About Yoga
Yoga is one of the oldest systems of personal development in the world. This system of balancing the body, mind and spirit was formulated by ancient yogis who understood man’s essential nature and realised a way to utilise all of man’s inner resources to live in harmony with himself and the environment.
Pupils learn through a carefully graded and systematic programme of asana (posture). Pranayama (breath control) is gradually introduced once students have a firm foundation of asana practice. Yoga practice both relaxes and energises the body and mind and brings vitality, flexibility, strength, concentration, self-confidence and mental calm. Yoga is suitable for all types of people and all levels of fitness.
Practising yoga helps overcome and prevent many stresses and strains, aches and pains and promotes a firm foundation of health and well-being.
The Teaching System
BKS Iyengar has evolved precise posture (asana) and breathing (pranayama) techniques with a firm philosophical base in the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali.
Patanjali lived about 1700 years ago in India. He is credited with collating and writing the first records of Yoga, Ayurvedic Medicine and Sanskrit Grammar, which consist of 196 sutras (aphorisms) which cover all aspects of life and are still more than relevant in today’s society.
The Iyengar system of teaching is methodical and progressive, emphasising detailed correctness and absolute safety. When necessary, it uses props that allow students to progress in their practice of postures safely at their own pace, where there is stiffness or injury. Beginners work in a basic way on simple postures according to their capabilities. As they develop they then move on to more refined ways of working as well as on to more complex postures.
About Yogacharya BKS Iyengar
The world’s most widely practised method of yoga is that taught by Yogacharya Sri BKS Iyengar of Pune, India. Born in 1918 in Bellur, India, he studied and practised yoga continuously for over seventy five years. He died on 20 August 2014 in Pune.
Iyengar’s thorough study, understanding and mastery of yoga are unrivalled in modern times. Having taught for over 75 years in all five continents, he won worldwide respect and recognition for his achievements and made yoga accessible and relevant to people everywhere, no matter what their physical or mental ability.
He set the standard for his teachers and students while his textbooks on yoga have become classics. He founded the Ramamani Iyengar Memorial Yoga Institute in Pune, India, where his daughter Smt. Geeta Iyengar and son Sri Prashant Iyengar taught alongside him for many years. Geeta Iyengar died in December 2018, and Prashant and granddaughter Abhijata Sridhar are now directors of the institute.
There are over 1200 qualified Iyengar yoga teachers in the UK alone, and thousands more in over 40 countries. There are many national Iyengar yoga associations worldwide.
About Geeta Iyengar
(excerpt from obituary published by Iyengar Yoga (UK) in Dec 2018)
Sister to her five siblings but a mother figure to the whole community of Iyengar yoga practitioners which now spans 59 countries across the world, Geetaji lived a simple life which embodied all the principles of being a yogini. She chose to lead a life of brahmacharya (celibacy) and devoted her life to yogic pursuits.
As Director of the Ramamani Iyengar Memorial Yoga Institute (RIMYI) in Pune, India, together with her father B K S Iyengar and her brother Prashant, she was instrumental in moulding and teaching generations of yoga aspirants from their Yoga-shala (yoga school).
Though a teacher in her own right, she remained a shishya (student) to her father and to the subject of yoga till the end. Even at the recently concluded centenary celebrations of Yogacharya B K S Iyengar, where more than 1,200 students from 53 countries participated in a ten-day yogasana and pranayama session, she taught tirelessly for six hours a day exhorting students to experience the intelligence in their bodies first-hand and not depend on second-hand experiences. This insistence on self-learning and self-awareness in the body, mind, consciousness and breath became her defining ethic.
She authored the classic, ‘Yoga – A Gem For Women’ which is now translated into several languages. Her continuous exploration resulted in the volumes Preliminary Course and Intermediate Course which became a beginner-level learner’s text guides to her father’s definitive Light on Yoga.
Her six-decades-long commitment to the subject of yoga has been something which will now inspire generations of practitioners.
On 28 August 2014 in our yoga space in Crete we took part in a communal dedication to the memory of our guru BKS Iyengar, which happened simultaneously all over the world.