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Evergreen Yoga Studios
Expanding Human Consciousness
Our Practice
Vinyasa Krama
The name we gave to our practice is not our invention. Vinyasa Krama is the term Tirumalai Krishnamacharya used to describe the intelligent, sequential progression of yoga — the right step, for the right person, at the right time. It is a philosophy of teaching, not a fixed sequence. It is the foundation on which everything at Evergreen is built.
Krishnamacharya was born in 1888 and taught until his final years, dying at 100. He is the root of every dynamic yoga tradition practiced in the world today. His students founded Ashtanga Vinyasa (Sri K. Pattabhi Jois), Iyengar Yoga (B.K.S. Iyengar), and Viniyoga (T.K.V. Desikachar). The thread that connects them, and connects Evergreen to this tradition, is the understanding that yoga is a complete system for human development, and that asana is one limb of a practice that includes breath, attention, philosophy, and the way one lives.
The Teachers
Yoga is a transmitted practice. What is taught at Evergreen arrives through teachers : specific people and specific moments of transmission. We name them because naming them is the practice.
Shiva Rea is the primary influence on the Evergreen methodology. Founder of Prana Vinyasa and the Samudra Global School for Living Yoga, she studied Ashtanga Vinyasa with Sri K. Pattabhi Jois and with T.K.V. Desikachar — bringing the Krishnamacharya lineage into a living synthesis of dynamic flow, breath, music, and philosophy. From Shiva Rea came the understanding that vinyasa is not a sequence but a living thing — breath moving through form, practice as moving meditation.
Petros Haffenrichter is a Jivamukti teacher, based in Germany and Crete, whose practice traces through Sharon Gannon and David Life — who themselves studied with Sri K. Pattabhi Jois — back to the same root. From Petros came the philosophical dimension: scripture, devotion, kirtan, the understanding that what happens on the mat cannot be separated from how one lives. The music and community at Evergreen carry his imprint.
Yiannis Andritsos (Mukta Om) is a Dharma Yoga teacher and direct student of Sri Dharma Mittra, who spent a decade studying daily in New York before starting teaching. From Yiannis came the classical structure : the eight limbs as daily practice, the body as a vehicle for something beyond itself.
Patrick Fullan was an Ashtangi and dedicated practitioner who taught for many years in Athens. Panos studied with him for several years. From Patrick came the handstand practice — which has become a defining element of Evergreen, visible in every inversion class, every teacher training, every student who learns to stand on their hands at Evergreen.
Both Petros Haffenrichter and Patrick Fullan studied with Cliff Barber — an American ascetic who lived for decades by a river in rural Greece, one of the first Westerners to travel to Mysore and study with Sri K. Pattabhi Jois, a mathematician and sacred geometer who never built an institution but gave something real to everyone who found their way to him. He died in 2020.
What this means
All of these threads trace back to the same source — Krishnamacharya, the father of modern yoga, whose students spread across the world and whose methodology underlies the practice at Evergreen. We did not inherit one tradition. We were formed by several, each adding a dimension: the flow, the philosophy, the classical structure, the inversion work. Together they form the Vinyasa Krama methodology as it is taught and lived at Evergreen.
We name our teachers because yoga has always moved this way — from person to person, carried by those who practiced it authentically and gave it to whoever was ready to receive it. At Evergreen, we hold that responsibility with the same seriousness with which it was given to us.
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