Spring Session 2013
When I traveled to SE Asia to work for the US Peace Corps, I had only recently found yoga. I was determined, however, to travel to India after I completed my two years of service. On my way to India, I visited a dear friend in northern Thailand and unexpectedly fell in love with Traditional Thai Massage and Meridian Theory. I still wanted to go to India and made plans to meet my sister in Kathmandu. After hiking, I fell into a serendipitous arrangement with a Nepali Women’s Yoga Teacher and spent 6 weeks with her as if I were living in an Ashram in India. We practiced meditation, pranayama, asana, karma yoga and yoga nidra daily. It was so peaceful in the Himalayas and even though I had a visa to enter India on my 26th birthday, I decided to return to northern Thailand to continue studying Traditional Thai Massage.
My wise friend, Sara Stover, knew of my growing interest in yoga and recommended I attend an intensive with a local Austrian expat and studio owner. I rode my bicycle to his shaded glass studio on a dusky Monday to find out I was the only person who was signed up for his five day intermediate yoga intensive. Since he generously offered to hold the class, I was a willing student and had no idea that I was in for my first experience with Iyengar Yoga.
Besides being a beautiful green oasis in the large city of Chiang Mai, Knut’s studio was filled with immaculately folded and placed blankets, blocks, bolsters, and straps. There were slings hanging from the ceiling and bars on the walls, like in ballet class. One wall was entirely a mirror and we spent many hours with my back against this wall in sitting and standing poses so I could learn what it was like to have my body precisely placed in the yoga postures with the support of a wall. We also practiced pranayama, meditation and restorative poses. Knut showed me how to use the sling to hang upside down. I was new to inversions, but in this pose, I was able to feel traction that brought space to my congested sacroiliac. And I believed I had found a form of movement that gave me hope for the first time that I might heal an injury I sustained 3 years before.
As I mentioned, I came to yoga after dancing ballet, running or playing sports since the age of three. In 1997 in a West African Dance class in Ghana, my instructor forced my torso down to the floor in Adho Mukha Upavistha Konasana. When I returned home, no doctor was able to explain exactly what happened because they could not see anything on any xray, but after that injury I was no longer able to run, dance or move as I had until that point.
Because movement had been such a huge part of my life, I began to study yoga as a low-impact form of exercise, but also recognized its ability to bring me a sense of peace and serenity. This new practice of Iyengar Yoga instructed me that with precise attention to detail in my body, I could learn to heal the damage done and learn to create new strength and flexibility, much like Mr. Iyengar, himself.
Bellur Krishnamachar Sundaraja Iyengar was born in 1918 to a large poor family where he became ill with malaria, typhoid and tuberculosis. At 16 he travelled to study with his brother-in-law, Sri Krishnamacharya, and at 18 he was sent to Pune to spread the teachings of Yoga. Because of Mr Iyengar’s experiences with illness, he practiced 10 hours a day to learn to discipline his body. He is a living example of the power of yoga to heal and strengthen.
Mr. Iyengar and his senior teachers, including his daughter, Geeta, and son, Prashant, have diligently researched yoga as a form of complementary medicine accessible to all who seek it. These Iyengar yoga teachers research yoga as medicine for arthritis, cancer, depression, anxiety, scoliosis, back pain, Parkinson’s Disease, Cardiovascular disease and women’s health to name a few.
In order to make yoga available to everyone, Mr. Iyengar pioneered the use of props to assist students in developing their practice. Without these props, I would not be able to access many of the forward bending poses, among others. These assists help me as a practitioner to understand what the poses are meant to feel like and how to practice the poses safely, effectively and therapeutically.
Mr. Iyengar has also mastered the art of sequencing to create desired physiological responses. A skilled Iyengar yoga teacher creates sequences to cool and calm the body or warm and stimulate the body. Because of their diligent study, Iyengar yoga teachers are able to link poses together to deepen a students experience with a particular pose or a particular part of the body. What we begin to learn through this consistent long-term practice and attention to detail is that through disciplining the physical body, we can access and discipline the breath/energy body and in so doing Mr. Iyengar has given us the tools to ultimately begin to reach the deeper more subtle limbs of yoga; dharana (concentration), dhyana (meditation) and Samadhi (absorption). Even though Mr. Iyengar says, there is no Iyengar Yoga, only Patanjalis yoga, I am an eternally grateful recipient of the gift of the diligent study and effort that is Iyengar Yoga.
References:
Iyengar National Association of the United States