TKV Desikachar, the son of legendary T. Krishnamacharya, died today at the age of 78. He is one of the last students from the direct Krishanmacharya lineage, nephew of B.K.S. Iyengar, and founded the Krishnamacharya Yoga Mandiram in Chennai, India.

One of his seminal books, The Heart of Yoga, is found in many teacher training programs. One of the best quotes from that book is “The success of Yoga does not lie in our ability to perform postures, but in how it positively changes the way we live our life and our relationships.”

Desikachar had been suffering from dementia for the past few years and his condition has been largely kept silent by his family. One of Desikachar’s students, Leslie Kaminoff wrote a statement about his condition two years ago in Elephant Journal:

“I lost my teacher years ago not to death, but to an advancing dementia that has turned his healthy body into a prison for a devastated mind. The cause of his condition remains a mystery to me; if his immediate family has knowledge of it, they have not publicly stated so. By writing this I am breaking an unspoken code of silence that has surrounded my teacher’s fate and that of his family.”

The yoga world has had yet another loss today from a long time teacher of another era who has devoted his life to teaching. Many blessings to TKV Desikachar and his surviving family.