User Reviews

I have to disagree on the other reviewers point of view.

To me this documentary was not only snippets thrown together, not only about finding the "truth" about the origins of yoga, but more like how the world tends to be: There is no truth to be found, at least not an objective one. There are only stories, memories, assumptions and approximations - you have to make up your own mind.

So this documentary really mimics life and the way we receive knowledge, imho. It is a calm documentary, without drama, without the usual western yoga hype and without the western (usually US) esoteric jabber, which I loathe. One gets a feeling for Sri T. Krishnamacharya - the real person, not the guru - and also for the contradictions, that surrounds him. The footage this movie contains is very precious, as Krishnamacharya's best known students Jois and Iyengar, but also a lot of his children were being interviewed. Jois has already died since then and the others are also very old - very precious indeed, as you hear details, that might have been lost otherwise.

The little snippets on the different yoga styles shown through their guru's teachings I also found very interesting. To see B.K.S. Iyengar instruct the "old German" (= the director of the documentary Jan Schmidt-Garre) on Sirsasana is extremely impressive. I have to confess, that I have a love-hate-relationship to Iyengar and yoga, but you really can observe Iyengar's deep knowledge about the human body and also his humour and his big heart.

It's not your everyday documentary and I want to thank Schmidt-Garre for making it; also for not telling me from the off what the message or the "original yoga style" is, but leave it like it has unfold in front of him. Maybe the "quintessence" of the docu really is only 5 minutes long, but this didn't matter to me, because it was the ride I enjoyed.

Highly recommended.

The Asana Travelogue is titled 'The breathing god' in Germany. I went to see it to get some background information on yoga. What I learned in two hours could have been compressed into a five minute report. The film feels like Schmidt-Garre went to film rather aimlessly for some years and then tried to stitch the material to a story afterwards.

He starts out to discover the 'origins of modern yoga' which is a highly relevant question. Is this really an ancient technique or just a good marketing story? Without much explanation - which was generally lacking in many places - he then establishes that one guru (Krishnamacharya) was the source of yoga and starts interviewing his relatives and disciples. I was quickly confused by the different characters with complicated names which weren't properly placed into context. They all have a lot to say, but fail to tell a combined story. He adds a couple of personal yoga experiences where he is instructed by gurus. But the point of this does not really become clear as it does not add value to see an old German make a lengthy head stand.

So instead of a clear story that answers his originally posed question, we are just left with interspersed interview snippets which lets me assume that was just all he could make of the material in the end. The lesson we are left with is that either modern (Western) yoga has no clearly identifiable origin or that at least he has not been able to find it.