BKS Iyengar
Indian yoga master who, more than any other figure, shaped the global understanding of yoga as a precise, alignment-based postural practice. A frail child saved from tuberculosis by yoga, he studied with his brother-in-law T. Krishnamacharya and from 1937 taught yoga in Pune, India for over seven decades. His 1966 book Light on Yoga, the foundational reference of modern yoga, has sold over three million copies and been translated into more than nineteen languages. Time magazine named him one of the 100 most influential people in the world. His exacting precision, his use of props (now standard equipment in nearly every yoga studio), and his deep philosophical grounding in the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali made him both the great democratizer of yoga and one of its most rigorous teachers.
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Quotes by BKS Iyengar
105 quotes“True yoga is not about the shape of your body, but the shape of your life.”
“Concentration is on the means. Liberation is the result.”
“The sutras of Patanjali are a map. Asana is the land.”
“Without alignment, there is no asana. Without asana, there is no yoga. Without yoga, there is no life.”
“Adjustment is not about pushing the body. It is about awakening intelligence in the body.”
“Use the props as a teacher. Let them teach the body.”
“Each breath is a chance to begin again.”
“In savasana, the practitioner offers everything to the eternal.”
“The body is the instrument. The breath is the song.”
“Yoga without humility becomes performance.”
“Every misalignment in the body is a misalignment in the soul. Every adjustment is a return.”
“Pose with intelligence. Pose with grace. Pose with surrender.”
“The breath knows what the mind has forgotten.”
“In the long arc of practice, what you learn from injury is more than what you learn from ease.”
“The teacher's job is not to teach yoga, but to wake the yoga that is sleeping in the student.”
“Practice every day. Even on a bad day. Especially on a bad day.”
“In yoga, we are always beginners.”
“The body and the mind are not separate. The breath is the bridge.”
“Yoga has nothing to give you that is not already yours.”
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