A student, teacher and trainer for more than fifty years, Jean-Claude Garnier transmits Ashtanga Yoga in the lineage of Sri K. Pattabhi Jois, combining tradition, a deep knowledge of the human body and individualised guidance.
A path of practice and transmission
Jean-Claude Garnier’s encounter with yoga goes back to his adolescence.
Weakened by illness during his childhood, at the age of fourteen he discovered the book by Indra Devi, the first Western woman to study with Sri T. Krishnamacharya. This reading marked the beginning of a path that would never stop deepening.
At twenty, he walked for a time with the Communauté de l’Arche, founded by Lanza del Vasto, the first Christian disciple of Gandhi — there his taste for a simple, committed life took root. During a first long stay in India, while digging wells and helping to lay the foundations of the Matrimandir in Auroville, he met Vinoba Bhave, Gandhi’s successor. He then completed his training with Denise and André Van Lysebeth.
Over the years, he met many major figures of contemporary yoga and spirituality: Jean-Paul Boudon, B.K.S. Iyengar, Swami Gītānanda in Pondicherry, and the ashram of Sri Aurobindo, where he met the Mother.
From 1978, he studied directly with Sri K. Pattabhi Jois in Mysore, in southern India. This encounter became a decisive turning point. For nearly twenty years, he returned every year to his master to deepen the teaching of the Yoga Korunta and of traditional Ashtanga Yoga.
For more than five decades, he has continued this same approach: to practise, to study and to transmit.
A way of teaching
For Jean-Claude, yoga is not limited to the execution of postures. The practice is a tool of transformation that engages the body, the breath, attention and self-understanding.
His teaching rests on an attentive observation of each practitioner: the adjustments, progressions and advice are adapted to the real possibilities of each person, to allow a lasting evolution that respects the body.
This approach is nourished by more than fifty years of teaching, but also by his work in general and cranial osteopathy, acupuncture, functional anatomy and psychotherapy of Reichian inspiration — understanding the human being “as a whole”.
Faithful to the transmission received from Sri K. Pattabhi Jois, he considers that the understanding of yoga arises above all from the direct experience of the practice.
What yoga has taught him
After more than half a century of practice, yoga remains for Jean-Claude a path of study and discovery.
Far from being a fixed knowledge, the practice continues to question, to teach and to open new perspectives.
Over the years, his work with students has confirmed to him that every body has its own history, resources and rhythm. Teaching then consists less in imposing a model than in helping each person reveal their own potential.
This conviction still nourishes his practice, his classes, his seminars and the teacher training he co-directs at the Institute.
Words that inspire
« Practice, and all is coming. »
— Sri K. Pattabhi Jois
