Yoga lineages

Most yoga taught today descends from a handful of twentieth-century teachers, and knowing the line a teacher trained in tells you a lot about what their class will feel like — flowing or precise, athletic or gentle, posture-first or meditation-first. These pages tell each lineage's story: who founded it, how it spread, and what its classes look like now. Everything is sourced, and each page ends with links to the teachers and studios on Yoga Guide who tag themselves with that lineage.

• Sri Aurobindo 1872–1950 The Cambridge-educated revolutionary turned sage whose Integral Yoga is a philosophy of transforming all of life — not a posture style — carried on at Pondicherry and the township of Auroville.
• Bikram Choudhury b. 1944 The originator of the 26-posture hot yoga sequence that spread worldwide — and whose civil sexual-misconduct verdicts and flight from the US led most studios to drop his name.
• The Buddhist tradition since c. 5th century BCE Not a yoga lineage with a founder, but the meditation tradition — from the historical Buddha to Zen, Insight and mindfulness — that shaped much of how modern yoga approaches the mind.
• T.K.V. Desikachar 1938–2016 Krishnamacharya's son and thirty-year student, who turned his father's Madras teaching into a method — one practice per person — carried on as Viniyoga and at the KYM in Chennai.
• Sri Dharma Mittra b. 1939 The Brazilian-born "teacher's teacher" of New York, whose Master Yoga Chart of 908 postures and classical Dharma Yoga have trained generations of instructors.
• B.K.S. Iyengar 1918–2014 The Pune master whose Light on Yoga became modern yoga's manual, and whose blocks, belts and blankets made the postures possible for every body.
• Swami Kripalu 1913–1981 The Gujarati kundalini master whose name graces Kripalu Yoga and North America's largest retreat center — a gentle, inward practice of self-observation without judgment.
• Tirumalai Krishnamacharya 1888–1989 The Mysore scholar whose palace yoga school produced B.K.S. Iyengar, Pattabhi Jois, Indra Devi and T.K.V. Desikachar — and, through them, most of the yoga taught today.
• Neem Karoli Baba c. 1900–1973 The bhakti saint of Kainchi — guru of Ram Dass, Krishna Das and a generation of Western seekers — whose lineage is devotion and service rather than posture.
• K. Pattabhi Jois 1915–2009 The Mysore teacher whose six fixed series of breath-linked postures became Ashtanga yoga — and, through it, the flowing vinyasa classes taught almost everywhere.
• Swami Rama 1925–1996 The Himalayan master who let scientists watch him stop his heart, founded the Himalayan Institute, and taught a meditation-and-breath tradition — with a documented misconduct verdict in his later years.
• Ramana Maharshi 1879–1950 The sage of Arunachala whose practice of self-enquiry — asking "Who am I?" — is a path of pure awareness rather than posture, and drew seekers from around the world to Tiruvannamalai.
• Sri Sri Ravi Shankar b. 1956 The founder of the Art of Living Foundation, whose Sudarshan Kriya rhythmic-breathing course has been taught to millions across some 180 countries.
• Sadhguru (Isha) b. 1957 The founder of the Isha Foundation, whose Inner Engineering course and Shambhavi Mahamudra kriya, plus the Adiyogi statue and Save Soil campaign, have made him one of the most widely followed living yogis.
• Swami Satchidananda 1914–2002 The Sivananda disciple who opened Woodstock, founded Integral Yoga and built Yogaville — a gentle six-branch method with an interfaith heart.
• Swami Satyananda 1923–2009 The Sivananda disciple who built yoga's great teaching institution at Munger and systematized yoga nidra — a lineage whose Australian ashram was later the subject of a Royal Commission case study.
• Swami Sivananda 1887–1963 The physician turned monk whose Rishikesh ashram, three hundred books and worldwide disciples made him the other great fountainhead of modern yoga.
• Vipassana (Goenka) 1924–2013 S.N. Goenka's worldwide Vipassana movement — silent 10-day meditation retreats, taught free of charge, in the Burmese lineage of Sayagyi U Ba Khin.
• Swami Vishnudevananda 1927–1993 The "flying swami" who carried Sivananda's teaching West, built the Sivananda Yoga Vedanta Centres, and invented the modern yoga teacher-training course.
• Paramahansa Yogananda 1893–1952 The first great Indian yoga master to settle in America, whose Autobiography of a Yogi and Self-Realization Fellowship made Kriya Yoga a household path.
• Yogi Bhajan 1929–2004 The teacher who brought Kundalini Yoga to America in 1969 and built 3HO — a vigorous practice of kriyas, breath and mantra, whose founder was later found, in a commissioned investigation, to have abused followers.

Plenty of good teachers train across several of these, or none — listings can also say no single lineage. The tag is the teacher's own description, not a rank or a credential, and these pages describe history rather than endorse anyone. When you're choosing a teacher, the usual advice applies whatever the lineage.