Inside Yoga 114 (27/8/14)
RIP BKS Iyengar
“Words fail to convey the total value of yoga. It has to be experienced,” said the yoga teacher BKS Iyengar, who died last week, on August 20, at the age of 95. This short quote summed up a lot of what was important to this influential yoga teacher, because he lived and breathed the practice he taught.
BKS Iyengar was born into a poor Sri Vaishnava Iyengar family (a priestly Brahmin caste) at Bellur, Karnataka, India. He was the 11th of 13 children (only 10 of whom survived) of father Sri Krishnamachar, a school teacher, and mother Sheshamma.
As a child he had struggled with malaria, tuberculosis, typhoid fever, and general malnutrition. “My arms were thin, my legs were spindly, and my stomach protruded in an ungainly manner,” he wrote.
At the age of 15 he joined his brother-in-law, the yoga teacher Sri Tirumalai Krishnamacharya, in Mysore, in order to improve his health. Krishnamacharya, who was 20 years older than Iyengar, is regarded as the father of modern yoga and responsible for the revival of hatha yoga (note that although yoga originated in India the British, the countries colonial masters for a couple of centuries, did what they could to wipe out traditional Indian education and medical/health approaches, and this included yoga).
For Iyengar joining his brother-in-law changed his life and he never looked back. Iyengar went on to become one of the most famous yoga teachers in the world, responsible for much of its development in the West.
My yoga practice, and the way I teach it, owes a lot to the methods and approach of Iyengar, because his attention to detail in terms of yoga asanas was second to none. Understanding the asanas opens doors to the rest of the practice: the breathing, the mind and meditation. It is held together through a healthy asanas practice.
Iyengar was not the only influence in my practice, but in the true sense of the expression “six degrees of separation”, the three teachers who influenced my approach to yoga are all linked. They were Iyengar, K Pattabhi Jois and TKV Desikachar, and all have links to Krishnamacharya. Iyengar as mentioned studied with the master as a young man, as did Pattabhi Jois for many years (from teenage years into adult years) and Desikachar is Krishnamacharya’s son.
Pattabhi Jois, who died in 2009, created a yoga practice which is commonly known as Ashtanga Vinyasa, and known for the flowing style of asanas, which has become very popular in the West; while Desikachar, who is based in Madras teaches his own particular approach, and I found his book Heart of Yoga to be one of the best overviews of yoga I have read.
All of these teachers used the traditional yoga teachings and never lost sight of the origins and values that hold this practice together.
With the passing of Iyengar it is the end of an era: to the West he was a pioneer who brought us something new – yet so old, a practice that is an elixir, a remedy for all that ails us in a modern world. He devoted his life to bringing us yoga and thanks to his work, yoga is here to stay.
In memory of BKS Iyengar – 1918-2014
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