B. K. S. Iyengar and Hatha Yoga

In Britain, the two most influential schools of ‘postural’ yoga are Iyengar Yoga and the British Wheel of Yoga, which was founded in 1962.

Besides teaching its own courses, the British Wheel of Yoga also acts as an umbrella organization, validating the training programmes of an increasing number of other British yoga groups, including Viniyoga and the Scottish Yoga Teachers Association.

The Iyengar Yoga system is also called Hatha Yoga. B. K. S. Iyengar (b. 1918) learned yoga from Krishnamacharya, who was his brother-in-law. Although Iyengar stayed with Krishnamacharya from 1934 to 1937, he only studied yoga with him for ten or fifteen days during that time.

Iyengar then moved to Pune, became a professional yoga teacher and established the Iyengar Yoga Institute. He says that although he was not taught for very long by Krishnamacharya, those lessons determined what he has become today.

An important influence on general public awareness of yoga was the violinist Yehudi Menuin, who was instrumental in introducing his yoga teacher Iyengar to Europe, for the first time in 1954.

Iyengar also went to the USA in 1956. In 1960, at the invitation of Yehudi Menuin, Iyengar came to London to teach a small group of yoga students, returning every year to teach an ever-increasing number of them. Iyengar’s book Light on Yoga, first published in 1966, became a standard English-language work for yoga practitioners.

The Iyengar Yoga school is still growing worldwide, teaching the system and philosophy of Hatha Yoga, which places considerable emphasis on the correct practice of asanas, and also teaches meditation and pranayama.

During the last fifty years, many former students of Iyengar have branched out and devised either their own systems of yoga, or have adapted Iyengar Yoga.

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