Page 141 - Adhiyoga Purana

From Coffee to Collaboration:
How Wesbaba Found His Teacher in Adhiyogi
When Adhiyogi first landed in California to volunteer at El Monte Elementary School in Concord, his days were filled with teaching children — but he still had plenty of free time. Never one to sit idle, he explored opportunities to share his yoga wisdom in the vibrant Bay Area yoga community. Over the course of several days, he reached out to approximately twenty-five yoga studios.
The responses were polite but discouraging. Most studios declined, explaining that they only taught a specific style of yoga or that their class schedules were made far in advance.
Only one person responded with genuine interest — a senior yoga teacher named Wesbaba. Instead of dismissing the conversation, Wesbaba invited Adhiyogi for coffee.
During that meeting, Wesbaba opened up about a personal struggle he had faced for the past six years. He had compiled thirty-five intricate and advanced questions on yoga — questions that no teacher had been able to answer to his satisfaction. He had almost resigned himself to never finding clarity.
To Wesbaba’s astonishment, Adhiyogi not only listened carefully but answered each question with ease, precision, and deep insight, all without any notes or preparation. It became instantly clear that Adhiyogi’s understanding of yoga went far beyond asanas — it was rooted in a profound grasp of India’s philosophical traditions, Sanskrit, and the interconnectedness of yoga with systems like Sāṃkhya.
Impressed, Wesbaba shared his experience with the yoga studio where he was teaching. That studio immediately invited Adhiyogi to lead classes and entrusted him with conducting their very first Teacher Training program — an event that turned out to be a huge success.
In Wesbaba’s own words:
“I would like to offer my heartfelt appreciation for Adhiyogi’s guidance and teaching of Yoga philosophy as well as its ancillary sciences. What makes his teaching so unique is his broader understanding of how Yoga fits into the greater picture of India’s vast philosophical tradition. When studying a subject such as Patanjali's Yoga Sutras, one cannot isolate the teachings from subjects such as Samkhya and Sanskrit. Most modern-day teachers do not have adequate understanding of these other subjects, and therefore the presentation of Yoga Darshana is lacking. This is where Adhiyogi truly shines as a teacher. He has a gift for unwrapping the teachings in a clear and precise manner, relating them back to the bigger picture, and making them relevant and palatable for the modern yogi.”
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