering my spirit!
What I have received is from my teacher and what he received is from his teacher.
There is a lineage of more than 2000 years.
How can they label this Desikachar?
They are murdering me because they are murdering my teacher.

Interviewer: If they named it after your father that wouldn't be good either?
Desikachar: No, my father would be in tears.
Whatever he invented, he never said he invented it.
I know that he innovated things, but he would never say 'it is mine'.
That is the Indian philosophy of humility and respect for the teacher.
They always would say, 'my teacher taught this to me.'

Following on from this in April 2003 he emailed his students and asked them, in the spirit of guru daksina, to choose either not to use the word Viniyoga to represent his and his teacher's teaching or to remove his and his teachers name from their communications.

“Dear Friends
When I introduced the concept of Viniyoga in the late 70’s and early 80’s,
I never imagined that it will replace the word “yoga”.
I am extremely disappointed with the situation today,
where this has become the case and caused so much distortion and confusion.
Hence I request you to either delete the word Viniyoga to represent my teacher’s
teaching, or remove my father’s and my name from your communications.
This is the least you can do for me, as a guru dakshina. “
Please feel free to forward this to other students whose email addresses I don’t have.
With Best Wishes
TKV Desikachar “

It is this feeling that offers a potential message, as TKV Desikachar discusses in “What are we Seeking”, in that ‘Yoga is to relate and to unite‘.

Yoga in Todays Society

According to the teaching of Krishnamacharya and Desikachar, Yoga is taught in a way appropriate for each person and their situation. Here is where Desikachar discussed the word viniyoga in the opening quotation as the appropriate application of Yoga techniques according to the person and the uniqueness of their situation.

Thus the viniyoga of Yoga, or the application of Yoga according to the person and their situation, would be a truer definition to describe the way that teachers trained in these teachings work.

Teaching Yoga from this perspective respects differences in ages, gender, mental and physical health, culture, religion, philosophy, occupation and interest along with the current situation of the person.

Care has been taken to try to preserve this spirit of transmission of TKV Desikachar's teaching which emphasises:

• Adaptation of all aspects of Yoga to our needs and potential, integrating movement, breathing and attention, for better physical and mental health and awareness.
  

• A process that moves from teaching a Yoga adapted to our limitations towards one that stretches our abilities.
  

• The precise use of the breath as a powerful tool to influence a person's mental and physical well being.
  

• The value of the relationship between the teacher and the teachings and the student and their practice

“There is an image in the world today that the guru has a following
and his students follow him like the Pied Piper.
This is not good.
The true guru shows you the way.
You go your way and then you're on your own,
because you know your place and you are grateful.
I can always thank my guru naturally and enjoy the relationship,
but I do not have to follow him around,
because then I am not in my own place.
Following the guru's destination is another way of losing yourself.
The yoga concept of svadharma means "your own dharma" or "your own way".
If you try to do somebody else’s dharma, trouble happens.
The guru helps you find your own dharma.“

- TKV Desikachar