About Mukunda Stiles, the father of Structural Yoga Therapy

Mukunda Stiles—Yoga Therapy Center Director & author of Structural Yoga Therapy, Yoga Sutras of Patanjali & Ayurvedic Yoga Therapy 

 
As a youth Tom became an eagle boy scout and a congressional nomination to West Point. In 1969 he was drafted into the Army where he was assigned as a cadet candidate for West Point Military Academy.  While there he received spontaneous mystical siddhi yoga as a result of awakening to the inner teacher (guru). After four years of practice he began to teach what arose as psychic healing and Classical Yoga at University of Calif. at Davis in 1973. In April of 1974, he had another abrupt meeting with destiny through Swami Muktananda who initiated him into a spontaneous Tantrik Kundalini Yoga process of Shaktipat which culminated in a deeper personal relationship with Spirit. “My life has never been the same”. He moved into a new direction and received a degree in religious studies with a thesis on Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras. Baba Muktananda gave his blessings to Mukunda to make Classical Yoga his profession.  He gave him the name Mukunda, meaning “compassionate liberator” and authorized him to give spiritual initiation (Dhivya diksha), give spiritual names, and to transmit Shaktipat (spiritual awakening). He continues this tradition through individual sessions as a spiritual mentor.

Swami Muktananda Paramahansa with his disciple Swami Prakashananda

Mukunda was the Yoga instructor at four of Muktananda's ashrams in the US and in India. During his many trips to India he has studied with both secret and well known spiritual teachers. Swami Shyam of Kulu instructed him in Raja Yoga and gave him a second spiritual name, Mukundanand, in 1982. Babaji Prakashananda of Suptashring Devi became his spiritual teacher following the mahasamadhi (death) of Baba Muktananda later that same year. Babaji initiated him into the devotional aspects of Tantrik Kundalini Yoga focused on the Divine Mother. Mukunda's book The Yoga Poet and Agaram Bagaram Baba - The Life, Teachings and Parables of Babaji Prakashananda by Titus Foster, describe these Tantrik yogic teachings.

While under Baba Muktananda’s spiritual guidance, he trained in the 900-year old lineage of the master of hatha yoga masters, Prof. Krishnamacharya.  While not directly being a student of the master he was drawn to K. famous and hidden   teachers including psychiatrist Paul Copeland MD, Indra Devi, BKS Iyengar, TKV Desikachar, and AG Mohan.  A video of the Master’s practice in 1938 can be found at: http://lindasyoga.blogspot.com/2007/01/1938-video-of-krishnamacharya.html - (On the same page you can view a 1938 practice with BKS Iyengar.) 

Mukunda worked closely with Rama Jyoti Vernon, founder of America’s first professional Yoga school, the Institute for Yoga Teacher Education (now the San Francisco Iyengar Yoga Institute). . Mukunda was in the first class to graduate this 2 year, 560 hour teaching certification in 1976. He set up three residential Yoga centers including the Sacramento Holistic Health Institute. This institute offered state approved vocational training in Yoga, Massage, Holistic Lifestyle Education, Yoga Energetic Bodywork and Pranayama. It was here in 1978 that he developed Structural Yoga Therapy (TM) and wrote his first books on this innovative process. To polish his understanding of anatomy and kinesiology he undertook a year’s graduate study in physical therapy at California State University in Sacramento.

Graduates from the 200 hour Structural Yoga Teachers course can be found among the staff of the Nityananda Institute, Integral Yoga Institute and the Yoga Teachers of Colorado (www.ytoc.org).  Since 1978 Mukunda has offered a 700 hour Structural Yoga Therapist certification course. Yoga teachers world-wide have participated in this intensive training and since 1999 more than 50 graduates have successfully been certified. 

In 1981 Baba Muktananda sent Mukunda to Boston to be on the staff of the SYDA ashram.  Soon after this he became independent of the ashram and worked by referral from hospitals, physicians, and therapists to provide personalized Yoga Therapy for a multitude of medical and psychological conditions. He wrote a series of articles on Yoga Therapy for knees and shoulders published by Yoga International magazine. He taught to both patients and staff of the Mind Body Medical Institute, headed by Herbert Benson, M.D. and Joan Borysenko, Ph.D. for five years and published a paper entitled a Survey of Yoga therapy.

Mukunda with Indra Devi at her 100th Birthday. May 12th 1999

In 1992 he re-connected with his teacher Rama Jyoti Vernon and joined the executive board of Unity in Yoga International Conferences. In 1995, with Rama, he co-founded AYC - American Yoga College, a collaboration of other senior teachers to train a new generation of yogis who sought professional standards. Through AYC he gave trainings in Canada, England, Scotland, Russia, Brazil, Argentina and Israel and wrote their course manual Asana practice and teacher training manuals.  A revision of this manual is now used for Structural Yoga Teacher training 200 hour programs.  Mukunda has remained a close associate with his first teachers Rama and Paul since 1973.

Since the passing of his two spiritual teachers, the Inner Teacher has continued to actively providing him guidance in all avenues of life alternating at times with being a forest dweller in the redwoods of Northern Kali-fornia and living a busy life of international teaching combining physical and spiritual Classical Yoga. Being a devotee of the Divine Mother, Mukunda completed teacher training in TriYoga with Kali Rae and has had Darshan of Ammachi since the first of her 20 years of world tours.  Inspite of the passing of his spiritual teacher they have proved worthy of the title of guru – “one whose presence and illumination never leaves their student”.

While in Boston from 1982 -2000 he trained in Ayurveda with John Douillard, from whom he learned pulse diagnosis, Dr. Vasant Lad, David Frawley and Robert Svoboda. Mukunda worked to reframe the connection of Ayurveda’s emphasis on health and lifestyle within the spiritual framework of a Yoga lifestyle. To this end he has been on the staff of the Rocky Mountain Institute for Yoga and Ayurveda and the International Ayurvedic Institute (IAI), working as editor of seven books on Ayurveda, Yoga Therapy and a five volume course manual written by David Frawley.

He is currently on the Advisory Board of the International Association of Yoga Therapists. His books Structural Yoga Therapy and Patanjali's Yoga Sutras are published by Samuel Weiser, Inc. His latest book Ayurvedic Yoga Therapy is published by Lotus Press.  as a result of insights that have come from his 35 years of Classical Yoga practice. He now resides in Holyoke, Massachusetts.

http://www.yogatherapycenter.org