The Iyengar Art of Living

Notes from a meeting with BKS Iyengar, the yoga teacher

In 2006, when I met BKS Iyengar, the yoga teacher who passed away on Wednesday, he was 88 years old. I was interviewing him for Reader’s Digest in the library of his residence-cum-yoga centre in Pune. In the notes that I looked up after hearing about his death, I had written that the interview happened at 3.35 pm and by then Iyengar had finished his daily practice of three hours of asanas and an hour of pranayam—not bad for someone just short of 90.

Iyengar was one of the first to popularise yoga in the West. Yehudi Menuhin was his follower. He had made the Queen of Belgium stand on her head when she was 84 years old (she insisted on doing shirsasan and he obliged). He had taught the philosopher J Krishnamurthy and also Jayaprakash Narayan. But, after I discounted his self-evident success, a couple of things struck me. One was that he was self taught to a large extent. As a child, he lived with his brother-in-law T Krishnamacharya, a great yoga teacher himself, but who was reluctant to teach the boy because he considered him physically weak. It was only after another student left without warning and there was no one to give a demonstration that Iyengar’s lessons began. When a few women wanted to learn and could not be taught by a man in those days, as a boy he began to teach.

His obsession with yoga was complete. He would practice like a maniac for hours. His guru wouldn’t teach him pranayam even when Iyengar was an adult and a teacher. Iyengar learnt it by hiding and watching him practice. The entire interview was punctuated with him talking about overcoming pain on different occasions at different stages of his life. There was also self doubt right up to his august years. In 1958, he suddenly felt like he had no control and it took a year to get it back. After a scooter accident in 1979, he was told he would never be able to practise but he taught himself all over again.

The other thing that struck me was how he never made that natural leap to a godman. He had disdain for them. Baba Ramdev was just becoming nationally popular then and, on a question by me, Iyengar asked me how many times had I seen Ramdev correct someone—how could a teacher teach without correcting even once? He dismissed the instant yoga of television; results took time. He turned to a woman there and asked how many years had she practised. She replied, “11 years”. He told me that it was only this year that she learnt that the back of her knees were not straight. He said it took 11 years of practise to just know the back of her knees, how ridiculous was it to think that you could learn anything in a few days.

And, of course, I asked him about death—how did he visualise it? “My friend, 10 years ago I was in a death bed at this place only. My vital energy had sapped to such an extent that I could not come to class because I could not climb staircases. I was always [in] bed, 24 hours I was coughing. I had two heart attacks. In 1991, and four years after that. And still I am doing the most difficult poses,” he said. Death, of course, would come calling but he was probably too busy with Yoga to think about it.

BKS IyengarpranayamYoga teacher