This post will end up as an update on my Ashtanga Authorisation 1980s to present post and page.
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| http://www.kpjayshala.com/australia-and-new-zealand.html |
The new KPJAYI (not the Sharathjois.com) list is up.
There seems to be some consternation that this list, while reinstalling many of the names clumsily removed by Sharath, is at least one year old.
If it's the case that Sharath wasn't a director, as is being suggested ( we need actual confirmation of this from Saraswati), but merely an employee, then the list, all the names on it and the fees received surely belong to the KPJAYI, having the original link to direct to sharathjois.com is, I imagine, misappropriation.
Sharath is surely legally bound to release all information regarding teachers he has authorised on behalf of the KPJAYI and thus allow them to update the list ( that's probably still the case if he was a director) and remove the redirect from kpjayi.org to Sharathjois.com.
Generally it's good practice to stay out of the way of families as much as possible and allow them to sort things out in their own time. Sharath and Saraswati still seem to be able to work together at some level, Sharath taught for a couple of months at the shala last year and is supposedly teaching there this June, nobody (except perhaps Manju) seems to be prepared to relinquish the income Sharath is able to generate at this time by teaching at the shala.
If Sharath and those seeking to publicise him were to stop using the, what many consider, offensive and hubristic 'Paramaguru' title, that seems to have been acquired through promoting tourism more than anything else and, along with the financial aspect, perhaps one of the main reasons tension division and defensiveness have coming to a head.
If Sharath intends to go his own way with sharathjois.com (the appropriation of the Jois name rather than his own family name is another question altogether) then I perhaps he needs to be starting from scratch and ‘authorise’ teachers in his own name rather than in that of the KPJAYI, it's messy.
There are more than enough lawyers in Ashtanga to confirm if this is the case.
No doubt many teachers, who consider Sharath their teacher will prefer to be on the sharathjois.com list rather than the KPJAYI list.
This is one reason I've supported the Ashtanga.com list http://www.ashtanga.com/html/classes.html and championed the idea of a non profit foundation, perhaps along the lines of the KYM ( Krishnamacharya Yoga Mandiram) with a public audit.
The Ashtanga Yoga Confluence last week did a good job I thought of dismissing lists altogether (I'm hoping to transcribe some of the comments from Richard, David, Dena, Tim and Manju if no videos appear sharable on YouTube) but also of showing how hurtful it was to be removed, a betrayal of the decades of devotion and dedication to practice and the passing along of the practice as well as the personal blessing of KPJ.
See this post for the backstory.
http://grimmly2007.blogspot.jp/2016/03/ashtanga-authorisation-1980-present.html
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I'm not an Ashtanga teacher, recently I'm not even sure I'm an 'Ashtanga' (in the sense of a postural method) practitioner, so jaded have I become of late. I'm blogging here, as I have done for ten years as an outsider, a distant observer and a mostly cynical, and yet curiously also idealistic, home practitioner. For a perspective from someone 'inside' with much to say that I agree and struggle with, try here