Jivamukti Teacher Training '07: Some teachings on teachers

It doesn't matter what type of teacher you have in your life, but what matters and will determine whether you achieve liberation is your devotion to that teacher. It is actually your job as the student to make the teacher enlightened by seeing them as already enlightened. Likewise, it is the duty of the teacher to see the students as holy beings, thus making them so.

However, according to Yogi Sri Krishnamacharya (the grandfather of most of the styles of yoga in the West), three things will make a good yoga teacher:

connection to lineage: the teacher should aways acknowledge their own teachers, have studied with their teachers personally and been blessed by them to teach
practice: the teacher should have a consisent, daily sadhana practice which informs their own teachings and keeps them fresh and grounded
sincere love of others: the teacher must really care about other people and want them to be happy; the student-teacher relationship must be founded on pure, unconditional love

David and Sharon are great examples of all three of these qualities. Their tireless attention to their students is always infused with great love and joy, their perfection of yoga comes from their continued experimentation and study, and they always acknowlege and bless their holy gurus. Who are the Jivamukti holy gurus? These are Jivamukti's three holy teachers:

Swami Nirmalananda
Shri K. Pattabhi Jois
Shri Brahmananda Sarasvati

Taken from the Jivamukti website:

Shri K. Pattabhi Jois

Shri K. Pattabhi Jois studied yoga under his guru Shri Krishnamacharya and also attended the Sanskrit College of Mysore, where he became a professor of Sanskrit and Advaita Vedanta. He and Shri Krishnamacharya developed the Astanga Yoga series based on the purifying practices described in the ancient texts. In 1948, he founded the Ashtanga Yoga Research Institute in Mysore. In 1958, he wrote his classic book Yoga Mala, which explores Astanga and Yoga philosophy. In 1998, David Life was made a certified Astanga teacher by Shri K. Pattabhi Jois. Both Sharon and David make regular trips Mysore to study under him.

"Ahhhh Samadhi. Yoga is Samadhi. God is One. Yoga is One. Philosophy is One. That's All.
- Shri K. Pattabhi Jois

Shri Brahmananda Sarasvati

Shri Brahmananda Sarasvati had an extensive background in Eastern and Western medicine. In 1958, he founded the Yoga Society of New York. Ananda Ashram, which he founded in 1964 in Monroe, New York, continues to be devoted to Shri Brahmananda Sarasvati's teachings and message, and the ashram hosts many Jivamukti events. A Sanskrit scholar, his life was dedicated to the union of science and the spirit. He is the author of Fundamentals of Yoga, The Textbook of Yoga Psychology (one of the definitive translations of Patanjali's Yoga Sutras) and Self Analysis and Self Knowledge, along with many essays. He left his body in 1993.

"Nobody is a fool and nobody is wise. It is the space which makes you foolish or wise. If you have space within your mind, then you become wise, and if you have no space in your mind, then you become 'otherwise'."
- Shri Brahmananda Sarasvati

Shri Swami Nirmalananda

Swami Nirmalananda believed in the potency of Self rule, and he called himself the "Anarchist Swami." He inducted David Life into the sunnyas (renunciate) order in 1990. Swami Nirmalananda was a naturalist and a "mauni". He practiced silence for 11 years. "Unless the individuality is transcended, we cannot know what is universality and unless we die while living, we cannot know what is Eternal life. The mind can only think one thing at a time and it always functions within the realm of duality like good and bad, pleasure and pain, happiness and sorrow. Unless we rise above these pairs of opposites, we will not be able to know what the integrated state of existence is."