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Iyengar's 95th Birthday Celebration - 95 poses in 95 minutes at Kelowna Yoga House Dec 14, 2013
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It is widely known that B.K.S. Iyengar has resisted 'claiming' Iyengar yoga as a brand of yoga. At the same time he is one of the most wide-known and respected yoga teachers around the world. Mr. Iyengar continues to say that he is an ordinary man with a passion for the yogic life and an intense desire to help all those who suffer.
According to B.K.S. Iyengar, Patanjali says that we need communication between the intellect and the heart and where these are blended this is true happiness. In his book Light on the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, sutra 1.17 speaks to identifying the elements of the intellect and the heart that need to communicate: vitarka vicara ananda asmitarupa anugamat samprajnatah. Turning the coin over, we can view the body as seen and the self as seer. The conjunction between the seer and the seen is the cause of all our problems. This is the beauty of Mr. Iyengar's work from the basis of the sutras, as he has us learn from both sides of the coin. Long-term asana practice brings increasing discernment from the outer, physical level to the centre of our being and from our centre to the periphery. Ultimately this helps us develop freedom from suffering as we renounce our attachment, to our body, our afflictions, and our "I".
Across the world, people have recognized B.K.S. Iyengar as a living example of the yogi who brings a renewed integrity, and a deep knowing to his vastly beneficial methods. B.K.S. Iyengar never started on his yoga path with these noble ideals in mind. He began purely from a health point of view, due to his own ill health. He says he had no confidence to continue living, in fact. Gradually, through the practice of yoga he began to gain wellness both physically and mentally. Still immature in his own practice and understanding of yoga, he was asked to teach and through this great responsibility, over time, an evolution took place in which Mr. Iyengar began to provide a standard as well as a direction for his students to follow. He resolved to teach from his own experience of yoga practice rather than from reading books. Only after many years of dedicated self-study he began to see, little by little, what the yoga sages were saying. He has an intimate understanding of the sutras of Patanjali, which explain in detail the eight stages of yoga. B.K.S. Iyengar humbly writes, in Light on the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, "I am neither a pundit nor a scholarly academician." He wanted yoga to reach the common everyday person and he therefore focused on teaching two of the eight stages, asana and pranayama. B.K.S. Iyengar was the first yoga teacher to teach in large groups. From early on, B.K.S. closely observed his students - many whom did the asanas better than he, he says - looking in detail at each limb. He also looked at pictures of students, noticing the differences between people doing the same pose. It came to him that alignment is the most important thing. Yoga is alignment, he decided.
Sri T. Krishnamacharya, a hindu scholar and yoga master was B.K.S. Iyengar's teacher and B.K.S. credits his guru for strengthening his determination to discover the parameters of the asanas. Through hard work, failure, challenges from his teacher and public derision he explored the depths of both physical pain and psychological pain and by understanding this in himself, it helped him know what happens with other people. Wishing for more guidance from his own guru, but did not receive, forced him to become "an original" man, he has said. He became creative, depending on what an individual needed. He took on everyone's suffering, and with precision tried his utmost to find the source of the problem, most often a limit in our own minds. From this groundwork a fundamental basis to his teaching emerged.
In 1952 Yehudi Menuhin came to India, invited by the Prime Minister. At the time, inside his fame as a one of the greatest violinists of the 20th century, Menuhin was searching for someone to guide him in reshaping his violin playing and one of Mr. Iyengar's student's suggested B.K.S. Iyengar. They met and Menuhin became a devoted student, believing that learning yoga greatly influenced his attitude in life and his music. He recognized the grounded, pure intelligence in B.K.S. Iyengar's form of yoga. Then, in 1954 Menuhin invited him to Europe to teach and as a result, Mr. Iyengar says, Iyengar yoga "spread like a banyan tree", throughout Europe and into North America. Always a student himself, B.K.S. Iyengar wrote books only after being encouraged by his own students, who helped him. He never intended to be a writer. By means of experience with his own practice, teaching, writing and training teachers, he came to believe in the qualities of confidence, clarity, compassion and courage. His first book, Light on Yoga, was published in 1966 and has been translated into 18 languages. This book has sold three million copies and is considered to be a definitive guide on the philosophy and practice of yoga. Iyengar yoga took hold in Canada in the 1970's and over the course of 25 years international standards became available. Iyengar yoga teachers are now known worldwide for their excellent knowledge and ability to purely transmit B.K.S. Iyengar's principles using his method.
As a current student in a teacher training program it is evident that the teacher-training curriculum stems from the same learning practices that B.K.S. Iyengar himself went through. He came to Canada twice in the early 1990's to Iyengar Yoga Canada conferences and instructed Canadian teachers to formalize both the association and the teacher-training program. To this day, Mr. Iyengar signs teacher certificates.
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