Our Teachers
Yoga Acharyas
The Yoga Knowledge is transmitted and receive through the Sampradayas which are living traditions of both teaching and practice within a specific spiritual process. They are generally composed of a monastic order within a specific guru lineage, with ideas developed and transmitted, redefined and reviewed by each successive generation of followers. A particular guru lineage is called parampara. By receiving diksha (initiation) into the parampara of a living guru, one belongs to its proper sampradaya.
To ensure continuity through dharma transmission, various sampradayas ensure continuity and protect the knowledge through Guru-shishya parampara where Guru teaches shishyas in gurukula, matha, akhara, and viharas.
There are four authentic Sampradayas
Brahma Sampradaya
Sri Sampradaya
Rudra Sampradaya
Kumaras Sampradaya
The modern yoga originally comes from Sri Sampradaya as follows
Bellur Krishnamachar Sundararaja Iyengar
14 December 1918 – 20 August 2014
An Indian teacher of yoga and author. He is the founder of the style of yoga as exercise, known as "Iyengar Yoga", and was considered one of the foremost yoga gurus in the world. He was the author of many books on yoga practice and philosophy including Light on Yoga, Light on Pranayama, Light on the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, and Light on Life. Iyengar was one of the earliest students of Tirumalai Krishnamacharya, who is often referred to as "the father of modern yoga". He has been credited with popularizing yoga, first in India and then around the world.
Bellur Krishnamachar Sundararaja Iyengar
14 December 1918 – 20 August 2014
An Indian teacher of yoga and author. He is the founder of the style of yoga as exercise, known as "Iyengar Yoga", and was considered one of the foremost yoga gurus in the world. He was the author of many books on yoga practice and philosophy including Light on Yoga, Light on Pranayama, Light on the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, and Light on Life. Iyengar was one of the earliest students of Tirumalai Krishnamacharya, who is often referred to as "the father of modern yoga". He has been credited with popularizing yoga, first in India and then around the world.
Sri Vedanta Desika
1268–1369
Also rendered Vedanta Desikan, Swami Vedanta Desika, and Thoopul Nigamantha Desikan, was an Indian polymath who wrote philosophical as well as religious and poetical works in several languages, including Sanskrit, Manipravaḷam (a Sanskritised form of literary Tamil), Tamil and Prakrit. He was an Indian philosopher, Sri Vaishnava guru, and one of the most brilliant stalwarts of Sri Vaishnavism in the post-Ramanuja period. He was a Hindu devotee, poet, Master of Acharyas (desikan) and a logician and mathematician. He was the disciple of Kidambi Appullar, also known as Athreya Ramanujachariar, who himself was of a master-disciple lineage that began with Ramanuja. Vedanta Desika is considered to be avatar (incarnation) of the divine bell of Venkateshvara of Tirumala by the Vadakalai sect of Sri Vaishnavism. Vedanta Desika belongs to Vishvamitra/Kaushika gotra.
Sri Ramanujacharya
Pan Indian Hindu philosopher, guru and a social reformer. He is noted to be one of the most important exponents of the Sri Vaishnavism tradition. His philosophical foundations for devotionalism were influential to the Bhakti movement.
Ramanuja's guru was Yādava Prakāśa, a scholar who according to tradition belonged to the Advaita Vedānta tradition, but probably was a Bhedabheda scholar. Sri Vaishnava tradition holds that Ramanuja disagreed with his guru and the non-dualistic Advaita Vedānta, and instead followed in the footsteps of Tamil Alvārs tradition, the scholars Nāthamuni and Yamunāchārya. Ramanuja is famous as the chief proponent of Vishishtadvaita subschool of Vedānta, and his disciples were likely authors of texts such as the Shatyayaniya Upanishad. Ramanuja himself wrote influential texts, such as bhāsya on the Brahma Sutras and the Bhagavad Gita, all in Sanskrit.
Yamunacharya
also known as Alavandar and Yamunaithuraivan, was a Vishistadvaita philosopher based in Srirangam, Tamil Nadu, India. He is best-known for being a preceptor of Ramanuja, one of the leaders of the Sri Vaishnava tradition. He was born in the early 10th century CE, and was the grandson of Nathamuni, a famed yogi, who collected the works of the Tamil Alvars.
Yamunacharya grew up learning Vedic texts from Rama Misra, and was skilled in the concept of mimamsa. According to Sri Vaishnava tradition, as a teenager, he challenged the royal priest of a Pandya king, Akkiyalvan, to a debate. Akkiyalvan, when he saw the age of the youth, sarcastically asked "Alavandara?", meaning "Has he come to rule me?". He defeated Akkiyalvan by logically proving that Akkiyalvan's mother was barren, the king was not righteous, and the queen unchaste. The king and queen, impressed that the boy had understood the shortcomings of logic, adopted him. The queen hailed the boy as "Alavandar". In other versions of the legend, he is given half the kingdom. There is no historical record to show his reign, so it is possible that this happened in a small village, rather than the kingdom of Pandya.
Śri Nathamuni
Autor of Yoga Rahasya
Though there is difficulty in identifying Nathamuni's date of birth and age, he is considered to have lived during the lifetime of Madhurakavi Alvar's parampara (lineage). According to Sri Vaishnava tradition, Nathamuni was conversing with his father about the legend of Prabandhams written by the Alvars. His father, Ishvara Bhattar, exclaimed the Prabandhams were long lost, and that they would be impossible to retrieve unless one had the grace of Narayana. Hence, he got interested in this and had set to the pilgrimage to the Kumbakonam Sarangapani Temple, where Vishnu is worshipped under the epithet of Aravamudhan. There, he heard priests singing 10 particular pasurams (hymns) dedicated to Aravamudhan (Sarangapani temple's main deity) by the saint Nammalvar. He was overjoyed hearing those and enquired its details. But the priests stated that only 10 pasurams was known to them out of 1,292 written by Nammalvar. He placed immense faith on the deity Aravamudhan and he visited Thirukurgur, birth place of Nammalvar.
Śri Nammalvar
Nammāḻvār who was known as Vakulabharana, Śathari and Parānkusa, who is also the source of yoga, who introduced on the essence of the Vedas, was one of the twelve Alvar saints of Tamil Nadu, India, who are known for their affiliation to the Vaishnava tradition of Hinduism. The verses of the Alvars are compiled as the Naalayira Divya Prabandham, where praises are sung of 108 temples that are classified as divine realms, called the Divya Desams. Nammalvar is considered to be the fifth in the line of the twelve Alvars. He is highly regarded as a great mystic of the Vaishnava tradition. He is also considered to be the foremost among the twelve Alvars, and his contributions amount to 1352 among the 4000 stanzas in the Naalayira Divya Prabandam.