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 asana is not about flexibility. It is about steadiness with ease.”
“In standing poses, root through the feet. In life, root through the heart.”
“The body is intelligent. Listen to it.”
“In the heat of practice, the impurities of body and mind are burned away.”
“Yama and niyama are the foundation. Without them, the higher limbs are unstable.”
“Practice creates the body of yoga. Vairagya creates the mind of yoga.”
“Even the smallest pose, done with full attention, is yoga.”
“In savasana, the practitioner dissolves and the soul rests.”
“The pose is the question. The breath is the answer. The pose is the answer too.”
“Yoga is the art of dying.”
“In each savasana, practice the death you will one day inhabit.”
“The body is older than the mind. Let it lead.”
“In the eight limbs of yoga, every step is the destination.”
“Sthira and sukha — steadiness and ease — these are the marks of true asana.”
“In the inhale, the cosmos enters. In the exhale, the self is offered.”
“The teacher gives a key. The student opens the door.”
“Sweat is the perfume of the practitioner.”
“In every asana, ten muscles work. The other six hundred witness.”
“Yoga is not what you do on the mat. Yoga is who you become because of what you do on the mat.”
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