A report on the China-India Yoga Summit
The image below (click to enlarge) is from an article in the September issue of Yoga Magazine, which is now on sale.
It’s billed as a “special feature on the life and works of B.K.S. Iyengar”, and it explains how he shaped the practice of yoga.
I’ve written before about its impact on my life. Here’s a personal sample of the bigger picture:
At first, I was struck by his size, or the lack of it, apart from a barrel chest. Flanked by his two most senior American teachers, both relative beanpoles, he looked like Yoda sporting a knee-length golden kurta. His silver winged eyebrows and mane lent him the air of a mad professor crossed with a God. Though he calls himself an artist and philosopher, Iyengar prefers to see teaching as a science.
Yoga, he said, is “an investigative instrument”, doing “research work from the skin to the self.” Although it merges “the individual self of the head with the universal self of the divine heart”, it’s subtle work, not blissing out with candles. “I teach spiritual yoga, not sensual yoga,” he told us. But minds can get distracted by the senses, and by what we think we know.
“You are all speaking of information technology,” Iyengar crackled through a headset. Most of the assembled throng were under 40, and brandishing smartphones. “I am giving you technological information. This is far superior.”
The article can be downloaded here. A text version follows.
