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FALL 2004
NAMASTE,
In our summer newsletter, we mentioned that Time magazine, in the April 26, 2004, issue, had selected B.K.S. Iyengar to be among "the 100 most powerful and influential people in the world". The Time issue came out just as we were preparing to send our newsletter to the printer, so there was little opportunity to do more than mention the article in our Studio News section. It is an honor of sufficient significance, however, that I wanted to do more than give it passing mention.
Mr. Iyengar’s inclusion in the article, titled "The People Who Shape Our World", is a testament to the elevated stature of yoga in the world today and in this country in particular. With nearly 15 million people practicing yoga in the US to the tune of an estimated $6 billion, yoga is a mainstream presence in America at the outset of the 21st century. And while there are still faddish elements to its popularity, the groundswell of interest in yoga has created a large enough number of dedicated adherents and persisted long enough that I feel confident in saying that yoga has achieved a secure foothold in Western culture.
Of much more importance than the Time article itself, of course, is Mr. Iyengar’s actual role in building this fascination with yoga, an inescapable fact that prompted Time to include him in the first place. The well-known actor, Michael Richards, an Iyengar Yoga practitioner himself, is the author of the piece on B.K.S. Iyengar. He titled it "Bringing the East to the West", and in it, credits Mr. Iyengar with, as the title implies, feeding what "has become mainstream Western acceptance of a 3,000-year-old Indian tradition."
Yoga was barely known in the West and practiced even less before Mr. Iyengar’s classic book Light On Yoga was published in 1966. It was about that time that interest in yoga began to increase. Other books by other teachers came out as well, and a variety of swamis and gurus began to journey from India, the motherland of yoga, to the West. Although he had come to America in the mid-50’s, Mr. Iyengar began making regular trips to the U.S. in the early 70’s. Gradually, practitioners inspired by his approach established centers of what was being called Iyengar Yoga all over the country. For the last quarter of the twentieth century, Iyengar Yoga was the fastest growing method of yoga in the U.S., and its practitioners constituted the largest distinct yoga community in the country. Of course, all of this coincided with the mainstream yoga boom that continues to this day, and B.K.S. Iyengar and Iyengar Yoga were instrumental in fostering it.
Until Iyengar Yoga made its appearance, much of the yoga that was taught and practiced in the US was steeped in Hindu philosophy and ritual. The few serious yoga students of that time often took Sanskrit names and adopted Indian dress. Yoga asanas (postures), although the primary focus of most classes, were often regarded as a necessary but lower form of sadhana (practice). Pictures of Hindu gods were often present and chanting Hindu prayers was common. Teachers often led the asana classes while performing the poses at the same time, and the instruction was minimal. Much of the time, descriptions of what was to be done were couched in esoteric terms relating to the flow of energy and exotic internal processes. It was not a particularly inviting activity for most Americans.
B.K.S. Iyengar’s approach was much more amenable to Westerners. Although he used Sanskrit names for the asanas and for the concepts underlying the philosophy of yoga (an aspect of the method that some found off-putting), there were few Indian trappings and Hindu rituals. The classes were conducted without incense burning, without music playing, with lights on and eyes open. No attempt was made to create an otherworldly atmosphere. The teacher, the student, the body and breath, and the moment were sufficient. The goal was not an out-of-body experience, but an in-the-body awareness.
When they taught, Mr. Iyengar and his teachers usually spoke in anatomical terms that were concrete and accessible. And they taught rather than led a class. Instead of simply performing the asanas along with the students, the teachers observed the students and guided them in the right direction. The student was not only told what to do, but how to do it, either by verbal instruction, demonstration, or hands-on adjustment. There was also the sense of building a body of knowledge and a practice.
One of the key elements that Mr. Iyengar introduced to the practice of yoga was the importance of alignment. Until he revealed and emphasized the value of alignment in the asanas, the yoga poses that most people practiced were, for want of a better word, sloppy. Poses done with physical - and thus energetic - misalignments can create problems for practitioners rather than solving them, leading to imbalance and injury. Nearly every method now incorporates some elements of alignment in the way it approaches asanas.
For those students who were unable to find the optimal position in the poses because of stiffness, weakness, or injury, Mr. Iyengar developed the use of props. This innovation allowed many practitioners to receive benefits that would otherwise have been denied them. Few teachers used props until Mr. Iyengar introduced them. Now, most studios, regardless of the method they teach, use (and often sell) blocks, straps, sticky mats, blankets, bolsters, and a host of other props to help their students get more out of their classes and practice.
The use of props and the emphasis on alignment and precision in the poses and the breath dovetail with the application of yoga to the realm of therapeutics. This aspect of yoga, perhaps more than any other, has captured the interest of Western medicine and science, and thus the attention of the media. The imprimatur of the scientific community confers credibility in our society, and B.K.S. Iyengar has done more than any other teacher to invite and stimulate this recognition. Therapeutics form a part in almost every serious yoga teacher training program and are among the most popular courses at workshops and conferences around the country. With a few exceptions, the therapeutic techniques and their applications most widely utilized have been pioneered by Mr. Iyengar.
Alignment, body-based teaching methods, props, therapeutics: all are characteristic of yoga instruction and practice in America today. And B.K.S. Iyengar’s fingerprints can be found wherever yoga on all of these developments.
For me, even more than these gigantic contributions to what is becoming an increasingly accepted part of Western culture, the gift B.K.S. Iyengar has given to all of us is the gift of his passion for and dedication to the art and science of yoga. His tremendous energy and devotion have fostered creativity coupled with respect for tradition and a challenging spirituality that comes to life in the moment. His yoga is not just for the renunciate willing to step outside the mainstream of contemporary life, but for the householder, the man or woman who, like Mr. Iyengar himself, has a family, responsibilities in the world, and an appreciation for the richness of life on earth; for whom yoga is a way to plunge more deeply into the complex and fascinating web of everyday existence without losing sight of the profound fundamental truths that wise seers have pointed us toward since the beginning of time.
As Michael Richards so aptly puts it: "The beauty of Iyengar yoga in particular is the revelation that there is a living architecture hidden in all of us that only needs unveiling".The goal is to tie the mind to the breath and the body, not to an idea. His philosophy is Eastern, but his vision is universalist "[H]e’s introduced to the West the Easterner’s best path to health and well-being."
We at Unity Woods are privileged and grateful to present yoga in the tradition developed by a true visionary, a recognized innovator, and one of the world’s most influential human beings: our teacher, B.K.S. Iyengar. I look forward to seeing Mr. Iyengar once again when I return to India this December to celebrate his daughter Geeta’s 60th birthday (Dec. 7) and his 86th (Dec.14).
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