#99 – Keen on Yoga Podcast with Norman Sjoman

Norman E. Sjoman is the author of the 1996 book The Yoga
Tradition of the Mysore Palace. The book contains an English
translation of the yoga section of Sritattvanidhi, a 19th-century
treatise by the Maharaja of Mysore. It contributes an original
view on the history and development of the teaching traditions
behind modern asanas.


According to Sjoman, a majority of the tradition of teaching yoga
as exercise spread primarily through the teachings of BKS Iyenger
and his students. He claims this “appears to be distinct from the
philosophical or textual tradition of hatha yoga. In addition, it
does not appear to have any basis as a genuine tradition as there
is no textual support for the asanas taught and no lineage of
teachers."


Sjoman studied at the University of British Columbia and
Stockholm University before obtaining a PhD from the Centre of
Advanced Studies in Sanskirt at Pune University. In addition, he
holds a pandit degree from the Mysore Maharaja's Mahapathasala.
Sjoman spent 14 years in India studying four different shastras n
Sanskrit, with several pandits. In the mid 1980s, while doing
research at the Mysore Palace, Sjoman made copies of the yoga
section of the Sritattvanidhi. This was a "colossal" illustrated
compendium, authored in the 19th century by the then Maharaja.


The book included diagrams of 122 yoga asanas. Unlike the few
other known historical yoga treatises, the emphasis was solely on
the physical activity. Some appeared based on Indian wrestling
and other gymnastic exercises. In that aspect more closely
resembling modern yoga as exercise forms such as Ashtanga Vinyasa
Yoga. Both B. K. S. Iyengar and Pattabhi Jois, who are major
influences on modern yoga forms, themselves studied under teacher
Tirumalai Krishnamacharya at the Mysore Palace in the 1930s.


Sjoman discovered that the royal family, in the early 1900s, had
employed a British gymnast to train the young princes. When
Krishnamacharya arrived in the 1920s to start a yoga school, his
schoolroom was the former gymnasium complete with ropes. Sjoman
argues that several exercises detailed in a purposely written
western gymnastics manual were incorporated into
Krishnamacharya's syllabus, resulting in his vinyasa style, and
further passed on to Iyengar and Jois.


The Yoga Tradition of the Mysore Palace was published in 1996
including the 122 asana illustrations and extracts from the
gymnastics manual. Naturally, the radical, perhaps heretical,
idea that some of the practice of modern yoga as exercise is
based on something as mundane as British gymnastics caused a stir
in the yoga world.