Roots

Sage Patanjali

Patanjali is the sage credited with the Yoga Sutras, the short text on which the philosophy of yoga rests. He defined yoga as chitta vritti nirodha, the stilling of the movements of the mind, and described eight limbs, or ashtanga, that lead there. The verse below is the traditional invocation to him.

The invocation to Patanjali

योगेन चित्तस्य पदेन वाचां
मलं शरीरस्य च वैद्यकेन ।
योऽपाकरोत्तं प्रवरं मुनीनां
पतञ्जलिं प्राञ्जलिरानतोऽस्मि ॥

yogena cittasya padena vācāṁ malaṁ śarīrasya ca vaidyakena
yo'pākarottaṁ pravaraṁ munīnāṁ patañjaliṁ prāñjalir ānato'smi

Let us bow before the noblest of sages, Patanjali, who gave yoga for serenity and sanctity of mind, grammar for clarity and purity of speech, and medicine for perfection of health.

Listen to the invocation

Recording from bksiyengar.com, the website of the Ramamani Iyengar Memorial Yoga Institute, Pune.

The eight limbs, one by one

The legend

Tradition tells how Patanjali came into the world.

1. 1
   A dance

   Adisesa, the serpent on whom Lord Vishnu rests, watches Lord Shiva's dance. Vishnu is so absorbed that his body begins to vibrate with the rhythm and grows heavy, and Adisesa struggles to bear the weight.

2. 2
   A wish

   When the dance ends, Vishnu is light again. He explains what happened. Adisesa longs to learn dancing, and Vishnu foretells that he will first write a work on grammar.

3. 3
   A mother

   Adisesa meditates to find who will be his mother, and sees Gonika, a woman yogini praying for a worthy son to whom she can pass on her knowledge.

4. 4
   A handful of water

   At the end of her penance Gonika offers water to the Sun in her cupped palms. A tiny snake falls into them and takes human form, and bows to her.

5. 5
   A name

   She names him Patanjali: pata, fallen, and anjali, palms folded in prayer.

The legend is told in tradition, not as history.

The Yoga Sutras

The Sutras are a famously compact text: 196 short aphorisms, in four chapters. Most yoga traditions draw on them.

[How Narayan Sir relates the sutras to what he teaches. From Session 4.]

Bellur

Guruji

B.K.S. Iyengar, whom his students call Guruji, shaped the method that carries his name. He gave it two things: precision and alignment in every posture, and props he designed himself, such as wooden blocks, belts and ropes, so that people of every kind could practise safely. The institute describes his method as grown from "research-based experience and experience-based research".

Narayan Sir learnt directly from him, for decades.

A life in dates

1. 14 December 1918Bellur Krishnamachar Sundararaja Iyengar is born in Bellur, Karnataka. His father is a schoolteacher.
2. ChildhoodHe suffers malaria, typhoid and tuberculosis.
3. Aged 16He is introduced to yoga by his teacher, Sri T. Krishnamacharya.
4. Aged 18He is sent to Pune to teach, because he knows a little English.
5. 1943He marries Ramamani. They have five daughters and a son, Prashant.
6. 1952He meets the violinist Yehudi Menuhin, who helps introduce him to the Western world.
7. 1966Light on Yoga is published and carries the method across the world.
8. 1973 and 1975The foundation stone of the Ramamani Iyengar Memorial Yoga Institute is laid in 1973. It is inaugurated on 19 January 1975.
9. 1998On his 80th birthday he teaches 800 students for a week in Pune.
10. 2000He holds a special course for senior teachers from nearly forty countries.
11. 2003The Oxford English Dictionary includes the word Iyengar.
12. 2004He inaugurates the Sage Patanjali temple in Bellur. TIME magazine names him among the world's most influential people.
13. 2014Guruji passes away. The teaching carries on, hand to hand, through his students.

In Guruji's words

• Health is firmness in body, stability in mind and clarity in thinking.
• Your body is your child, look after it.
• Each movement is my mantra.
• Do yoga from the soul and not from the mind.
• Never perform the asanas mechanically, for then the body stagnates.
• Intelligence should be uniform in all the postures.
• Yoga aims at complete awareness in anything you do.
• Yoga is symmetry. That is why it is a basic art.
• Do the asanas conscientiously and consciously.
• Never forget that the pupil also teaches the master.

B.K.S. Iyengar, Guruji. Gathered from the pages of bksiyengar.com.

The institute in Pune

The Ramamani Iyengar Memorial Yoga Institute, named for Guruji's wife, is the heart of Iyengar yoga. Even its design carries the teaching.

Books

Guruji wrote at length on practice, the breath and the Sutras. A few places to begin reading:

Light on Yoga, first published in 1966, has been translated into many languages. Find these and others through bksiyengar.com.

Sources