Yoga legend BKS Iyengar passes away

BKS Iyengar, a Yoga guru who was credited with doing much to take the ancient practice to the West, died in a hospital in Pune on Wednesday morning at the age of 95, according to a family friend. The friend, Dr Satish Desai, said Iyengar had been receiving treatment for kidney failure. Iyengar, who practiced his asanas well into his 90s, established Yoga institutes in six continents, including one in Pune, where he lived. Some of his better-known disciples included violinist Yehudi Menuhin, Indian Independence fighter Jayaprakash Narayan and American actress Ali MacGraw.

His insistence on perfecting the poses — or asanas — won him a huge following, among them celebrity fans ranging from cricketer Sachin Tendulkar to writer Aldous Huxley. “Perhaps no one has done more than Mr Iyengar to bring Yoga to the West,” said The New York Times in a 2002 profile of the guru.

“Long before Christy Turlington was gracing magazine covers, decades before power Yoga was a multimillion-dollar business, Mr Iyengar was teaching Americans, among others, the virtues of asanas and breath control.”

US model Turlington famously graced the front cover of Time magazine in a cross-legged pose for a 2001 report on the explosion in Yoga’s popularity.

“Iyengar means Yoga,” he said proudly in an interview in 2002. “Yoga means Iyengar. They are synonymous terms.”

An encounter with Menuhin in 1952 had much to do with the spread of Iyengar’s practice, which is characterised by long asanas, some lasting for several minutes. The violinist summoned him to Mumbai, which was then called Bombay, for a meeting that turned into a three-and-a-half-hour session. Menuhin later said that his Yoga practice had changed his violin playing.

The violinist later brought Iyengar to Switzerland, where he introduced him to other prominent westerners who became his followers. In his first visit to New York in 1956, Iyengar said he encountered racism but little interest in Yoga. He told CNN in 2007 that it was only in 1961, after he had begun using Yoga to treat ailing students, that it finally “took the West by storm.”

Iyengar wrote several books on Yoga, one of which, Light on Yoga, has been translated into 18 languages, according to his website. In 2004, Time magazine called him one of the world’s 100 most influential people.

His early life was one of hardship: He was born to a poor family in a village in Karnataka during a global influenza outbreak. His father died of appendicitis when Iyengar was 9. Iyengar suffered from tuberculosis, typhoid and malaria, he said; by the time he discovered Yoga at 16, he said, he was so weakened that it took him six years to return to health.


“Yoga saved my life,” he said in an interview in 2005. “I took it for my health, and then I took it as a mission.”

Iyengar had been ailing since some time and was admitted to a private hospital in Pune a week back. He was put on dialysis after his condition worsened two days back.


The legendary Yoga guru was admitted to a city hospital on August 12 following complaints of acute breathlessness and palpitation, Dr Deepali Mande, who attended on him, said. He breathed his last at 3.15 am. His website carried a picture of Iyengar’s smiling face beside a message that read: “I always tell people, ‘live happily and die majestically’ 14-Dec 1918-20 Aug 2014.”