Atlas of Skills / Ashtanga Yoga

Learn Ashtanga Yoga in Mysore (Gokulam)

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.

Ashtanga yoga was born in Mysore, in southern India. On 11 August 1933 Tirumalai Krishnamacharya opened a yoga school in a wing of the city’s Jaganmohan Palace, and among his students was K. Pattabhi Jois, who had first met him at twelve. Krishnamacharya said the sequences came from an old text, the Yoga Korunta, later eaten by ants; that is legend, and Jois’s own son said Krishnamacharya created them. Jois opened his institute in Mysore in 1948. After the Belgian André Van Lysebeth trained with him in 1964 and printed his address in a book, Westerners began to come, and they still do. For the 2026 season at Sharath Yoga Centre, the family’s shala on the edge of Mysore, demand was such that places were allotted at random.

What it is like to be there

You will be in Gokulam before dawn and loose in the city by the afternoon, so the city is worth knowing. Karnataka's tourism department calls Mysuru its Cultural Capital; the palace at the centre draws over six million people annually, and Devaraja Market — flowers, incense, sandalwood and spices, in a city the Wodeyars ruled from 1399 to Independence — is where the everyday version happens. Time it if you can — Mysuru Dasara runs 11 to 21 October in 2026, at the very front of the season, and the city turns out for it. Otherwise go to the market early and buy fruit you cannot name.

Last checked · Arnaud Callier · 9 October 2026

★ Best place to go
Birthplace of the discipline

Mysore (Gokulam), India

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

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.

BirthplaceLiving sceneMeccaVerified schoolsUnbroken lineageHeritage
Where it is taught — hand-verified

Schools in Mysore (Gokulam)

Researched by hand against each school's own course pages · Arnaud Callier. No school paid to be listed.

Named in this town

Where this craft came through here

Where it came through

A lineage, not a staff list. Nobody on it is teaching today — for who is, look just above.

What you walk away with

The credential that counts here

KPJAYI/SYC Authorisation (then Certification) — historically the rarest stamp in yoga · Certifying body: Sharath Yoga Centre (formerly KPJAYI) / Yoga Alliance

That is the one an outside body sets and marks, which is what separates it from a certificate a school prints itself — that proves you attended. We name which of the two a course actually gives you; ask the school the same question before you pay, and judge the answer yourself.

Write me a note about this one — how you'd love to learn it, and where.

If this box never loads, the same note reaches me at arnaudcallier@pm.me.

Same discipline, other sources

Also for Ashtanga Yoga

London, United Kingdom
New York City, United States
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
  1. Who actually teaches it? Can you find them by name, with a track record you can check yourself?
  2. Is the craft alive in that place, or is the school the only thing there? A real scene has more than one good option.
  3. What exactly do you walk away with — a recognised qualification, or a certificate they printed themselves? Ask which.
  4. Can you speak to someone who did the course? A real person, not a testimonial on their own page.
  5. 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.