Where this comes from
Your teacher learned it from a teacher. The chain is long, and three books anchor it.
In this step
- 01Handed down, person to person
- 02The three books behind this course
Handed down, person to person
Yoga reached your studio the way it has always moved, from teacher to student, generation after generation.
Yoga did not arrive in a studio. It arrived the way old knowledge always has, handed from teacher to student, generation after generation. The Gita describes exactly that, and describes something rarer too:
From the source
BG 4.1Krishna gives the teaching a deep past: declared to the sun god, taught to Manu, told to a royal line. It places this conversation inside a much older transmission.
“The Blessed Lord said: This imperishable yoga I declared to Vivasvân; Vivasvân taught it to Manu; Manu to Ikshvâku told it.”
The original Sanskrit
śrī-bhagavān uvāca imaṃ vivasvate yogaṃ proktavān aham avyayam | vivasvān manave prāha manur ikṣvākave 'bravīt
The next verse finishes the story: a teaching passed down kings and sages, decayed by the great efflux of time. The tradition has always known that transmission is fragile, which is why it keeps being renewed, and why the texts themselves matter.
Keep reading:BG 4.2
The three books behind this course
The youngest of them even names its own teachers, a lineage written into the book.
The Hatha Yoga Pradipika, youngest of the three texts here, names its own teachers outright:
From the source
HYP 1.4Svātmārāma, the manual's author, names his own teachers, Matsyendra and Gorakṣa, placing the book inside a living lineage rather than claiming invention.
“Matsyendra, Gorakṣa, etc., knew Haṭha Vidyâ, and by their favour Yogî Swâtmârâma also learnt it from them.”
The original Sanskrit
haṭha-vidyāṃ hi matsyendra-gorakṣādyā vijānate / svātmārāmo'thavā yogī jānīte tat-prasādataḥ
The three books this course braids together:
The three texts
- 1Yoga Sutrasthe mind-manual
- 2Bhagavad Gitathe life-manual
- 3Hatha Yoga Pradipikathe body-manual