B.K.S. Iyengar Through The Decades: 1930s Rare & Historical Photographs

By catherine on March 16, 2015 | This entry has been posted in BKS, Vintage

Bellur Krishnamachar Sundararaja Iyengar (14 December 1918 – 20 August 2014), better known as B.K.S. Iyengar, was the founder of the style of yoga known as “Iyengar Yoga” and was considered one of the foremost yoga teachers 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 referred to as “the father of modern yoga“. He has been credited with popularizing yoga, first in India and then around the world.

B.K.S. Iyengar was born into a poor Sri Vaishnava Iyengar family at Bellur, Kolar District, Karnataka, India. He was the 11th of 13 children (10 of whom survived).

B.K.S. Iyengar Through The Decades

We have been able to compile stunning, rare and historical photographs of B.K.S. Iyengar throughout his lifespan. This is the first page which takes a look back at his life and yoga during the 1930s. The subsequent decades can be found at the following pages:

1930s ~ B.K.S. Iyengar Through The Decades

In 1934, his brother-in-law, the yogi Sri Tirumalai Krishnamacharya, asked the 15 year-old Iyengar to come to Mysore, so he could practice yoga. Krishnamacharya had Iyengar and other students gave yoga demonstration in the Maharaja’s court at Mysore, which had a positive influence on Iyengar.

Iyengar considers his association with his brother-in-law a turning point in his life saying that over a two-year period “he [Krishnamacharya] only taught me for about ten or fifteen days, but those few days determined what I have become today!”

He taught yoga to several noted personalities including Jiddu Krishnamurti, Jayaprakash Narayan, Yehudi Menuhin and Vanda Scaravelli.

With the encouragement of Krishnamacharya, Iyengar, aged 18, moved to Pune in 1937 to teach yoga. He began to practice in great earnest, studying yoga by using his own body and mind as a laboratory, and becoming one of yoga’s greatest ever self-taught experimentalists. He stayed in Pune and gradually developed a name for himself as a teacher and an expert on therapeutic yoga.