UNITED KINGDOM, May 2009: One of the leading figures in the world yoga community, Sri K. Pattabhi Jois, has died at the age of 93.
Jois, from India, was widely considered to be a modern expert of ashtanga yoga and credited with popularising it in the West. His many thousands of students include the pop musicians Sting and Madonna, and the actress Gwyneth Paltrow. Ashtanga yoga, in the way taught by Jois, is based on synchronising the breath through a progressive series of postures.
Introduced to yoga at a demonstration in 1927 at the age of 12, Jois immersed himself in the discipline, studying under the guru Krishnamacharya who had revived the ancient practice of yoga in the early years of the 20th century. Jois developed and refined ashtanga yoga after translating ancient texts on the technique, eventually establishing the Ashtanga Yoga Research Institute in Lakshmipuram, Mysore. Jois considered yoga to be a form of mind medicine. “Ashtanga yoga is helping many people throughout the world to balance the mental, physical and spiritual pressures and stresses posed by the modern world we live in today,” he said.