The term “Iyengar Yoga” was coined to describe the method of teaching Yoga developed by BKS Iyengar. Iyengar, however, states:
I have no right to brand my method of practice and teaching as “Iyengar Yoga”. It is my pupils that call it Iyengar Yoga to distinguish it from the teachings of others. Though I am rational, I am a man of sentiment and tradition bound. I trust the statements of others, follow their lines of explanation and experiment with them to gain experience. If my experience tallies with their expressions, I accept their statements. Otherwise I discard them, live by my own experiments and experiences, and make my pupils feel the same as I felt in my experiments. If many agree, then I take it as a proven fact and impart it to others …
… The only thing I am doing is to bring out the in-depth, hidden qualities of yoga to the awareness of you all. This has made you call my way of practice and teaching “Iyengar Yoga”. This label has caught on and become widely known, but what I do is nevertheless purely authentic traditional Yoga. It is wrong to differentiate traditional from Iyengar Yoga.
BKS Iyengar, Astadala Yogamala Vol 2, Allied Publishers Limited 2001, Yoga Drsti, p. 25-26
If we accept the statements above, then Iyengar Yoga is a method of examining, and gaining experience in, the field of Yoga. In the following article I have attempted to define the attributes of Iyengar’s method.
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