"Yehudi Menuhin was one of the most lauded violinists of the twentieth century. Yet he was also famous for his affiliation with renowned hatha yoga teacher B.K.S. Iyengar and legendary sitarist Ravi Shankar, with whom he frequently performed....

"When Albert Einstein heard him play he said, 'Now I know there is God in Heaven.'

"By the 1950s, he was not only acclaimed as a musician but as a philanthropist as well. He often performed to raise funds for charities, and gave a series of such concerts for Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, the first Prime Minister of India. During his first meeting with Nehru, he was challenged by the Prime Minister to stand on his head. He did so, successfully. Nehru responded by showing off his own headstand. This incident made newspaper headlines, and yoga teachers from all over India queued up to offer their wisdom to the American marvel who was so interested in yoga.... 

"During his second trip to Mumbai in 1954, Menuhin had already begun to realize the tremendous effect even his casual experimentation with yoga was having on his violin performances....

"Through the years, Menuhin... never relinquished his diligent and consistent yoga practice. Indeed, yoga became an integral and indispensable part of his life....

"Through meditation, he taught himself to play with less tension and resistance and with a more effective application of energy. He also learned to coordinate multiple motions into one. All of this produced amazing results. Peers were astounded with his improvement and bewildered at the source of his insight, yet he simply considered it all the natural and expected result of meditation. When asked, Menuhin attributed all accomplishment to Iyengar, whom he referred to as his 'best violin teacher.' 

"History tells us that genius often accompanies misery, as exemplified in the lives of Van Gogh, Mozart, Paganini and others. If this is true, Menuhin was a rare exception. He was a genius at peace - a peace, he said, that came from yoga."   

(Rajiv H. Mehta)