Sitting pretty
The unassuming southern Indian city of Mysore has become a magnet for aspiring yogis from across the planet, with its community of like-minded souls drawn by the laid-back town’s extensive history and expertise.
Cairo Murillo, a 37-year-old yoga teacher and surfer from Brazil, arrived in the southern Indian city of Mysore on a rain-soaked day in July last year.
India’s wettest month, July sees the southwest monsoon pour over the peninsula, painting forests, farms, gardens and the sides of pavements in wild shades of green.
Murillo arrived intending to visit several yoga schools, locally known as yogashalas, during a six-week stay. But Mysore changed his plans.
He remained for nearly three months, practising yoga with his guru; attending Vedanta (Indian philosophy) classes; befriending a community of practitioners from faraway countries; joining them on two-wheeler rides to historic sites around town; and eating his way through the city’s vast vegetarian menu.
“My first impression of Mysore was that of a friendly city – organised, affordable and gorgeous,” says Murillo. “Here I was in a culturally vibrant and historically rich city, strengthening my practice of yoga with senior gurus. I felt healed in many ways after Mysore, with its strong learning environment, history of yoga and Vedanta.
“My time in the city fulfilled a personal search for me,” says Murillo, who hopes to keep returning to Mysore (now known officially as Mysuru) to elevate his yoga practice.
When it came time for Murillo to leave, a motley group of yoga buddies – Europeans and Southeast Asians prominent among them – gathered for a goodbye meal of millet idlis and Ayurvedic beverages in a little cafe aptly named No Coffee No Prana (“prana” meaning life force). Each person at that table had arrived in the city with one intention – to strengthen their practice of yoga with a guru of their choice.
Among them was Ichitaka Kimura, from Tokyo, Japan.
Itta, to his Mysorean friends, the shy 52-year-old doctor speaks about “arranging my life circumstances to be able to practise in Mysore” – he was in the city for five months.
His best memories? The everyday practice at the shala, making friends from different cultures, short trips around town and ayurvedic therapy, he says. Kimura turned vegetarian for the duration of his stay, and taught himself to cook Indian meals.
“I really enjoyed my organic, vegetarian life,” says Kimura, who adopted as one of his favourite cafes Depth N Green, in Gokulam, a leafy neighbourhood north of the city centre with neat houses and wide roads, farmers markets and small restaurants tucked down little alleys – and the heart of Mysore’s yoga scene. “Trying flavourful Indian dishes and learning to cook dal [lentil curry] was a whole new cultural experience.”
Mysore’s tryst with the practice dates back a couple of centuries; however, its recognition as the yoga capital of India is more recent.
The city is home to some of India’s most senior yoga gurus and families that can trace their lineage to scholars and masters who established renowned yogashalas here, among them Ramesh Shetty’s Mysore Ashtanga Yoga
Shala; the Prana Vashya Yoga Shala; Manasthala Mindful Living; and the Atmavikasa Centre of Yogic Sciences.
Mysore royalty played a role, too. The maharajas of Mysore were lovers of art and learning, and sponsored scholars to teach and promote yoga.
Among the records belonging to the Mysore Palace is the mid-19th century treatise Sritattvanidhi (“The Illustrious Treasure of Realities”), attributed to Maharaja Krishnaraja Wodeyar III. Within the treatise is a section documenting 122 hatha yoga postures, complete with detailed sketches by miniaturists.
Decades later, in the 1920s, Maharaja
“INTERNATIONAL PRACTITIONERS WHO COME TO MYSORE ARE SERIOUS PRACTITIONERS. THEY SEEK VEDIC KNOWLEDGE AND TO ENHANCE THEIR ASANA [PHYSICAL] PRACTICE.”
– Acharya Vinay Kumar, of the Prana Vashya Yoga School
Krishnaraja Wodeyar IV invited renowned Indian yoga scholar Tirumalai Krishnamacharya to practise in Mysore.
Krishnamacharya is considered the father of modern yoga and his students developed styles such as
Iyengar and Vinyasa, which would gain worldwide recognition.
Ashtanga yoga, developed in the city by a disciple of Krishnamacharya called
K. Pattabhi Jois, has a large, committed following and is now known globally as Mysore-style yoga.
The Jois family continues to adhere to the traditional Ashtanga teaching style, attracting a sizeable amount of the international yoga crowd that travels to Mysore. A daughter of K. Pattabhi, R. Saraswathi Jois, helms the K Pattabhi Jois Ashtanga Yoga Shala and a grand
son, Sharath Jois, runs the popular Sharath Yoga Centre.
“International practitioners who come to Mysore are serious practitioners,” says Acharya Vinay Kumar, of Gokulam’s Prana Vashya Yoga School, which takes a dynamic and therapeutic approach to yoga, using breath as a tool. “They seek Vedic knowledge and to enhance their asana [physical] practice. They are willing to spend time here.”
Close to 1,000 international practitioners attend his classes and workshops every year, says Kumar: “A large number […] practise in Mysore for six months and go back to work for the rest of the year. Many among them are yoga teachers.
“The allure of Mysore is in its traditional approach to yoga – it has not deviated too much from the original format [of its ancestors],” says Kumar, explaining why Mysore is preferred to yoga and wellness destinations offering more short-term “experiences”.
The city’s yoga season runs from August to February-March. During the summer, senior gurus leave to conduct workshops in Europe, the United States and Southeast Asia.
What Mysore lacks in mysticism compared with yoga rival Rishikesh, it makes up for with mastery.
For several decades, the holy town on the banks of the Ganges, in the Himalayan foothills, has drawn spiritual tourists to its ashrams. International celebrities such as the Beatles famously camped in Rishikesh to learn transcendental meditation from Maharishi Mahesh Yogi.
Mysore is less assuming. It makes little attempt to announce itself as special, nor has it submitted to the chaos and noise that can be part of the Indian travel experience. Rather, visitors settle into a peaceful and disciplined routine in quiet neighbourhoods such as Gokulam and, about 6km to the south, Lakshmipuram. They attend classical music festivals, explore local cuisine and immerse themselves in the joys of daily ritual.
For the seeker, it’s easy to find curated experiences such as sound healing with Tibetan singing bowls and full moon meditation; training in Kalaripayattu (an ancient Indian martial art form); and ice plunge sessions.
Wei Li, a Chinese-American from
Sichuan province, discovered “Mysorestyle” Ashtanga yoga as a student at the University of Virginia, in the US, about a decade ago. She was initiated into the practice and, two years later, landed in Mysore.
Over the years, she has returned to the city several times to practise with a few hundred other students at the Sharath Yoga Centre, in Hebbal, on the outskirts of Mysore.
“I fell in love with the pleasant weather and pink sunsets, local food served on banana leaves, and the community of female practitioners I met here,” says Wei, who is now beginning a doctoral programme in physiotherapy in California.
Many of Mysore’s global visitors are women, some even arriving with their toddlers and young children.
Sandra Boinon, who travelled from Paris, France, late last year for a threeweek stay, admits to having arrived with a sense of trepidation, fuelled by stories of the harassment women travellers encounter in India.
“But I felt at ease in this city,” she says, sitting cross-legged on floor
YOGA TOURISM HAS INFLUENCED THE CULTURE, CUISINE AND COUTURE OF THIS HISTORIC CITY AND IS LIKELY TO BECOME AN EVEN LARGER INFLUENCE.
cushions in the Santosha Cafe, a quaint little Gokulam business with bright yellow interiors and floor seating, and popular for its mix of Indian and European dishes, including nutritionally balanced thalis (plated meals), sandwiches and smoothies.
Pretty soon Boinon was riding around town on a rented scooter, exploring the flower market and old bazaars.
When her shala announced an openair yoga session on the Mysore Palace grounds to mark the 10-day Dasara festival (which symbolises the triumph of good over evil and is celebrated in the autumn), Boinon arrived on her bike before dawn to grab a spot.
The demographic of its international guests has stoked the spirit of enterprising Mysoreans. Visitors can enlist the services of babysitters for when they are attending classes; there are homestyle catering options for vegan and satvik food (plant-based Ayurveda diet); and two-wheeler rentals and guided tours of the old city abound.
Homeowners in Gokulam have spruced up spare rooms and terraces to rent out to visitors studying at the neighbourhood shalas.
In the old bazaars, shops selling silk saris now stock up on yoga pants and hemp fibre bags.
Yoga tourism has influenced the culture, cuisine and couture of this historic city and is likely to become an even larger influence, believes chef and entrepreneur D. Rajesh, who has seen the number of international guests in Mysore return to pre-Covid-19 numbers.
Rajesh runs the Chakra House Cafe, a laid-back eatery that is popular with yoga students who are working remotely from Mysore.
Chakra House gets it right – from the straw mats to stretch exercised legs on, to the yoga music, bright murals of Indian gods and big breakfasts that make for an ideal post-practice refuel.
The menu is an uncomplicated mix of Indian and European – millet wraps and multigrain sandwiches stuffed with fresh local produce are a big hit.
Rajesh launched Chakra House in 2002, as the city’s yoga culture was just beginning to gain global recognition, and since then numerous coffee shops, vegan cafes and juice and smoothie bars have sprung up in Gokulam.
Mysore may yet be a blip on the global wellness tourism map. But the city of pink sunsets and predawn group sessions offers something of a pilgrimage for any practitioner of yoga.