Lineage Archive
September 22 – October 7, 2025
If you have practiced long enough to want to know where any of this actually came from, this is the teaching you have been looking for. In the autumn of 2025 we hosted one of the most respected living students of Sri T. Krishnamacharya for a sixteen-day intensive in Salt Lake City. This page is the record of that teaching, and of the lineage YogaSoul carries because of it.
What took place
Sixty hours of āsana across more than a hundred subroutines and five hundred vinyasas, with prāṇāyāma, mudrā, dhāraṇā and mantra woven through. Forty hours of philosophy: the Sāṃkhya Kārikā of Isvarakrishna and the Yoga Sūtras of Patañjali, read from Ramaswami’s own translations.
Mornings nine to twelve, afternoons half past one to half past four, over sixteen days with a single rest day. Enrollment was limited, and the program ran in person and online at once.
.webp)
The teacher
Srivatsa Ramaswami studied directly with Sri T. Krishnamacharya for more than thirty years in Chennai, longer than any other student, Western or Indian, who has taught publicly in the West. He is the author of The Complete Book of Vinyasa Yoga, Yoga for the Three Stages of Life, and his own translation and commentary on the Yoga Sūtras.
Vinyasa Krama is a complete system rather than a style, and it survived only because it was handed down intact, one student to the next.
Why it matters here
Rachel Cieslewicz and Eric Martin, co-founders of YogaSoul, have both studied Vinyasa Krama directly under Ramaswami. Each also holds authorization to teach the primary and intermediate series of Ashtanga, which came through Manju Jois.
YogaSoul’s lineage traces to Krishnamacharya through both founders. Hosting this intensive followed from how they were trained, and it is the same lineage the 200-Hour and 300-Hour programs are built on.
.webp)
The program
Tuition was $2,498 for the full intensive, or $1,498 for the first eight days. Recorded here for reference; the program has concluded.
Vinyasa is not just a movement practice. It is a complete methodology connecting breath, body and mind in an unbroken lineage going back to Krishnamacharya. A lineage you only read about stays a fact that you know. It becomes a practice when someone who carries it is standing in front of you, and those weeks do not come around often. There is more in yoga than you have been able to reach.
Srivatsa Ramaswami
For the record
The traditional system taught by Krishnamacharya. Unlike contemporary vinyasa flow it is a complete methodology, linking breath, movement and posture across hundreds of sequences in a carefully ordered progression, from standing through seated to supine. It is not a style. It is a system.
Isvarakrishna’s text is one of the foundations of Indian philosophy, and it supplies the metaphysical framework underneath the Yoga Sūtras: the dual understanding of purusha, consciousness, and prakriti, nature. Studying it directly with Ramaswami, in his own translation, is rare.
Vinyasa Krama survived only because it was handed down intact, one student to the next. A tradition that cannot name its teachers is a curriculum rather than a lineage, and this is the difference the 200-Hour and 300-Hour programs are built on.
The Complete Book of Vinyasa Yoga, Yoga for the Three Stages of Life, and his own translation and commentary on the Yoga Sūtras. The Sāṃkhya Kārikā translation was the text for the afternoon sessions.
Sessions ran in person in Salt Lake City and online at the same time, so practitioners who could not travel were able to take part. Write to us if you would like to know about recordings.
We hope so. We announce intensives and visiting teachers to our own community first, so write to us if you would like to hear about the next one before it is public.
Who you become
You stop taking the practice on trust and start knowing where it came from, which changes how you teach it and how you answer for it when a student asks you directly.
Where this goes next
Tell us that lineage is what you are after. We keep a short list of people who want to know before anyone else does.
Visiting teachers and intensives go to our own community before they are announced anywhere public.
The 200-Hour and 300-Hour carry this same lineage, and they run every year.
Also at YogaSoul
Utah’s longest-running program, two certification levels, small by design.
Two retreats next May, five days apart, so you may join one or both.
Small-group practice at Rachel’s shala in East Millcreek, twice a week.
There is more in yoga than you have been able to reach.
The 200-Hour and 300-Hour trainings are grounded in the same lineage-based, breath-centered philosophy that shaped this intensive. If studying with Ramaswami sparked something, this is where to take it.