“When I practice I am a philosopher. When I teach I am a scientist. When I demonstrate I am an artist” – BKS Iyengar

How do you expand your light discovered from practice? Shed Light on Yoga in your own way?  These are my thoughts since BKS Iyengar passed on this week, beloved by an endless amount of teachers and students around the world for his deep contribution to the excellence, discipline, artistry, skill, science and practice of yoga asana, pranayama and meditation. He shed light on yoga in his way, based on his own evolution and path chosen as a hatha yoga practitioner. I admire him greatly, and he was many of my teachers’ teacher. Iyengar was in my lineage, and although I never directly studied or practiced with him, he also felt a little like a grandpa.

I met Iyengar as his 90+ year self in a dream once, and he busted out kalabhairavasana.  But instead of seeing him at his 90 year self do the pose, it sort of morphed into the picture of him doing the pose from Light on Yoga.  I took that as an inspiration to practice the pose that week, but I never forgot that he came to me in a dream to somehow show me something.

Through the years I’ve reshaped my understanding of the purpose of practice, which is so personal.  I’ve moved away from just working on super hard poses for the sake of it, and am more likely now to examine what goes into creating a shape like that with my body, and even how I have to shape or reshape my mind.  And the flip side; what has to come out of me to be able to do that?  What do I have to un-learn or simply stop doing? What is the light in me trying to shine, and how can I get out of the way so it can move?

Self knowledge is often times said to be one of the main goals of the practice, across teachers, styles, lineages and centuries.  I understood Iyengar’s main goals of the practice to be awaken and enliven, from the revolutionary yoga digest, Light on Yoga:

– Awakening, out of the slumber that is non-awareness of your golden gift of life.

– Open into the light-stream of consciousness that is pure, whole, free, untainted, and already moving through you.

– Awaken to realize that consciousness is already abiding in you, as you.

in order then to:

-Enliven and make clear the passageway that allows this stream to be moved with greater fluidity.

-Activate it with less starts/stops, and to fuller capacity into your prakritic body and into daily life. Enliven your inner wholeness into words, thoughts, and actions.  Everywhere.

-Move consciousness into greater abundance outward, where its already moving.

To shed light outward, you have to first awaken to the light within. Awaken your awareness to it, locate it, then enliven the light moving through you. And to do this, Iyengar says, it will require an Inward Journey, and some serious discipline and time.

“Illuminated emancipation, freedom, unalloyed and untainted bliss await you, but you have to choose to embark on the Inward Journey to discover it.”  – Light on Yoga

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I care much more about this process than achieving a pose. Despite the discipline that the great yoga Masters like Iyengar and Sri Pattabhi Jois (the father of Ashtanga Yoga) brought to life in their teachings of asana, discipline on the mat is not the only place discipline is needed. I’ve found of course it is to sit, to meditate. Sit regularly, sit well, and make the seat a priority. I’ve learned to discipline my thought patterns. I’ve learned to discipline being softer, which I know sounds very paradoxical, and it is. But for me I’ve had to watch when I get too hard in my mind/body, and be sure to soften instead. Discipline after all is one of the main teachings out of the Yoga Sturas of Patanjali:

1.12 – abhyasa-vairagyabhayam tan-nirodah

I understand this to mean, “the experience of deepening practice comes through disciplined, clear choices of how and when you practice”.  BKS Iyengar’s translation from Light on The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali of this sutra reads, “Disciplined practice and detachment are the means to still the movements of consciousness”.  While he is also saying give it all you have, don’t stop, he’s also saying drop the bullshit around it needing to look, feel, or behave in any way shape or form like something you expect. Rather, how can it show up simply for you, as you?  Journey with it.

Iyengar’s contributions to the modern yoga world are vast, and we could create endless Top Ten lists to mark them, and I pranam to each one. Despite Iyengar and Jois of Ashtanga yoga founding very different methods, their lineage is bound forever together as students under the same teacher, schooled in the same traditional methods, practices, and teachings for locating the light of awareness, the light of consciousness.  Ashtanga went with an athletic, series-based practice; and Iyengar yoga’s discipline leaned around the precision of alignment in the poses, and staying in poses to reap the benefits.  I am eternally grateful to Mr. Iyengar’s offerings since his vibration, intention, wisdom and light came through all of my teachers, embedded in me, and I feel it strongly today. Maybe that’s why I dreamt about him. Maybe his light was encouraging me to look deeper, with the metaphor being a really, really hard pose. Look deeper for the light, and don’t give up.

Mr. Iyengar’s Light body is extended very far around the world, and in some way it’s quite possible if not probable, that any number of your yoga teachers have been influenced by Iyengar or Iyengar Yoga. It’s kind of amazing.  I hope we keep this original light alive while allowing for continued ingenuity, creativity, and inventiveness. Now that he’s gone I feel even stronger to remain true to the integrity of the practice. The watered down mess that yoga in many ways has become – I hope this doesn’t take over.

He also said, “The pose begins the moment you want to come out.”  Let’s stay with it.

Suswapna, sir.  May you have sweet dreams. Thank you.