Based in London, Philippa Asher is among the small number of Ashtanga yoga practitioners worldwide — and the only British woman — certified by Sri K. Pattabhi Jois to teach the Ashtanga yoga method within his tradition. She studied the Primary, Intermediate, Advanced A, and Advanced B Series directly with Pattabhi Jois and Sharath at the Ashtanga Yoga Research Institute in Mysore, India, later renamed the Krishna Pattabhi Jois Ashtanga Yoga Institute, and now shares the system internationally.
Her path to yoga was preceded by extensive training in the performing arts and education. From the age of twelve, she attended vocational ballet school at the Bush Davies School of Theatre Arts, followed by five years at Surrey University studying Dance Anthropology, History, and Performance, and then a postgraduate degree in the Education of Adults. She went on to teach at universities and ballet companies across the UK.
In the late 1990s, after moving into the media, film, and music industries, Philippa unexpectedly stepped into an Ashtanga yoga class in London. The experience proved transformative, making immediate and lasting sense. She began practising the Ashtanga system daily before work and continued deepening her study over the years.
For nearly twenty-five years, she spent several months each year studying at AYRI/KPJAYI, now Sharath Yoga Centre, in Mysore and while on tour, learning under the guidance of Pattabhi Jois and his grandson Sharath Jois.
In 2006, Philippa founded and directed Triyoga Soho’s Ashtanga self-practice programme in London. After five years of teaching there, she relocated to South India to create her own shala on a coffee estate in the Western Ghats: ASHTANGA NIRVRTA, a beautiful homestay yoga retreat designed to bring Ashtanga yoga to practitioners of all levels in a natural setting free from distraction.
Alongside teaching on Ashtanga yoga retreats around the world, Philippa also leads workshops and self-practice residencies in studios across London, Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and Asia. ASHTANGA NIRVRTA LONDON is the setting for her London Ashtanga Guided Self-Practice Weeks. When she is not teaching in person, she offers online one-to-one private lessons, as well as Sanskrit-counted Primary, Intermediate, and Advanced A Series classes and pranayama.
Her way of sharing yoga asana — from complete beginners to more experienced practitioners — is disciplined yet light, with a sense of joy and humour. She places strong emphasis on sound technique, safe alignment, and the synchronisation of vinyasa, the Sanskrit-counted coordinated movement-breath sequences, with tristhana, the integration of breath, gaze points, and movement. Her teaching honours the exact method passed on by Pattabhi Jois from the late 1990s, while also reflecting the essence of Patanjali’s sutras on yoga and asana.
Philippa’s lifelong devotion to Ashtanga yoga, combined with her background as a trained dancer and her experience as a qualified teacher, gives her an intuitive and informed understanding of bodies, yoga postures, people, and the ways they learn.