It’s been a significant week in the yoga world with the passing of Mr. BKS Iyengar, affectionately called “Guruji”. As yogis often say, “he left his body” on Tuesday as his kidneys were failing over the past few weeks while fighting infection. He would have been 96 in December.
It was a surprise how hard it hit me the morning after I had heard about his passing. I was beginning to tell my morning class about him, had lit a candle and dedicated the class to him. As I started to share how I and so many others were indirectly connected to him I began to tear up. I kept it together until I reflected on how I stepped onto the path of yoga. About twenty years ago, the first class I walked into at the University of Melbourne was an Iyengar yoga class. My teacher, Judith Hanson Lasater, was one of his students and that so much of what and how I teach is a direct reflection of his genius. His use of props was evolutionary and is deeply reflected in the practice of restorative yoga.
My tears began to gently flow as I recognized the powerful impact that one person had made on my own life as I sat in front of a class about to teach. I had no idea that when I stepped onto my mat for the first time in an Iyengar class, with my first instructor, Murray, eventually saying to me “Jayne, you should teach yoga” that I would actually have such a deep revelation so many years later. And all of this came about by one person who inadvertently set it all in motion…Mr. Iyengar.
He was born into poverty and struggled with illness. It was yoga that healed him and pointed him in the direction of his dharma, his purpose in life. He studied, practiced and taught yoga for over 70 years and apparently had an uncanny eye for seeing the body in incredible ways. His perspective, trial and error, evolved into an entire lineage that can be traced back to the modern day father of yoga, Tirumalai Krishnamacharya. Two of his students, BKS Iyengar and K. Pattabhi Jois, created two of the most well-known styles of yoga: Iyengar and Ashtangha. Virtually any, and all, hybrid styles and forms of yoga that are being practiced throughout the Western world have trickled down through these channels.
What I love about the ever-evolving perpetuation of yoga is that when well taught and practiced, the practitioner begins to literally embody the teachings. From that place of knowing each person brings to the practice the alchemy of their own unique experiences. Some share it through simply living it, others through teaching it. It’s a way of taking what resonates within someone and paying it forward through your own interpretations.
Countless teachers have gone before me, all passing along their inspiration, experimentation and insight. At some point, it landed so deeply within that I felt the calling to share all that I had learned. The many who have gone before us have lit the path for us to walk along.
Judith Hanson Lasater has shared the image of sitting before a class and seeing all of those teachers in her lineage standing behind her. I, too, hold a similar image and the people behind me aren’t all yogis, but have offered something to me as I have journeyed along this path. It seems to be very crowded back there.
The overwhelming part is how deeply it can touch our lives, how profoundly it offers a sense of community and how humbling it is to have been touched by the hand of genius.
Rest in peace Guruji and, like millions of others, I thank you and bow deeply to you.
