The Ashtanga Lineage: The Teachers Who Carried the Practice

Ashtanga Vinyasa is unusual among yoga schools in how carefully it records who taught whom. The line runs from Tirumalai Krishnamacharya to K. Pattabhi Jois, from Jois to a handful of Westerners who found their way to a small room in Mysore in the 1970s, and from those few to the studios where most flow-based yoga is now taught. Jois formalised that transmission: teachers were authorised or certified by him personally, and later by his grandson Sharath, which is why the lineage can be listed by name in a way that almost no other tradition can.

That system is also why one thing has to be said once, at the start, rather than repeated after every name. Pattabhi Jois was credibly accused by numerous students of sexual assault carried out under the guise of hands-on adjustments, over many years and in that same room. Some of the teachers below witnessed it, some have spoken about it at length, some have not. Listing someone here is a record of where they studied, not a verdict on what they did with it.

What follows is grouped by generation rather than by rank.

The Jois Family (20th–21st c.)

Manju Jois (20th–21st) — Pattabhi Jois’s eldest son, he taught alongside his father from the 1960s, brought the practice to the United States in 1975, and has since taught a looser, more therapeutic version of it than the one that became standard.
Saraswathi Jois (20th–21st) — Pattabhi Jois’s daughter, she practised in the shala from childhood and has taught there for decades, making her the longest continuous presence in the room the whole lineage comes from.
Sharath Jois (20th–21st) — Grandson of Pattabhi Jois, he led the Mysore institute and the authorisation system until his death in 2024, and was for a generation of practitioners the last direct link to the source.

The First Generation — Westerners in Mysore (20th c.)

Norman Allen (20th) — The first Westerner to study seriously with Jois, arriving in 1971 and eventually learning the advanced series, and the one who told the others it was worth the trip.
David Williams and Nancy Gilgoff (20th) — They persuaded Jois to teach them the full system in 1973, were the first Westerners to learn the complete Primary and Intermediate series, and brought it back to Maui, where much of the American practice began.
Cliff Barber (20th) — An early and famously uncompromising student of the Mysore years, remembered less for what he wrote than for the standard of practice he set among the first Westerners there.
Danny Paradise (20th–21st) — One of the earliest independent teachers to leave the certification structure, he has taught an exploratory, undogmatic version of the practice for fifty years, often outside the studio world entirely.
David Swenson (20th–21st) — Among the first Americans to learn the full sequences, his Ashtanga Yoga: The Practice Manual remains the clearest self-study guide the tradition has produced.
Derek Ireland and Radha Warrell (20th) — They opened the first European shala, the Practice Place in London, and effectively started Ashtanga in Britain and the Mediterranean before Ireland’s early death.
Mark and Joanne Darby (20th–21st) — Montreal-based teachers who studied in Mysore from the late 1970s, known for a physically subtle approach that emphasises breath over force.
Lino Miele (20th–21st) — His book was the first to catalogue the vinyasa counts systematically, and his shala in Kovalam became a fixed point for European practitioners.
Kathy Cooper (20th–21st) — An early student from the Mysore years who has taught independently since, one of the women in a first generation usually described through its men.

The Senior Teachers (20th–21st c.)

Tim Miller (20th–21st) — The first American certified by Jois, in 1988, and founder of the Ashtanga Yoga Center in Encinitas, he is the usual source for the mythology and ritual context behind the sequences.
Richard Freeman and Mary Taylor (20th–21st) — A teaching partnership based at the Yoga Workshop in Boulder, they combined Iyengar’s internal precision with Ashtanga’s flow and grounded both in the philosophical texts.
Eddie Stern (20th–21st) — A long-time student of Jois and co-translator of his Yoga Mala, his Broome Street shala in New York was a global hub, and he now works with neuroscientists on the practice’s measurable effects.
Maty Ezraty (20th–21st) — One of the few women certified by Jois, she founded the original YogaWorks in Santa Monica and became the bridge between Ashtanga and the wider vinyasa flow movement.
Chuck Miller (20th–21st) — Co-founder of YogaWorks with Ezraty and a teacher’s teacher, known for technical depth and for treating the practice as a lifelong study rather than a syllabus.
Dena Kingsberg (20th–21st) — One of the most senior women in the tradition, based in Australia, with a practice she has sustained at a demanding level since her teens.
John Scott (20th–21st) — A foundational teacher in the UK and author of Ashtanga Yoga, known for teaching the vinyasa count precisely rather than treating it as decoration.
Rolf Naujokat (20th–21st) — A German senior teacher whose long winters in Goa have made his shala one of the tradition’s steadier gathering points.
Gabriella Pascoli (20th–21st) — One of the first senior Italian teachers and a fixture of the early Mysore years.
Noah Williams (20th–21st) — An early American senior teacher known for a rigorous, self-contained practice.
Dominic Corigliano (20th–21st) — A senior American teacher with a deep, quietly maintained practice and a long teaching record.
Tomas Zorzo (20th–21st) — A senior Spanish teacher and one of the earliest to bring the practice into Spain.
Graeme Northfield (20th–21st) — An Australian senior teacher, a contemporary of Kingsberg, known for a therapeutic reading of the sequences.
R. Alexander Medin (20th–21st) — A Norwegian senior teacher known for physical capacity and for study of the source texts in Sanskrit.
Guy Donahaye (20th–21st) — Author of Guruji: A Portrait of Sri K. Pattabhi Jois, the oral history assembled from the early students, which remains the tradition’s essential primary document.
Peter Sanson (20th–21st) — A New Zealand teacher authorised in the late 1980s, known for a compassionate, non-dogmatic approach and long stays in Mysore.
Susi Amendola (20th–21st) — Director of Yoga Now in Omaha, with a teaching career spanning four decades and an emphasis on the practice’s therapeutic use.
Ron Reid and Marla Joy (20th–21st) — Long-time Toronto teachers who built the Ashtanga community in Canada around their shala.
Michael Gannon (20th–21st) — An early certified teacher who took the practice into music festivals and popular culture, for better and worse.
David Garrigues (20th–21st) — An intense, philosophically minded teacher rooted in the early Mysore years, now known for extensive online courses on the practice’s history and texts.
Gregor Maehle (20th–21st) — Author of the most encyclopedic books on the practice, cross-referencing the sequences against anatomy, the Yoga Sutras and the Hatha texts.
Petri Räisänen (20th–21st) — A Finnish teacher and author, and one of the tradition’s most careful practitioners of the therapeutic adjustment.

Teaching Today (20th–21st c.)

Kino MacGregor (20th–21st) — Certified by Jois at twenty-nine, she was among the first to build a global following through video rather than through a shala.
Laruga Glaser (20th–21st) — The first Black woman granted Level 2 authorisation, and one of the most widely watched practitioners of her generation.
David Robson and Jelena Vesić (20th–21st) — Directors of the Ashtanga Yoga Centre of Toronto, known respectively for teaching the mechanics of jumping and floating, and for one of the most respected women’s practices in the tradition.
Ajay Tokas (20th–21st) — A Level 2 authorised teacher from India whose advanced practice reached a large online audience and drew a new generation of Indian practitioners back to the form.
Tarik Thami (20th–21st) — A Level 2 teacher from Morocco, known for precision and physical strength in the advanced series.
Maria Villella (20th–21st) — A senior Level 2 teacher in the United States with a long record of guiding students through the Intermediate series.
Andrew Hillam (20th–21st) — A senior Level 2 teacher known for repeated long periods of study in Mysore.
Hamish Hendry (20th–21st) — Co-founder of Ashtanga Yoga London and a notably quiet, philosophically focused teacher.
Joey Miles (20th–21st) — A director of Ashtanga Yoga Leeds, known for technical precision and a compassionate approach to adjusting.
David Keil (20th–21st) — An anatomist as well as a teacher, his Functional Anatomy of Yoga connects the sequences to what is actually happening in the body.
Adam Keen (20th–21st) — A UK teacher known for questioning the tradition’s received wisdom, particularly around injury, trauma and the authority of the method.
Ty Landrum (20th–21st) — Director of the Yoga Workshop in Boulder after Richard Freeman, known for a poetic and philosophical treatment of the breath.
Tiffany Cruikshank (20th–21st) — Founder of Yoga Medicine and a Level 2 authorised teacher, she brings clinical and anatomical training to the practice.
Sharmila Desai (20th–21st) — A Level 2 authorised teacher and co-author of Yoga Sadhana for Mothers, the tradition’s main resource on practising through pregnancy and after.
Mark Robberds (20th–21st) — An Australian Level 2 teacher whose work has moved from the fixed sequences toward broader movement exploration.
Kamal Singh (20th–21st) — One of the first Indian Level 2 teachers authorised under Sharath, teaching in Rishikesh.
Deepika Mehta (20th–21st) — An Indian Level 2 teacher who returned to advanced practice after a severe climbing accident, and who did much to popularise yoga in urban India.
Scott Johnson (20th–21st) — Founder of Stillpoint Yoga London, he has written and taught extensively on practising the method without the authoritarian structure that came with it.
Kia Naddermier (20th–21st) — A Swedish teacher and founder of a Mysore programme in Stockholm, with long study in India.
Edgar Navarro (20th–21st) — An authorised teacher of the method, teaching Mysore-style classes.
Joseph Armstrong (20th–21st) — An authorised teacher of the method, teaching Mysore-style classes.
Julia Scott (20th–21st) — An authorised teacher of the method, teaching Mysore-style classes.
Katy Scherer (20th–21st) — An authorised teacher of the method, teaching Mysore-style classes.
Rachel Miles (20th–21st) — An authorised teacher of the method, teaching Mysore-style classes.

Conclusion

No other yoga school keeps a list like this. Most traditions dissolve into their students within a generation or two; Ashtanga wrote down who was allowed to teach it, and the result is that you can trace almost any teacher in the world back to one room in Mysore in a few steps.

That has cut both ways. The form has been preserved with unusual fidelity — the sequences taught in Leeds and Toronto and Rishikesh are recognisably the same practice — and the price was that authority was concentrated in one man, in a system that made questioning him structurally difficult. The tradition is still working through what that produced.

What is striking, reading the generations in order, is how much divergence happened anyway. Paradise left the structure early; Freeman brought in Iyengar’s precision; Maehle cross-referenced everything against the texts; Keil brought anatomy; Keen questions the method itself. The lineage held the sequences steady while the people teaching them went in every direction.

For the wider context these teachers sit inside, the teachers who shaped yoga covers three thousand years rather than one school, and the guide to yoga styles explains where Ashtanga sits among the others.