Bellur Krishnamachar Sundararaja Iyengar (14 December 1918 – 20 August 2014) was an Indian teacher of yoga and author. He is the founder of the style of yoga as exercise called "Iyengar Yoga", and was considered one of the foremost yoga gurus in the world. He was the author of many books on yoga practice and philosophy including Light on Yoga, Light on Pranayama, Light on the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, and Light on Life. Iyengar was one of the earliest students of Tirumalai Krishnamacharya, who is often called "the father of modern yoga". He has been credited with popularizing yoga, first in India and then around the world.

The Indian government awarded Iyengar the Padma Shri in 1991, the Padma Bhushan in 2002, and the Padma Vibhushan in 2014. In 2004, Iyengar was named one of the 100 most influential people in the world by Time magazine.

Early years

B.K.S. Iyengar was born into a poor <!--DO NOT INSERT UNCITED CLAIMS--> Sri Vaishnava Iyengar family in Bellur<!-- This village is not the town of Belur in Hassan district. -->, Kolar district, Karnataka, India. He was the 11th of 13 children (10 of whom survived) born to Sri Krishnamachar, a school teacher, and Sheshamma. When Iyengar was five years old, his family moved to Bangalore. About four years later, just before his ninth birthday, he lost his father to appendicitis.

Education in yoga

In 1934, B. K. S. Iyengar's brother-in-law, the yogi Sri Tirumalai Krishnamacharya, asked him to come to Mysore, so as to improve his health through the practice of yoga asanas.<!--Iyengar states on page xix: "On my brother-in-law's [Krishnamacharya's] return,&nbsp;.. he proposed instead that I should stay in Mysore working on yoga to improve my health. "--> Iyengar considers his association with his brother-in-law a turning point in his life K. Pattabhi Jois has claimed that he, and not Krishnamacharya, was Iyengar's guru. In 1937, Krishnamacharya sent Iyengar to Pune at the age of eighteen to spread the teaching of yoga.

Though Iyengar had very high regard for Krishnamacharya, In the beginning, Krishnamacharya predicted that the stiff, sickly teenager would not be successful at yoga. He was neglected and tasked with household chores. Only when Krishnamacharya's favorite pupil at the time, Keshavamurthy, left one day did serious training start. Krishnamacharya began teaching a series of difficult postures, sometimes telling him to not eat until he mastered a certain posture. These experiences would later inform the way he taught his students.

Iyengar reported in interviews that, at age 90, he continued to practice asanas for three hours and pranayamas for an hour daily. Besides this, he mentioned that he found himself performing non-deliberate pranayamas at other times. Menuhin gave him the opportunity that transformed Iyengar from a comparatively obscure Indian yoga teacher into an international guru. Because Iyengar had taught the famous philosopher Jiddu Krishnamurti, he was asked to go to Bombay to meet Menuhin, who was known to be interested in yoga. Menuhin said he was very tired and could spare only five minutes. Iyengar told him to lie down in Savasana (on his back), and he fell asleep. After one hour, Menuhin awoke refreshed and spent another two hours with Iyengar. Menuhin came to believe that practising yoga improved his playing, and in 1954 invited Iyengar to Switzerland. At the end of that visit, he presented his yoga teacher with a watch on the back of which was inscribed, "To my best violin teacher, BKS Iyengar". From then on Iyengar visited the west regularly. In Switzerland he also taught Vanda Scaravelli, who went on to develop her own style of yoga.

He taught yoga to several celebrities including Krishnamurti and Jayaprakash Narayan. He taught sirsasana (head stand) to Elisabeth, Queen of Belgium when she was 80.

Among his other devotees were the novelist Aldous Huxley, the actress Annette Bening, the film maker Mira Nair and the designer Donna Karan, as well as prominent Indian figures, including the cricketer Sachin Tendulkar and the Bollywood actress Kareena Kapoor.

In 1966, Iyengar published his first book, Light on Yoga. It became an international best-seller. , it had been translated into 17 languages and sold three million copies.

In 1967, the Inner London Education Authority (ILEA) called for classes in "Hatha Yoga", free of yoga philosophy, but including asanas and "pranayamas (sic)" suitable especially for people aged over 40. The ILEA's Peter McIntosh watched some of Iyengar's classes, was impressed by Light on Yoga, and from 1970 ILEA-approved yoga teacher training in London was run by one of Iyengar's pupils, Silva Mehta. Iyengar was careful to comply with the proscription of yoga philosophy, and encouraged students to follow their own religious traditions, rather than trying to follow his own family's Visistadvaita, a qualified non-dualism within Hinduism.

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File:Yehudi Menuhin 43.jpg|In 1954, the violinist Yehudi Menuhin invited Iyengar to teach in Europe.

File:BKS Iyengar Centre House (cropped).jpg|Iyengar at Iyengar Centre House, London, 1971

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Iyengar in his signature pose, Natarajasana

| "As the signature pose of Iyengar, the most acclaimed master of postural yoga, Natarajasana became the representative yoga pose of the late 20th century... Iyengar saw himself as Nataraja's avatar. And he clearly (sometimes desperately) wanted us to see him as the incarnation of Nataraja. So he came close to conflating the yogin and the dancer." — Elliott Goldberg

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In 1975, Iyengar opened the Ramamani Iyengar Memorial Yoga Institute in Pune, in memory of his late wife. He officially retired from teaching in 1984, but continued to be active in the world of Iyengar Yoga, teaching special classes, giving lectures, and writing books. Iyengar's daughter, Geeta, and son, Prashant, have gained international acclaim as teachers. He also adopted a tiger and a cub in memory of his wife, who died in 1973.

Iyengar's most important charitable project involved donations to his ancestral village of Bellur, in the Kolar district of Karnataka. Through the Bellur Trust fund which he established, he led a transformation of the village, supporting a number of charitable activities there. He built a hospital, India's first temple dedicated to Patanjali, a free school that supplies uniforms, books, and a hot lunch to the children of Bellur and the surrounding villages, a secondary school, and a college.

Family

In 1943, Iyengar married 16-year-old Ramamani in a marriage that was arranged by their parents. He said of their marriage: "We lived without conflict as if our two souls were one."

Both Iyengar's eldest daughter Geeta (1944–2018) and his son Prashant have become internationally known teachers in their own right. His other children are Vanita, Sunita, Suchita, and Savita. Geeta, having worked extensively on yoga for women, published Yoga: A Gem for Women (2002); Prashant is the author of several books, including A Class after a Class: Yoga, an Integrated Science (1998), and Yoga and the New Millennium (2008). Since Geeta's death, Prashant has served as the director of the Ramamani Iyengar Memorial Yoga Institute (RIMYI) in Pune. Iyengar's granddaughter, Abhijata Sridhar Iyengar, trained for a number of years under his tutelage, and is now a teacher both at the Institute in Pune and internationally.

Iyengar died on 20 August 2014 in Pune, aged 95.

Legacy

3 October 2005 was declared as "B.K.S. Iyengar Day" by the San Francisco Board of Supervisors.

The noun "Iyengar", short for "Iyengar Yoga", is defined by Oxford Dictionaries as "a type of ashtanga yoga focusing on the correct alignment of the body, making use of straps, wooden blocks, and other objects as aids in achieving the correct postures."

On 14 December 2015, what would have been Iyengar's 97th birthday, he was honoured with a Google Doodle. It was shown in India, North America, much of Europe, Russia, and Indonesia. Yogacharya B.K.S. Iyengar: Uniting Through Yoga, a documentary film by Vishaal Desai, was released on his birth centenary in 2018. Leap of Faith (2008), another documentary film by Aditi Makim and Valentina Trivedi, covered his life from childhood to adulthood and the hurdles he faced in his career.

Currently, thousands of yoga instructors are CIYTs (Certified Iyengar Yoga Teachers), accounting for over 1100 in just the United States.

Awards and recognition

thumb|upright|President Pranab Mukherjee presents the [[Padma Vibhushan Award to Iyengar, 26 April 2014.]]

  • x15px|Padma Shri riband Padma Shri, India's fourth highest civilian honor (1991)