Light on Life: The Yoga Journey to Wholeness, Inner Peace, and Ultimate Freedom

"He is another one of these direct students of Sri Krishnamacharya, like Srivasta Ramaswami. Ramaswami was with Krishnamacharya for something like 60 years because he lived in Chennai and his family was connected with Krishnamacharya. He studied with him for longer than pretty much anybody else, whereas B K S Iyengar was only with Krishnamacharya for a short time when Krishnamacharya was the yoga teacher at the Palace of the Maharaja of Mysore. That is also where Pattabhi Jois, who is the father of Ashtanga, studied. The reason B K S Iyengar is often considered to be the father of yoga in the West is because he had a very famous student called Yehudi Menuhin. That was back in the 70s; Yehudi Menuhin popularized yoga and made it respectable. So he’s super important in the evolution of the western yogic tradition. “You can’t really learn yoga from a book” He wrote a book called The Tree of Yoga , a sort of encyclopaedia of yoga postures. It includes instructions on how to perform them, outlining any contraindications and enumerating all their benefits. He was publishing books on yoga long before everyone else. He also had a yoga institute in Puna, where they took in students and also trained teachers. They’ve been doing that for a long time. All that’s added to his influence. Iyengar puts a lot of emphasis on alignment. All the students of Krishnamacharya who have become big-name teachers in the West have different systems. There’s lots of crossover, but actually quite a lot of difference, too. These differences could be explained by the fact that these various teachers spent time with Krishnamacharya at different times of his life. And if you practice yoga for a long time, you find that your practice changes over time. The emphasis you put on this or that changes, which I think is healthy and normal. B K S Iyengar has written a number of other books, not only Light on the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali but also and Light on Prãnãyãma and many others. The book I’ve chosen, Light on Life, was written when he was relatively old; in it, he’s looking back. It’s very much an overview. He goes from the gross physical body to subtler factors, to the subtle body and ultimately to the soul. That’s the trajectory—it’s the inward journey. It’s a beautiful book by a great yoga master looking back at a life of yoga."