Amrita 6: Asana through the ages - Magazine - Page 19
Iyengar
portantly, positive, inspiring words to show and encourage
his students.
Ramamani, Iyengar’s much beloved wife, died shortly after I met him and two years later we (his students) raised
funds for the building of a centre in Pune, to be named the
Ramamani Iyengar Memorial Yoga Institute.
When teaching in the Institute, there was absolute silence
except for Iyengar’s penetrating voice. The class of 60 was
carefully arranged in rows, with the shorter students usually
at the front. He conducted the class with hawk-like perception and x-ray eyes. There could be three to six students
needing different postures, perhaps a head balance variation, a back arch or twist, yet Iyengar missed nothing. If a
student came out of a posture before he said so, he would
ask, ‘Are you in my class or not?’ He was not only timing the
main class, but also simultaneously every individual.
When teaching, Iyengar would fly around correcting students, attentive to everyone’s needs, never allowing them
off for age or disability but finding a way through the problem. He worked like fire and was so quick that it took me a
few moments to grasp the depth of his correction; (teachers
were allowed to follow, observe, learn and sometimes help).
Even now, 55 years later, his words will come back when I
am practising or teaching and I will understand more. He
was the most hard-working man I have ever met and would
do all in his power to wake students up. Sometimes he
would use his hands and feet to talk and mould the body
into the correct shape and sometimes, feigning anger, he
would give you a tap or slap or a cuff on the head, saying
‘Dull mind’. His corrections educate the body in such a way
that the body could hold the correction and remember it.
When correcting your back in pranayama, he rotated your
collar bones up, simultaneously correcting your spine with
what felt like a third hand – his foot.
“When teaching, Iyengar would fly around
correcting students, attentive to everyone’s needs,
never allowing them off for age or disability, but
finding a waythrough the problem.”
www.yogaallianceprofessionals.org
After a class, students would
get up to ask him questions and
when it came to my turn I asked
two questions. He slapped my
arm and said, ‘You asked two
and tried to squeeze in a third!’
His answers were extremely
brief. Question: ‘Can diabetes
be cured by yoga?’ Answer:
‘Yes.’ Question: ‘How to deal
with painful necks?’ Answer:
‘Work on the thoracic.’ He was
making me look for the answers
in a positive way.
His classes would usually run
overtime and were sometimes
as long as four hours, at the end
of which we would feel strong
and full of energy. I never saw
Iyengar hurt anyone; he just
hurt our ego, and wasn’t that
what we needed? An example
of this was on one occasion in
London. He asked us to select
our own classes, the choice being advanced, intermediate or
first year students. Luckily for
me I chose intermediate. He
was extremely strict on those
who had chosen advanced –
we called it ego bashing.
Yoga, attitude and iyengar
In all the 55 years I have been a
student of Iyengar, he never
said ‘good’, or gave me praise,
which is helpful for the ego. His
approval came in other ways.
Being a little wary of organisations, I kept up a personal communication with him and 25
years ago needed to ask his approval to make allowances in
postures for the less able and to
adapt the postures to suit their
needs. Up until then I had been
‘keeping the method pure’ – I
had to as I was running the Surrey Iyengar Centre and assessing his students.
AMRITA Issue 6 / Spring 2021 17
