This week we are in Tokyo, Japan, connecting with part of the Ghosh lineage. Namely, the family of Karuna and Jibananda Ghosh, and their son Bubai. 

Karuna was the youngest daughter of Bishnu Ghosh, and after Bishnu's death in 1970, she and her husband Jibananda adopted Bishnu's dream of establishing a yoga school in Japan. They came to Tokyo and founded the Ghosh Yoga Institute Japan. Ever since, they have been instructing prescriptive and therapeutic yoga from a humble room here. The yoga has always been one on one, with each student getting unique attention and instruction from the teacher.

We have known about the Tokyo family only vaguely, aware that Bishnu traveled here with performance troupes, doing feats of strength and contortion. There are widespread videos of some of these performances. We knew that he had set up a yoga school and that perhaps Buddha Bose and his sons were involved in the early days. Thanks to Jerome Armstrong's new book Calcutta Yoga, we were aware that a handful of young teachers were sent to Tokyo as holdovers while a more permanent teaching solution was found. Among these young teachers was Bikram Choudhury, who passed through Tokyo before eventually settling in the USA.

​But we have been ignorant of the depth of history and knowledge here. This limb of the Ghosh family has committed themselves to yoga for 50 years. They established and fostered a school and community here, ambassadors of yoga to a new culture.

Karuna Ghosh died in 2006, partly due to old internal damage from carrying heavy objects like elephants on her chest. Jibananda still runs the Institute. Their son Bubai is a businessman who also teaches yoga, prescribing "charts" for his students. He has started a separate little school in a more modern part of Tokyo.

Bubai met us as we disembarked from the plane. He fluently speaks English, Japanese and Bengali. He will generously spend the next 3 days introducing us to his family, Tokyo and the yoga history here.

The ultimate goal of yoga practice is understanding the true nature of who we are. This can seem abstract--how could we possibly be anything other that who we are?--but it has to do with the ego and the mind's creation of an identity. To realize our true self we strip away the mental constructions and are left only with our deepest "self."

The first step in this process is the body, since we identity our "self" with the body and its actions. So we teach ourselves that our body and its actions are malleable and impermanent. Since they are being controlled by a deeper power, they cannot possibly be the truest form of the self.
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We do this by controlling the body with yoga postures and alternating with stillness. This alternation between effort and rest, action and non-action, the posture and not the posture, gradually teaches us that even when we are not doing anything we are still ourselves.

Again, this may seem obvious or abstract, but you may be surprised how hard it is to do nothing. Our minds and bodies are constantly drawn toward action, as if their very existence relied upon it. When we force the body to be completely still we can face something of an existential crisis, fearing that we will cease to exist of we cease to act. This is why alternating action and inaction--the posture and not the posture--is so profound.

Today, July 9th, we celebrate the life and work of Sri Bishnu Charan Ghosh! So many around the world have benefited from his contributions to fitness, yoga and his dedication to teaching. We are ever grateful for his work and may we all remember him today and always. 

In honor of his life, here is an excerpt from the new book Calcutta Yoga Jerome Armstrong:

Bishnu naturally took to the stage. “I showed my muscle move ments and I can still hear the resounding claps I received. The people shouted from the gallery – ‘it was worth the eight annas spent.’” Once he had “performed the muscle control” exercises of nauli and uddiyana under “gas lights shown from below with reflectors,” he came on stage “dressed like a clown” and took part in all the performances, such as “parallel bar and ring acrobatics,” creating a “storm in the audience.” As he performed, Bishnu heard someone shout, “Did I not tell you, it is the same boy who has come back as a clown? He is the best performer.” Though it was his first performance, he won a silver medal that day. Bishnu later recalled:

I was stupefied! Thank God I was in a clown’s dress or else everyone would have been witness to my highly emotional expressions that day. Lalbabu must have given such silver medals to many such students but it was like manna from heaven for me that day. I cried the whole night, tears of emotion. That silver medal gave me the incentive to proceed in this path for the last 40 years.

This was not a one-time act; Bishnu “became famous as a clown” during the early 1920s.

As he took up bayam, combat sports and feats of strength, Bishnu had two qualities that he felt propelled him to succeed: “determination finish a job” and a desire for praise. He candidly stated, “I paid full attention to anything I did so that I would be loved and praised.” Alongside Thakurta, Bishnu participated in boxing, wrestling and Jiu-Jitsu matches, lathi-khela (sticks), and lifting tonnage. They performed in Calcutta at Seller’s Circus and Gemini Circus, and at events in the villages throughout Bengal. The troupe organized demonstrations either for charity or to raise funds for the City College akhara managed by Thakurta.

Read more about Bishnu Ghosh in Calcutta Yoga by Jerome Armstrong.