National Teaching and Learning
Change Programme
Improving teaching and learning in Adult Learning

"I was working as an engineer in Chennai and one evening I had plans to go to the cinema with a group of friends. My boss walked in and told me that I'd have to work late that night. I really wanted to be with my friends and so I said, 'I'm sorry, sir, but I can't. I have two yoga students coming for lessons with me this evening and I can't break the appointment.'

'I didn't know you were a yoga teacher,' my boss said. 'All right, you can go. But only on the condition that you will teach me yoga, too.' I went off and had a wonderful time with my friends.

A few days later, as we had agreed, my boss came to our home. I had decided that I would have him do a few easy exercises from the programme that my father had taught me. So, I had the boss raise his arms over his head, breathing as I had been taught, and turning slightly. He did and suddenly collapsed to the floor. His breath stopped, the colour in his face darkened, and there didn't seem to be any pulse. In a panic I ran for my father, who rushed back with me and began working over my boss, talking him back to consciousness and helping him to breathe. Soon, the poor man was fully recovered. He was a very fat man and in terrible physical condition. My father gently worked with him some more, showed him some different exercises, and the man left our home in fine spirits. Rather shame-faced, I later explained to my father all that had happened. 'Why didn't you come to me?' he demanded. 'You could have killed him!'

The experience taught me in the most unforgettable way the meaning of the primal universal law of all healing traditions, ancient and modern: 'Do no harm!' "

T.K.V. Desikachar, writing about the life of his father, guru, Professor T. Krishnamacharya, teacher of B. K. S. Iyengar, Pattabhi Jois and Indra Devi.

(Yoga and the Living Tradition of Krishnamacharya, By T.K.V. Desikachar with R.H. Cravens, published by Aperture, 1998, ISBN 0-89381-941-7)