Iyengar And The Invention Of Yoga

Iyengar And The Invention Of Yoga
BELUR, INDIA - NOVEMBER 28: BKS Iyengar seen during his 94th Birthday Celebration in November, 2012 in Belur, India. (Photo by Dominik Ketz/Getty Images)
BELUR, INDIA - NOVEMBER 28: BKS Iyengar seen during his 94th Birthday Celebration in November, 2012 in Belur, India. (Photo by Dominik Ketz/Getty Images)

In contemporary yoga classes, teachers often speak of Patanjali’s “Yoga Sutras,” a philosophical text compiled around two thousand years ago, as the wellspring of the practice. This requires an imaginative leap, because the yoga sutras say next to nothing about physical poses; their overriding concern is the workings of the mind. Yoga, the sutras say, “is the restriction of the fluctuations of consciousness.” The total of their guidance about posture is that it should be “steady and comfortable.”

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