Tirumalai Krishnamacharya Venkata Desikachar, better known as T. K. V. Desikachar, was a yoga teacher, son of the pioneer of modern yoga as exercise, Tirumalai Krishnamacharya. The style that he taught is called Viniyoga.
Life
Desikachar was born in Mysore and moved to Madras in the early 1960s. He had trained as an engineer, but, inspired by his father's teachings, he studied under his father in the 1960s, and from the 1970s he taught in many parts of the world. He published many books, especially the 1995 The Heart of Yoga. During his thirty years of study, Desikachar learned the practice and application of yoga techniques and texts, for therapeutic, exercise, and spiritual purposes. Desikachar developed Viniyoga, a term from the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali. This approach is claimed to be holistic and aligned with the Yoga Sutras. In 1976 Desikachar and A. G. Mohan founded the Krishnamacharya Yoga Mandiram, a yoga therapy clinic and yoga center in Madras, India, as a non-profit public charitable trust. Under Desikachar’s leadership, it offered teacher training and individual instruction in asana, pranayama, meditation, yoga philosophy, and Vedic chanting. It conducted research into the impact of yoga on people suffering from schizophrenia, diabetes, asthma, and depression. It has been recognised by the Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation of the Department for Scientific and Industrial Research, Government of India. The institution is a public registered charity, identified by the Department of Family Health and Welfare of the Government of Tamil Nadu.
Family
His wife, Menaka Desikachar, teaches yoga and Vedic chanting at KHYF. Bushan Desikachar, Dr. Kausthub Desikachar and Mekhala Desikachar are his three children. Kausthub is the Chief Executive and a senior teacher and yoga therapy consultant at KHYF. He was the Executive Trustee of the Krishnamacharya Yoga Mandiram till 2012. TKV Desikachar was a founder and director of the institute. In 2012, Kausthub Desikachar stepped down from Krishnamacharya Yoga Mandiram after sexual misconduct allegations.
