Information - Questions and Answers

What is yoga? Who is BKS Iyengar? What is the Iyengar yoga method? What is learnt in an Iyengar yoga class? What do I wear? What do I need to bring? Can anyone practice yoga? What benefits come from Iyengar yoga practice? What is The Certification Mark and various levels of Certification? What is the IY(UK)?

BKS Iyengar

Who is BKS Iyengar? 

Yogacharya BKS Iyengar remains the most influential yogi of our time who developed a unique way of practicing and teaching yoga. Iyengar Yoga takes its name from him.

He was born in S. India in 1918, the son of a humble school master in the village of Bellur, but it was Pune which became the home of Iyengar Yoga where he established the Ramamani Iyengar Memorial Yoga Institute (RIMYI). Local Indian students and hundreds of visiting students from all over the world attend classes there.

Iyengar Yoga is now taught in over 40 countries worldwide and there is a network of 180 national Iyengar Yoga Associations all stemming from BKS Iyengar’s Institute in India. His study and mastery of yoga are unrivaled in modern times and he has won universall recognition for his achievements in the popularisation of yoga, making it accessible and relevant to people everywhere. He has set the highest standards in the teaching and practice of this discipline. His many books e.g. ‘Light on Yoga’, ‘Light on Pranayama’, are classics.

Marks of respect and recognition for his achievements are endless but include:

• 2002 awrded the Padma Bhushan by the Indian Goverment - the highest civic honour for excellence.
• 2004 named by Time Magazine as one of the top 100 most influential people of the twentieth century.
• The Oxford Dictionary now has "Iyengar" listed as a method of yoga.