the yoga teacher t.k.v. desikachar, one of krishnamacharya's sons, explained that his father had intended to write a series of books on yoga, of which this was to have been the first, but the death of his sponsor the maharaja of mysore, krishna raja wadiyar iv, in 1940 caused the series to be abandoned. he stated that his father had decided to cover practices (shatkarmas, purifications) such as neti and dhauti "which he himself did not recommend". and he noted that the asanas in the book are described in "vinyasa krama", which was the way krishnamacharya taught yoga to children in the mysore palace. other practices which he strongly endorsed like pranayama and meditation were to be topics of later books and were therefore not covered.