B.K.S.Iyengar
B.K.S.Iyengar was born in 1918 in Bellur, a city in the south of India. He was able to study yoga with one of the big teachers of his time T.S. Krishnamacharya.
At the age of only 18 he was sent to Pune (a city south of Mumbai) to teach. This was a difficult task as he didn’t speak the local language and yoga wasn’t very popular at that time. But Iyengar was very passionate and he managed to make a name of himself.
Eventually even people from the west learned about him and asked for his teachings. One of them being Yehudi Menuhin a famous violinist, who became Iyengars student and friend. Yehudi Menuhin introduced him to the western world. He traveled to Switzerland, England, USA and other western countries to teach, perform and lecture yoga.
Soon people from the west traveld back to Pune with Iyengar to practice in his Yoga school (RIMYI – Ramamni Iyengar Memorial Yoga Institute) and Iyengar Yoga became well known and popular over the whole world.
Through his life Iyengar inspired and educated thousands of teachers. He is the author of numerous books, including the well-known yoga-bible 'Light on Yoga' (first published in 1966). He was a true inspirator and innovator and he never stopped searching for a better way to approach the subject of yoga. Despite his great popularity he always stayed a family man living a modest life in his house beside the yoga school in Pune. All his earnings went to his birth town Bellur where he built schools hospitals and housing for the poor.
In 2004 Time Magazine proclaimed B.K.S. Iyengar one of the most influential people of the world.
B.K.S. Iyengar practiced several hours of yoga daily until he died in 2014 aged 96. Today his teachings are still alive, passed on to us by the next generation, his children and grandchildren and all the teachers who learned from him directly. To this day every year hundreds of people from all over the world travel to his Institute in Pune to study Iyengar yoga.
