VAIRAGYA RANKO ABOUT HIS GURUS
Also called Guruji by his students, he had been passing on the tradition of Ashtanga Yoga for more than seventy years and represents one of the most significant yogis of the twentieth century. I stayed at his Ashtanga Yoga Institute at Mysore, India for the first time in 2008 and spent two months there. That is when I started my training with his grandson Sri R. Sharath Jois, current director of Shri K. Patabbhi Jois Ashtanga Yoga Institute, Mysore (KPJAYI), and his daughter Sri Saraswati Rangaswami.
In spite of his age, his presence in the shala was sufficient to make us all feel the incredible energy of this master and become aware of our practice...
I have spoken to Guruji for a couple of times and had conversations with his grandson and daughter almost every day, which made me absolutely determined to return to their Ashtanga Yoga Institute every year over and over again in order to learn yoga from this devoted family. When you have such amazing teachers and follow such an exceptional method, anything is possible. As Jack London once said: "Only when the impossible becomes reality, life becomes worth living".
Guruji rejoiced like a child when he read the book about Serbia, my gift for his 93rd birthday and I will never forget the glow in his eyes full of kindness and support for students from a distant country.
After completion of training with her Guru Swami Satyananda in India in late seventies, she established Satyanandashram Greece (www.satyanandashram.gr) and started spreading the teachings of her Guru and teaching yoga in accordance with his method.
She lives in her Ashram near Athens and often travels not only around Greece but also to the Balkan countries and all over the world, teaches at seminars and lectures, inspires and spiritually leads thousands of people to the way of self-knowledge and yoga.
When I met her in 1994 in Mungir, India at Bihar yoga school, she shared with me indescribable pleasure, happiness and love that triggered my desire for self-knowledge and yoga in the essential way.
After spending traditional eight years of yoga training in her ashram in Greece, Swamiji still represents an inexhaustible source of inspiration for my life and practice of yoga... I am striving to implement her teachings both in everyday life as well as in yoga and to follow her simple message that "all we need is awareness".
In the past couple of years, Swamiji has been encouraging me in my attempts to specialize in Ashtanga yoga in the tradition of Sri K. Patthabi Jois, which comprises the predominant part of my today's practice.