Yoga is his passion and mission

With nearly 8,000 yoga demonstrations to his credit, Mr. B.K.S. Iyengar is a yoga teacher unlike any other. K. Kannan meets the 84-year-old master during his visit to Delhi this past week.

Quote: ``Yoga works on the respiratory, circulatory and nervous system and is actually a philosophy of life.''

There are 30 to 40 million people across the world who are practising his art today. If the history of yoga is written some day in the future, his contribution in making it internationally popular cannot be overlooked. Still, the 84-year-old master continues to slog for the sake of making his passion burn brighter on the international firmament.

This past fortnight, Mr. B.K.S.Iyengar was in Delhi for the inauguration of his 40-day yoga workshops being coordinated by Nivedita Joshi, his Delhi disciple. ``The Union Health Ministry sent me a letter asking me whether I was interested in holding yoga classes here. I was hesitant but Nivedita insisted that I should come,'' says this internationally reputed yoga master, who has had such worthy disciples as Aldous Huxley, J. Krishnamurthy, Yehudi Menhuin and the Queen of Belgium.

With centres in all important cities across the world, the Iyengar method of practising yoga attracts many to its fold and in his Pune-based Ramamani Yoga Institute, not a day passes by without any miraculous happening. ``It has all been through word of mouth publicity. Once someone derives benefit, they tell their friends and so on,'' says Mr. Iyengar.

Ironically, this yoga master does not have a permanent presence in the Capital as yet. ``Destiny has taken me everywhere and though I have given good number of lecture demonstrations here since 1970, I have not yet been fortunate enough to start a centre here''.

It was destiny that made him a yoga teacher and he acknowledges it in full measure. ``I was suffering from tuberculosis and my recovery from it was an offshoot of my discovery of yoga. It took me as many as four years to recover and I had even thought of committing suicide many times,'' he says.

For Mr. Iyengar, the theory and practice of yoga goes together. ``If you see books on yoga, the explanation is out of tune with the poses.'' In order to practice yoga on himself, Mr. Iyengar, therefore, started learning the alignment and practising it on his own body. ``The moment I started doing so, I got that integrated inner action which made me align one part of the muscle with the other part. I used to stretch in order to feel and I used to feel energy dribbling. Then, I used to balance the energy on one side and the other. This way I developed yoga and made it into a special art,'' says this master, who has given nearly 8,000 demonstrations all over the world.

Remaining humble to the core, Mr. Iyengar, however, asserts that if he had not appeared in public, yoga would not have caught on. ``I have fasted for days. I have walked miles and miles to teach yoga. From 1954 to 1962, it was hand-to-mouth existence for me. I used to receive 100 dollars for maintaining my family.''

Mr. Iyengar recalls an incident in 1937 when he was invited to treat the principal of Fergusson College who was suffering from dysentry and he could not move from bed. ``Dr. V. B. Gokhale who invited me to London to teach yoga asked me to do something so that his abdominal organs move. I made him do yoga and his condition improved'' he says. ``In Switzerland, one of the army generals who had lost his arm wanted to do Shirshasana. At that time, I was teaching yoga to the famous violinist Dr. Yehudi Menhuin. I worked out a methodology so that he could do yoga. That was the beginning of the use of props.''

Mr. Iyengar, whose commitment to yoga is more in terms of knowledge, feels that the therapeutic process of yoga were only a by-product. ``Yoga works on the respiratory, circulatory and nervous system and is actually a philosophy of life,'' says the yoga master.

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