Ashtanga Yoga — where to learn it at the source (3 destinations)

Ordered by community strength — not by who pays

Where the community gathers

Place	Season	Level	How long
Mysore (Gokulam)	Oct-Mar	Intermediate -> Authorised Teacher	a month+
London	Year-round	Beginner -> Advanced	2–4 weeks
New York City	Year-round	Intermediate -> Advanced	2–4 weeks

★ Best place to go

Birthplace of the discipline

Learn the set sequence at dawn in the neighbourhood every authorised Ashtanga teacher on earth traces home.

in Mysore (Gokulam), India

Season: Oct-Mar · Intermediate -> Authorised Teacher

A state says so. Karnataka's tourism department publishes a page on Mysuru's Ashtanga yoga and names the shalas on it — a government describing a town by a craft, rather than a school describing itself. Three shalas, two named teachers, and a Mysore-style room is by definition people practising beside you. ⚠ What no page can tell you is what a season in Gokulam is actually like.

Mysore, where the method was born in 1933, and Gokulam, where the Jois family shalas still teach — the one place every authorised Ashtanga teacher on Earth traces home.

BirthplaceLiving sceneMeccaVerified schoolsUnbroken lineageHeritage

With Shruthi Jois and 1 more · Immersion — a month+

The full sheet on Mysore (Gokulam) →All 3 schools, the course and what it costs, and who teaches.

Year-round

Strong living community

Learn to hold a six-mornings-a-week self-practice in Europe's strongest daily Mysore room.

in London, United Kingdom

Season: Year-round · Beginner -> Advanced

Three rooms running six mornings a week, which is what a daily practice community looks like when it is real — the same faces before work, all year, rather than a course that ends. ⚠ Nothing outside those rooms establishes it. Stillpoint and Astanga Yoga London name their teachers on their pages; the site we link for Yoga Place is no longer theirs.

Europe's strongest daily Mysore-style community, where authorised teachers run six-morning-a-week rooms and a serious cohort holds the practice.

Living scene

Deep-dive — 2–4 weeks

The full sheet on London →All 3 schools and the course and what it costs.

Teachers we can name

Strong living community

Learn the full series at dawn beside a cohort that has practised it together for decades.

in New York City, United States

Season: Year-round · Intermediate -> Advanced

Two rooms, and one of them is Eddie Stern's — named, and teaching in it, which is rare on this map. A dawn cohort holding the full series together is company of a particular kind: small, early, and the same people. Nothing outside those rooms establishes it.

The American heartland of authorised Ashtanga, where a tight dawn cohort has practiced the full series together for decades under Eddie Stern's lineage.

Living scene

With Eddie Stern · Deep-dive — 2–4 weeks

The full sheet on New York City →All 2 schools, the course and what it costs, and who teaches.

Catalogued, not checked

Eight more places we know of, and nobody has checked any of them

Listing five places would tell you this craft happens in five places, and it does not. These are the rest we know of. Nobody has checked any of them. No school here is vetted, no teacher named, nothing graded — this is the lowest state on the map, and we would rather print it than let a short list read as a complete one. A line each, and what the place is known for. If you have been to one, or know a school or an instructor there, the line will take a note — it comes to me, and it is how a place stops being a line and starts being checked.

Goa, India
Where the winter shalas run while Mysore is out of season, often with the same travelling students.
Copenhagen, Denmark
A northern-European city with an established Mysore-style morning practice, six days a week.
Berlin, Germany
A large European Ashtanga community spread across several independent shalas.
Melbourne, Australia
The southern-hemisphere counterweight to London and New York, with its own long-running Mysore rooms.
Tokyo, Japan
A disciplined, early-morning Mysore culture that suits the method's demand for daily attendance.
Encinitas & Los Angeles, United States
Where Ashtanga first took root in America, and where several of its senior Western teachers still live.
Paris, France
A continental hub with Mysore rooms running through the working week.
Stockholm, Sweden
A small but continuous Scandinavian scene, useful if you want a room rather than a crowd.

If this one pulls you

Close to this on the map

Grouped by hand, not by an algorithm — same hands, same instinct, a different craft. Drag, or use the arrows.

YogaHatha & Vinyasa YogaRishikesh, Indiaopen · where to learn it YogaIyengar Yoganot open yet YogaKundalini Yoganot open yet

Why you can trust this map

How a place gets on here, and what we do when it stops being true

There is a real difference between a school that teaches you and a good-looking website, and too much of the internet is the second kind. Four instruments do the work, and every one of them is visible on the page you are already on.

We grade it in public, and publish what is missing. The Measure is five plain questions, not a score: is there a teacher we can name, can a stranger get in, will you be learning beside other people, is the craft alive in the place, and is there enough there to keep you going for years. An empty dot tells you which one we could not answer and why. A craft nobody has graded shows no meter at all, because an absence is not a zero.
We print what we checked and did NOT list. Every swept craft carries the places we looked at and turned down, each with its reason. That list is the part no marketplace prints, because a rejection is where the money is.
The claims are read back to their sources every night. A robot re-reads every link we publish against the school's own page each night, and every price and course name we have written a test for. page. When one stops matching three nights running, it is flagged for a human — and an entry that cannot be confirmed comes off. It is never softened.
Where we are not neutral, we say so above the recommendation. We run one paid week a year, with one teacher. His entry says that before it says anything good about him, and prints the way to reach him without us, at his prices.
Nothing here has been stood in yet. An open sheet means desk research, carefully done. No place on this map has been visited and dated by us. When one is, the check will carry a name and a date — and until then, the grade says so in the dots it leaves empty.
Nobody pays to be here, and nobody can pay to be left off. No commission, no listing fee, no tourist board. The order is the strength of the community, never the size of the wallet.

Before you trust any school — mine or anyone else's — ask these five things

Who actually teaches it? Can you find them by name, with a track record you can check yourself?
Is the craft alive in that place, or is the school the only thing there? A real scene has more than one good option.
What exactly do you walk away with — a recognised qualification, or a certificate they printed themselves? Ask which.
Can you speak to someone who did the course? A real person, not a testimonial on their own page.
What happens on a bad day — weather, an injury, a teacher who doesn't show? A serious place has an honest answer.

If a place dodges these, that's your answer. It costs you nothing to ask, and it tells you everything.

This is the short version. The full method is here — the six questions, in order, for any craft anywhere.