The Wisdom of Shri Shubha

During a visit to Mysore, India, Josh Pryor had the pleasure of attending the Mysore Yoga Traditions conference, where he was moved by the wisdom of guest speaker Shri Shubha. In this article, he shares the key takeaways from her lecture.

One of the guest speakers at the 2025 Mysore Yoga Traditions conference was Shri Shubha, daughter of the late great T.K.V. Krishnamacharya. It was a delightful talk with a little preamble about her father and then some detail and advice for practice and teaching. I must mention straight away that the resemblance, when laughing, between her and her uncle B.K.S. Iyengar is remarkable!

I believe she has mentioned this before, but it was interesting to hear that Krishnamacharya’s children did not realise for quite some time that he was a great man! They knew him to be their father, a very busy man, and a master of many fields. Shri Shubha explained that he was a child prodigy, and she said the family continues to digest the gravity of his impact on yoga around the world.

She told us that he really didn’t use props and that he gave verbal instruction all the time rather than hands-on. This is in stark contrast to his most famous disciples, who created Iyengar Yoga and Ashtanga Vinyasa Yoga. In fact, Krishnamacharya would often ask students to close their eyes while listening to his cues so that they could develop their proprioception more keenly without the distraction of vision and touch.

“What matters most is how you feel at the end of each practice and for the rest of the day.”

With regard to her own practice, handed down by her father and translated through her own experience, Shri Shubha said that if she doesn’t do her practice, “something feels very wrong!” She clarified that it’s important not to feel guilty if you miss a day or if things seem to change: “Every day is different, just like every finger on the hand is different.”

She said it’s vital to focus more on breathing; to do vinyasa and asana more slowly, extending the breath so that movements can be progressively felt. She recommends selecting at least one posture in any practice to hold for a particularly long time – five minutes or so – something simple like paścimattānāsana is perfect. And she recommends resting between poses and between sides of each pose in order to reap the full benefits of each section.

Lastly, toward the end of her talk, she remarked how they consider each day to have four parts: the morning, the early morning, the early early morning, and the rest of the day. I must say I agree!

Access to Shri Shubha’s full video lecture is available here.