Birth and early years
“Birth and death are beyond the will of man. They are not in our hands.”
B. K. S. Iyengar
B. K. S. Iyengar was born on 14 December 1918 in the small village of Bellur in southern India, at a time and in circumstances that offered little promise of an easy life. The world was in the grip of an influenza pandemic, and his family lived in modest conditions, without electricity, a school, or access to basic medical care. He was the eleventh of thirteen children in a large family where hardship and uncertainty were part of everyday life.
His health was fragile from birth. During childhood, he suffered from malaria, typhoid, tuberculosis, and the effects of malnutrition. He was thin, weak, and often completely exhausted. When he was five, the family moved to Bangalore, and a few years later he lost his father. Illness and difficult living conditions disrupted his education, while poverty taught him from an early age how to live with very little.
Nothing in his childhood suggested that this sickly, physically weak boy would one day become one of the most influential yoga teachers of the twentieth century. Even less likely was the idea that the body that had caused him so many difficulties as a child would one day become his most important tool for exploring life, consciousness, and the self.
When yoga was not a choice, but a chance to survive
At around the age of sixteen, B. K. S. Iyengar went to Mysore, where his elder sister lived with her husband, the renowned yoga teacher Tirumalai Krishnamacharya. He did not go there with the ambition of becoming a yogi. He arrived as a weak and sick young man who needed, above all, food, strength, and a chance to regain his health.
Life in Mysore was not easy. Alongside household duties, he had to follow the strict discipline of his teacher. Krishnamacharya initially saw little promise in him as a student. His body was stiff, his muscles weak, and his movement limited. Iyengar also knew little about the deeper meaning of the asanas he was required to practise. As he later recalled, he did not know why he was doing them, what their purpose was, or how they were supposed to affect him. Despite the pain, he did not question or complain. He did what he was told.
The turning point came almost by chance. One of Krishnamacharya’s best students disappeared shortly before an important demonstration, and Iyengar was required to take his place. In a very short time, he had to learn demanding asanas and then demonstrate them before an audience. The successful demonstration brought him recognition for the first time, but more importantly, it revealed something fundamental: his body did not have to remain merely a source of illness, weakness, and limitation. Through discipline and persistent practice, it could change.
His training, however, was very different from what we might now imagine as a typical relationship between teacher and student. Instructions were few and expectations were high. Iyengar learned not through lengthy explanations, but through repetition, observation, failure, and pain. When he did not understand something, he had to search for the answer in his own body.
This lack of detailed instruction later became one of the foundations of his work. Because he had not been given all the answers, he began searching for them himself. Gradually, he turned his body into a laboratory and his practice into a lifelong exploration. He experimented with asanas, changed the directions of movement, and observed how even the smallest adjustment of the foot, knee, pelvis, or chest could affect the entire pose. He was interested not only in how an asana looked from the outside. He wanted to understand what was happening inside the body.
In 1937, when he was just eighteen years old, Krishnamacharya sent him to Pune to teach yoga. The young Iyengar spoke only a little English and even less Marathi, the language spoken by his new students. He had limited knowledge, almost no money, and no guarantee that he would succeed as a teacher. He arrived alone in the city that would later become his lifelong home.
At that time, he was not yet Guruji, the author of groundbreaking books, or the teacher to whom students would travel from all over the world. He was an eighteen-year-old young man who, even as he taught others, still had much to learn himself. It was during this period that his distinctive approach began to take shape: practice, observation, correction, and practice again. Every class he taught was also an opportunity for his own exploration. From this continuous process gradually emerged an approach that would later profoundly influence the teaching and understanding of yoga around the world.
Pune: years of hardship, practice, and independent exploration
Arriving in Pune did not mean that B. K. S. Iyengar became a recognised teacher overnight. It marked the beginning of another period of uncertainty. He was very young, had limited knowledge of his students’ language, and had not received years of systematic training. But he possessed something that would prove decisive for his future: an extraordinary determination to work.
He began teaching at Deccan Gymkhana, as well as in schools, colleges, and other institutions. He often had to demonstrate poses that he himself was still exploring. To answer his students’ questions, he had to practise with even greater precision. Every class revealed something he did not yet understand, and every uncertainty brought him back to the yoga mat.
His days were long. He taught, travelled from one place to another, and practised for hours each day. He lived in poverty and sometimes barely had enough money for the most basic food. During the hardest periods, rice and tea were almost all he could afford. Hunger, exhaustion, and uncertainty did not stop his practice.
His position as a teacher was not assured either. Yoga in India at that time did not yet enjoy the recognition it has today. The young Iyengar found himself teaching students who were often older, better educated, stronger, and more confident than he was. Some even mocked his slight build. Rather than allowing this to stop him, he accepted the challenge. He knew that he would have to prove his knowledge above all through practice and direct experience.
His initial contract with Deccan Gymkhana was for six months and was later extended as he progressed and interest in his teaching grew. When this period came to an end, Iyengar continued as an independent teacher. At first, he had only a few students, but he persevered. He taught wherever doors opened to him, practised for hours, and gradually built a body of knowledge based not only on what his teacher had told him, but above all on what he discovered for himself through his own body.
Ramamani and life beyond the mat
In 1943, B. K. S. Iyengar married Ramamani. Their marriage was arranged by their families, as was customary in India at the time, but a deep bond developed between them. Together they had six children, five daughters and one son.
Ramamani knew little about yoga when they married, but she soon came to understand her husband’s complete dedication to practice and teaching. During the years when his income was far from secure and much of his time was devoted to exploring yoga, she cared for the family and gave him the space and time he needed for his work. She was not simply a quiet source of support in the background. Over time, she also became an attentive observer of his practice and one of the most important companions in his life. Iyengar later spoke of their relationship with great warmth, writing that they lived without conflict, as though their two souls were one.
Family life did not interrupt his practice. On the contrary, it became part of his understanding of yoga. Iyengar did not live as a renunciate, removed from everyday responsibilities. He was a husband, a father, a teacher, and a man who had to earn a living. His path showed that yoga is not only for those who withdraw from the world. It can be part of work, relationships, care, responsibilities, and all the unpredictability of everyday life.
For him, yoga was not an escape from life. It was becoming a way to live life with greater awareness.
The meeting that brought yoga to the West
By the early 1950s, Iyengar was already a respected teacher in Pune, but he was still virtually unknown outside India. Then, in 1952, he met a man who would have a significant influence on the future direction of his work: the world-renowned violinist Yehudi Menuhin.
Menuhin came to India as a celebrated musician, but he was exhausted from travelling, performing, and a demanding schedule. He was interested in yoga, although he had only a short amount of time available for Iyengar at their first meeting. Iyengar quickly noticed his fatigue and, instead of giving him a demanding asana, guided him into Savasana, the pose of deep rest.
Menuhin relaxed so deeply that he fell asleep. When he awoke, he was surprised by the effect of the practice. What was meant to be a brief meeting became the beginning of a lifelong friendship and a relationship between teacher and student.
Iyengar recognised in Menuhin’s body the effects of years of playing the violin: asymmetrical posture, tension, and fatigue. He did not present yoga to him as a collection of exotic poses, but as a way for a musician to develop stability, relaxation, concentration, and greater awareness of his own body.
Menuhin soon noticed that yoga was also affecting his playing. His body became less tense, his attention calmer, and his awareness of the breath clearer. He later called Iyengar his best violin teacher. He did not mean that Iyengar had taught him musical technique. Iyengar had taught him to understand and use the body through which he created music.
In 1954, Menuhin invited him to Switzerland. Iyengar travelled to Europe for the first time and entered a world where yoga was still relatively little known. This journey marked the beginning of his regular visits to Europe and an important step in the spread of his approach to teaching beyond India.
Menuhin also gave him a watch with a personal inscription: “To my best violin teacher, B. K. S. Iyengar.” The gift beautifully reflected the friendship between two masters. One had devoted his life to music, the other to yoga, and both understood the importance of discipline, the body, and complete attention.
First steps in Europe
Menuhin did more than open the doors of his home to Iyengar. He introduced him to musicians, artists, intellectuals, and other influential people who were willing to look beyond the prevailing ideas about yoga at the time. Iyengar began travelling through Europe more frequently, teaching during his visits to Switzerland, France, and the United Kingdom.
For a teacher from India, this path was not simple. He encountered linguistic and cultural differences, as well as prejudice and misunderstanding. Many students did not know the names of the poses or understand the philosophical background of yoga. Some saw it as a religion, others primarily as physical exercise, and still others as an unusual Eastern discipline.
Iyengar had to find a way to make yoga accessible to people with very different experiences and cultural backgrounds. Rather than relying on abstract explanations, he focused on the body. He showed students how they stood, how they distributed their weight, where they lost stability, and how their breath revealed tension.
The body became a common language that needed no translation.
His demonstrations attracted considerable attention. His strength, flexibility, precision, and control impressed audiences, but physical skill itself was never his ultimate aim. The external form of an asana was a starting point for deeper learning. Once people saw what dedicated practice could achieve, they were more willing to listen to what he had to say about the mind, breath, and consciousness.
Over time, a community of dedicated students began to form around him. Some studied with him during his visits to Europe, while others later travelled to Pune to learn from him directly. His work did not spread through large organisations or planned promotional campaigns. It spread primarily through direct teaching and through students who carried his knowledge forward.
Light on Yoga: the book that became a map
Travelling brought Iyengar a wider audience, but he knew that he could not personally reach everyone who wanted to learn yoga. He needed a way to organise, explain, and preserve the knowledge he had developed over many years.
Writing in English was not easy for him. It was not his mother tongue, and he also had to put into words something he had spent years exploring primarily through the body. How could he describe a direction of movement that an experienced teacher could communicate with a single touch? How could he explain the difference between tension and stability? How could he describe an asana precisely enough for someone who had never stood before him to understand it?
The result was Light on Yoga, first published in 1966. In it, he systematically presented more than two hundred asanas, with detailed instructions for their practice, their effects, and practice sequences. The book included around six hundred black-and-white photographs, in which Iyengar demonstrated the poses himself.
The photographs were not simply intended to display his remarkable physical ability. They served as a visual map, showing students the directions, proportions, and external form of each pose at a time when videos, online classes, and immediate access to teachers did not yet exist.
The book was exceptional for its time. It presented asanas with a breadth, structure, and precision that gave a wider international audience a new way to explore yoga. Light on Yoga was translated into numerous languages and became one of the most influential works on modern yoga practice.
Yet the book was never a substitute for a teacher. Iyengar understood that a photograph could show the external form of a pose, but it could not reveal what was happening inside an individual student’s body. His instructions were therefore not a promise of quickly mastering the poses, but an invitation to observation, exploration, and sustained practice.
With the publication of the book, Iyengar’s work took on a form that could reach people around the world. A student in London, Rome, Munich, or New York could open the same pages and follow the same fundamental instructions. Knowledge developed through years of practice and continuous exploration became accessible to a much wider audience.
The book brought him international recognition, but it also gave him a new responsibility. As more people encountered his approach, the question of how to preserve its precision and depth became increasingly important. Yoga was spreading rapidly. Iyengar gradually had to become not only a teacher of individual students, but also a teacher of future teachers.
The home of Iyengar Yoga in Pune
While his work was spreading around the world, Pune remained at the centre of Iyengar’s life. He returned there after every journey, lived there with his family, practised, taught, and continued his exploration of yoga. At the same time, the need for a space devoted entirely to yoga became increasingly clear.
Until then, he had taught in various halls, institutions, and private spaces. International interest in his work was growing, and students from abroad were beginning to travel to Pune. He needed a permanent place where he could teach beginners, experienced students, people with health conditions, and future teachers.
In 1973, B. K. S. Iyengar and his wife laid the foundation stone for a new institute. But Ramamani did not live to see it open. She died that same year, at the age of just 46. Her death was a profound personal loss for Iyengar. The woman who had shared the years of hardship with him, raised their six children, and supported his work died just as his long-held dream was beginning to take shape.
When the institute opened in 1975, he named it the Ramamani Iyengar Memorial Yoga Institute, or RIMYI. A place dedicated to yoga practice and learning thus also became a lasting tribute to his wife.
The institute was not created as a luxurious international centre. At its heart was a hall devoted to daily practice and learning. The walls, ropes, wooden props, yoga chairs, benches, and other props were not decoration. They became part of a space in which his teaching continually developed and adapted to the needs of his students.
RIMYI became a school and the centre of Iyengar’s work. In the same hall practised local students from Pune, teachers from Europe and America, children, older people, and those with a wide range of physical and health limitations. This diversity continually presented Iyengar with new questions and encouraged him to deepen his understanding of yoga.
He did not teach according to a fixed script. He observed the group and responded to what he saw. If students did not understand the basic actions of the feet, he did not move on simply because a more demanding asana had been planned. He returned to the foundations, repeated instructions, and looked for new ways to explain the same action so that the student could feel and understand it in their own body.
There was little room for practising on autopilot in his classes. He demanded complete presence. A student could not simply take a pose and wait for the time to pass. They had to observe what each part of the body was doing and how this affected the breath, perception, and state of mind.
For Iyengar, an asana was never something static. Even in apparent stillness, it remained a process of observation and exploration.
A demanding teacher who expected awareness from his students
Iyengar became known for his intense and direct style of teaching. His voice was powerful, his instructions precise, and his expectations high. He quickly noticed fatigue, inattention, or an attempt to replace demanding inner work with an outwardly impressive form of the pose.
He was not interested only in external form. He wanted to know what was actually happening within the pose.
His strictness could intimidate students. He did not soften mistakes or offer praise simply to create a pleasant atmosphere. He believed that a teacher did not help a student by allowing them to repeat movements that could lead to incorrect patterns or injury.
Yet alongside his strictness, long-term students often emphasised his exceptional powers of observation and care for the individual. He remembered their injuries, weaknesses, and patterns of movement. He noticed changes in a face, the breath, or the way someone walked, often before the student had said that something was wrong.
In therapeutic classes, he could devote considerable time to a single person. He modified poses, added support, and observed how the body responded. If the usual approach did not work, he found another. His instructions were grounded in decades of direct work with people of different abilities and limitations.
He did not demand perfection from his students. He demanded sincere effort, attention, and a willingness to learn.
Nor did he ever stop being a student himself. Even when others already regarded him as a great master, he continued to return regularly to the yoga mat. His authority came not only from his reputation, status, or the number of people who followed his teaching. It also came from the fact that he expected at least as much from himself as he expected from others.
His son, Prashant Iyengar, later wrote that the whole world wanted the best teacher in him, and received one, but the world could not offer him the best student. This thought captures Iyengar’s belief that teaching also requires a student who is genuinely willing to learn.
Geeta, Prashant, and the continuation of the family’s work
RIMYI was not the work of one person alone. Alongside B. K. S. Iyengar, his daughter Geeta Iyengar and his son Prashant Iyengar played important roles in shaping the institute, each continuing and developing the family’s work in their own way.
Geeta began practising yoga as a child. While still young, she took over some of her father’s classes when he travelled. Over time, her work became particularly important in developing a deeper understanding of yoga through the different stages of a woman’s life.
At a time when menstruation, pregnancy, childbirth, and menopause were often overlooked in the yoga world, Geeta developed adaptations, sequences, and forms of support that allowed women to practise more safely and meaningfully. Her book Yoga: A Gem for Women became a foundational work in this field.
Her teaching was not simply an extension of her father’s work. It was grounded in the same precise observation, while addressing questions related specifically to the female body and its changes through different stages of life. In doing so, she significantly expanded the understanding of how practice can be adapted to the individual without losing its depth.
Prashant developed the family’s work in a somewhat different direction, particularly through exploring the relationships between body, breath, mind, language, and philosophy. His classes were not concerned only with what a particular part of the body should do. He encouraged students to investigate more deeply who is acting within us, who is observing, and how practice changes when the body is not merely the performer, but also the receiver and the observer.
Later, Iyengar’s granddaughter Abhijata Sridhar Iyengar also became part of the continuation of the family’s work, having practised and studied directly under her grandfather for many years. In this way, the knowledge was not preserved simply as an unchanging set of rules, but as a living tradition that each new generation continues to develop.
This is one of the defining qualities of Iyengar’s legacy. His work did not end with one teacher or one generation. It continues through his family, teachers, and students around the world.
Why he began using yoga props
One of the most recognisable aspects of Iyengar’s legacy is the use of props: yoga blocks, belts, ropes, chairs, blankets, bolsters, wooden benches, and specially designed supports. Today, they can be found in yoga studios across many different traditions, yet the reasons they were introduced are often overlooked.
Iyengar did not develop props to make the practice look more interesting or to make demanding poses more comfortable. He began using them because he encountered people whose bodies could not follow conventional instructions.
Some students were ill, injured, or very weak. Others were older, stiff, or afraid. A pose that Iyengar could perform without assistance might have been inaccessible to them. Simply telling them to try harder would not have helped.
So he began asking a different question: What does this body need in order to experience the essence of the asana?
Sometimes the answer was a wall, at other times a belt, rope, or wooden prop. Support allowed a student to remain in a pose long enough to begin to understand it. It could help maintain the direction of movement, reduce unnecessary strain, or bring awareness and action to a part of the body that the student could not yet engage without assistance.
Props are not a shortcut
In the Iyengar method, using a prop did not mean that a student was practising an inferior or simplified version of an asana. Quite the opposite. A well-used prop could help the student practise with greater precision, safety, and understanding.
If a student could not reach the floor in a standing pose, a yoga block brought the support closer. If stiffness in the shoulders made it difficult to maintain the correct direction of the arms, a belt helped establish the appropriate distance and resistance. If a student could not safely remain in an inversion, a chair, blankets, or the wall allowed them to explore the pose without unnecessary strain.
A prop did not do the work for the body. It provided feedback. A belt revealed where a student was losing direction. The wall showed whether the body was aligned and symmetrical. A yoga block provided support while also requiring a more precise distribution of weight. A chair opened new possibilities, while still demanding the student’s attention.
Iyengar also used props in his own practice. He did not regard them as something intended only for beginners, older people, or those with injuries. He used them to explore demanding asanas, remain in poses for longer periods, and investigate subtler actions within the body.
The same rope could help a beginner understand the basic direction of the spine, while allowing an experienced student to explore backbends in a different way. A yoga block could bring support closer for one person, while helping another understand how to activate the foot or create more space in the chest.
From the teacher’s support to yoga props
Iyengar often assisted his students directly, using his hands, feet, knees, and the weight of his own body. He supported them where they did not yet have sufficient strength or stability and guided them into movements they could not yet understand through verbal instruction alone.
This kind of assistance was never arbitrary. Touch had to be precise, applied at the right moment, and adapted to the individual student’s response. Too much force could create resistance or excessive strain, while too little might not produce the intended effect.
Over time, Iyengar began looking for ways to provide similar support without constant direct contact between teacher and student. Props gradually took on part of the role of the teacher’s physical support. They helped students maintain direction and stability even when the teacher was not directly assisting them.
This became particularly important when working with larger groups and in therapeutic practice. A teacher could not physically support every student throughout a pose, while a correctly positioned prop could provide support for the entire duration of the asana.
More time in the pose, more opportunity to observe
Without support, a student in a demanding asana may be concerned mainly with how to remain in the pose at all. The breath becomes shorter, the face tense, and attention is directed primarily towards the effort and the desire to come out of the pose as quickly as possible. There is little space left to observe what is actually happening in the body.
When a prop takes some of the load, attention can shift elsewhere. The student begins to notice where the body is creating unnecessary tension, how the ribs are moving, where direction is being lost, and whether calmness and clarity can be maintained even during effort.
For Iyengar, remaining in a pose for longer was therefore not a test of endurance. He used time as a tool for perception. Not every aspect of an asana can be recognised within a few seconds. The body needs time for the initial resistance to diminish, the breath to become freer, and attention to become more precise.
Props provided exactly this time. The student did not simply enter the pose, but could remain there long enough to begin noticing its details and better understand the responses of the body.
Yoga accessible to different bodies
The use of props also made the practice accessible to people who could not perform certain asanas without support. A physical limitation did not necessarily mean that a pose was inaccessible. It meant that a different way of working might be needed.
Iyengar taught people of different ages and physical abilities. He worked with children, older people, pregnant women, athletes, and people with various injuries, illnesses, and limitations in movement. In this work, adaptations and props became particularly important.
He did not expect everyone to perform the same poses in the same way. For him, adapting an asana did not mean abandoning its purpose. On the contrary, it required an understanding of what the asana is intended to achieve and how an individual student can experience its action.
If a student could not stand, it was necessary to explore which elements of a standing pose could be experienced in another way. If they could not enter an inversion independently, support had to be found that allowed them to practise it more safely. If fear restricted movement, stability and confidence first had to be established.
Instead of asking “Can I do this pose?”, the more important question became: “How can I understand and experience the action of this asana in my own body?”
Through Iyengar’s approach to adapting asanas and using props, yoga became more accessible to people who could not practise many poses without appropriate support.
The beginnings of a therapeutic approach
Iyengar’s interest in the therapeutic potential of yoga began with his own body. He came to yoga as a sickly young man and discovered early on how regular practice could affect his strength, breathing, and overall well-being.
When people with health problems began coming to him, he did not prescribe the same practice to everyone. He observed their posture, breathing, movement, physical strength, and response to instruction. He considered each person’s age, current condition, and abilities, adapting the practice accordingly.
Over time, special therapeutic, or remedial, classes developed at RIMYI. Props played an important role in these classes: chairs, belts, blankets, ropes, supports, and wooden props. Different arrangements allowed students to practise asanas in ways adapted to their individual abilities and needs.
In this work, Iyengar emphasised precision and careful observation. Incorrect direction, excessive intensity, or an inappropriate choice of asanas could cause more problems than benefits. Therapeutic work therefore depended not simply on knowledge of the poses, but on experience and an understanding of the individual.
His approach had a significant influence on the development of modern yoga therapy. Yoga was not seen as a substitute for medical treatment, but as a way for individuals, through appropriate practice, to take an active role in caring for their body and mind.
A legacy that lives on
B. K. S. Iyengar left behind far more than books, an institute, and a method that today bears his name. His legacy lives above all in the way we understand the practice of yoga: in attention to the individual, in adapting the practice to different bodies, and in the understanding that a prop is not a sign of weakness, but can become a path towards a deeper understanding of asana.
His work continues through teachers and students around the world, including those who never had the opportunity to meet him personally. Each time we look beyond perfect form and seek understanding, awareness, and conscious practice, we continue something of his lifelong exploration.
Perhaps this is the most meaningful way to remember him on 20 August: not only through words about his life, but by returning to the mat.
His legacy continues where it all began: in practice.
