Book Review: B.K.S Iyengar, Light on Life

A few years ago I thought I was on the path to enlightenment. No kidding; it's true. I had just gotten out of grad school with an M.A. that I wasn't sure I'd ever use and was keeping body and soul together renovating apartments for a property-management firm while living in the houses I was fixing up. My food budget was $12 a week and all I had to my name while all my crap was in (free) storage was a bag with some clothes, a Purdy paintbrush, a yoga mat, a blanket, a tiny portable stereo and a dozen cds. I also had Light on Yoga.

Light On Yoga by B.K.S. Iyengar is probably the most influential book on yoga of all time. Iyengar, whose personal devotion to the art helped him overcome severe childhood illnesses, wrote the book in an effort to systematize the ancient discipline in order to eliminate what he considered the confusing, obstructive, or simply pointless accoutrements that had built up over time. Framing yoga as a comprehensive road to enlightment and inner peace, Iyengar presented a rigorous and exacting course of study that focused on asana (yoga poses) and pranayama (breathing techniques) as the first steps on that journey.

Over the course of 500 copiously illustrated pages, Light on Yoga presented more than 200 poses ranging from the simple (mountain pose or tadmasana, in which one simply stands perfectly erect and concentrates on the energy flowing between head and floor through one's feet) to the ludicrously acrobatic (Tiriang Mukhottanasana, in which one bends over backward from a standing position and grabs one's ankles - from the back - while touching the floor only with the soles of the feet) to the nearly impossible (corpse pose, or savasana, in which one simply lies on the floor with the mind perfectly still and yet perfectly alert). Each pose was described in short pithy phrases describing the alignment of the body, and the last 50 pages comprised a sample six-year course of study that, Iyengar claimed, would allow the dedicated student to master the contents of the book.

Like many aspiring yogis, I was drawn to Iyengar's no-nonsense approach to the art. But after several years of on-and-off study and eighteen months of intensive daily work, I found myself unable to progress beyond "Week 17." This was somewhat frustrating; Week 17 was highly physically demanding, and I found myself working ever harder at yoga (both poses and meditation) even as I put off the realization that I had no future plans, no prospects, and counted as my "domicile" a post office box in Amherst, Massachusetts. I eventually moved to a new city and a new job and let the change of circumstance be an excuse to let my yoga pratice wither. It turned out that I was not on the path to enlightenment. I was on the long road to an unheated basement apartment in Queens, New York. Much different.

Now, I understand that "Iyengar: the book" is different from "Iyengar: the class." In classes, Iyengar is famous for his energy and fierceness, even going so far as to strike students to (as he has it) stop them from making mistakes that could injure them. Certainly he has been successful- his strenuous and highly precise style of yoga is now taught around the world and he stands as possibly the world's foremost practitioner of the art. His more recent books (Light on Yoga was first published in 1966) find him introducing props such as blocks to help beginning students properly align their bodies while not stretching as far as advanced students, and expounding at greater length about the spiritual foundations of his art. His life's goal has been to help people achieve enlightenment by joining the mind to the body ("yoga" comes from the Sanskrit for "to yoke"), and the physical efforts are, in reality, secondary to the inner journey students undertake. In fact, the first section of Light on Yoga, the part without helpful pictures and such, is really more important to Iyengar's presentation than all the twisty acrobatics. That was something that, for all my serious aspirations and meditation, never sank in.

Article Author: John Owen

John Owen is a music writer, multi-instrumentalist and music industry veteran based in coastal Massachusetts.

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