The K. Pattabhi Jois Ashtanga Yoga Institute is the source of the Ashtanga yoga system that now has practitioners across the world. Krishnamacharya's student K. Pattabhi Jois began teaching here in 1948, codifying the sequence of postures — the primary series, intermediate series, and advanced series — that became the foundation of modern power yoga. His daughter Saraswathi Rangaswamy and grandson Sharath Jois continue to teach here; practitioners come from Europe, America, and Japan for months-long intensives, and the surrounding streets of Gokulam have developed a small ecosystem of health food cafes, yoga studios, and long-term rental flats around their presence.
The institute itself is not a tourist sight in any conventional sense — it is a working yoga shala where students are expected to have a serious practice and be formally registered. But for practitioners, studying here even briefly, in the room where Jois taught for fifty years, carries a weight that no other yoga school can replicate. The Gokulam neighbourhood around it is worth a wander in any case: relaxed, residential, full of coffee and conversation.