It was only in the 1920s that Yogananda (Autobiography of a Yogi) introduced a version of yogic “muscle control,” which drew on the metaphysics of the American New Thought movement and the bodily postures of European bodybuilding as well as Hindu traditions. Yogananda told his followers that this practice offered “the highest possible degree of mental, physical, and spiritual well-being at the minimum expenditure of time and effort.” The Indian sage already understood the efficiency obsessions of his American audience.
I practice Iyengar yoga. The Iyengar style of yoga comes from the teaching of B. K. S. Iyengar, one of the most influential yogis in the world. He is now 92, and he was already an extraordinary practitioner in the 1930s. (Here is a 1938 practice video.) His innovation was to slow down the yoga practice, and to demand the most profound and particular attention to detail.
Iyengar-style teachers will teach the poses deliberately, slowly. As an advanced student, when I go to class, I know I will be asked to hold the pose for a long time while carefully attending to alignment: the hands perfectly spaced, the pelvis balanced, the “three points” of the feet positioned evenly on the earth. The teacher may well explain the exact angle for the correct positioning of the foot in a standing pose or how to do camel pose by curling your upper back, right at T4 (for the initiated, that’s the 4th thoracic vertebrae).
These perfected bodily alignments are not achieved easily, however, and Iyengar yoga is known for its students’ enthusiastic embrace of an impressive array of props. There are blocks that extend the reach, and belts to tighten splaying body parts, and blankets and blocks and metal folding chairs, even ropes hanging from hooks in the walls. All of this can make the average Iyengar studio appear vaguely like a set-up for an S&M session, albeit with big windows and cheery lights.
B. K. S. Iyengar was still a boy when modern hatha yoga began to become popular in India. He was a student of Krishnamacharya, the famous founder of the “Mysore school” that taught a vigorous form of yoga to young Brahmins. Iyengar eventually went to teach in Pune, a provincial capital in Western India, quite distant from the elite and insulated culture of the Mysore Palace. In Pune he taught students who were far removed from the young, flexible boys who had been the core of the Mysore tradition under Krishnamacharya.Working with non-adepts, Iyengar eventually started to slow down the practice, and to use the props for which he became famous.
From here, there is a longer story that could be told about the embrace of yoga in the West, and the development of competing systems like that of Iyengar and Pattabhi Jois, the founder of Ashtanga yoga. (He and Iyengar soon became global stars and serious rivals.) Iyengar was a much admired yoga teacher in India in the 1940s, but he became the exemplar of modern yoga for the West when he published Light on Yoga in 1966. That book quickly became the standard reference, bringing yoga to a new generation of Americans and Europeans. In 2004, Time declared Iyengar to be one of the most influential people in the world. The full and rather remarkable history of Iyengar’s life and his global influence cannot be adequately recounted here. It is told elsewhere, including in Iyengar’s autobiography Iyengar: His Life and Work.
I practice Iyengar yoga. Just as surely as it says something about what happens when I walk into class, this statement locates me firmly in the social order of the yoga world. In that world, the Ashtanga yogis are the track stars and the class presidents. They glide through conferences, with shoulders sculpted by sun salutations, looking lithe and confident. The Bikram folks are purified by their steamy practice rooms. I’m pretty sure the phrase “hot yoga” wasn’t meant as a pun, but it’s hard to avoid the association: these yogis look good, and they wear excellent, color-coordinated spandex. The Anusara yogis are lovely, emotionally open souls who are destined to run the bake sales that raise money for children’s charities. The Iyengar folks like to think of ourselves as more intellectual and precise. For everybody else, we’re more like the kids who stay home on Saturday night, carefully searching for flaws in the design of Klingon war ships.
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