BKS Iyengar’s 97th Birthday: Google Doodle celebrates life of yoga master Creator of 'Iyengar yoga', who suffered from ill-health as a child, taught violinist Yehudi Menuhin the art of yoga and became an international guru:*


Google has created one of its trademark
doodles to celebrate the life of BKS
Iyengar, who founded the style of yoga
known as 'Iyengar yoga'.
Iyengar, whose full name is Bellur
Krishnamachar Sundararaja Iyengar,
was born in 1918 into a poor family in
southern India - one of 13 children, of
whom only 10 survived.
As a child he suffered from poor health
and at the age of 15 one of his brother-
in-laws, who ran a yoga school in the
state of Mysore, invited Iyengar to visit,
in order to improve his health through
yoga practice.
In 1937, he was 19, he was sent to the
city of Pune in the state of Maharashtra
to teach yoga but it was not until 1952
that Iyengar became an international
guru, after he introduced renowned
violinist introduced the violinist Yehudi
Menuhin to the art.
--
Menuhin was impressed by Iyengar's
skills and invited his teacher to
Switzerland in 1954. After this
introduction Iyengar continued visiting
the West and schools teaching his brand
of yoga were opened across the globe.

He studied anatomy, psychology and
physiology to pioneer modern
therapeutic yoga and after a scooter
accident dislocated his spine, Iyengar
began exploring the use of props to help
disabled people practice Yoga.
Iyengar's had a happy arranged
marriage to a woman named and said
of the couple: "We lived without conflict
as if our two souls were one."

She died when she was 46 and Iyengar
called his yoga school in Pune after her.
His son, Prashant, and daughter, Geeta,
are now the principal teachers in the
Pune yoga school, and his
granddaughter, Abhijat, has also taught
there. He is also survived by four other
daughters.
In 2004, Iyengar was named one of the
100 most influential people in the world
by Time magazine. In 2014 he was
awarded a state honour, the Padma
Vibhushan. He died in August 2014
aged 95.
