20/11/2025
Today, on the (western) birthday of Śrī T. Krishnamacharya, I want to honor the teacher who quietly protected yoga’s deepest roots —through colonial disruption, cultural change, and the pressures of modernization.
His devotion to Sanskrit, chanting, darśana, sādhana, and individualized teaching is the reason the lineage still breathes today.
In that spirit, I want to share something essential:
Decolonizing yoga is not a trend.
It’s a return to the tradition.
Yoga is a Darśana — a philosophical system.
The Yoga Sūtra and Haṭha texts are Śāstra,
the treatises that preserve and transmit the Darśana.
Much of this was lost or diluted through colonization, commercialization, and Western reinterpretation.
So here are 10 ways to decolonize your yoga practice:
1. Bring back Samkritam (Sanskrit)
2. Learn proper pronunciation
3. Restore chanting
4. Remember yoga is a Darśana
5. Study the Śāstra
6. Learn from lineage-rooted Indian teachers
7. Understand that asana is only one limb
8. Avoid rebranding the tradition
9. Honor sacred symbols
10. Don’t replace yoga’s teachings with western psychology
Krishnamacharya embodied this every day —living yoga as a complete, integrated path rooted in wisdom, relationship, and transmission.
We honor him by remembering what yoga truly is —
and by carrying the tradition forward with nobility and care.
