Farewell, BKS Iyengar, with Gratitude
It’s a mellow day, gray overhead in an Oakland sky, where I am visiting to attend an incredibly rich and deep 5-day yoga training on the pelvic floor. For many, another typical day, but for the greater Iyengar yoga community, a heart felt and tender day of parting to the venerable Yogacharya BKS Iyengar. Although I never got to travel to Pune to study with BKS Iyenagar, I am one of many thousands whose life has been touched by the ardent, all enduring practice, and as a side affect, teaching, of this man. My ability to access health and heal my body, to gain relief from the turbulence of the mind, to experience compassion, understanding, to know my place in the universe… all stems back to the life and work of BKS.
His website says, ‘I always tell people, “live happily, die majestically.”‘
I feel deeply inspired by what this person has accomplished in just one life.
He delved so deep into this vast subject of Yoga. He has carved a path that we can follow.
I feel for the vast global community of teachers and students who have lost Guruji. This powerful anchor to all this beautiful work and practice, which lives on through his teachings, through all the yoga teachers and students touched by his light… is now passed into the great beyond. He has given so much — so much depth, insight, richness, which we will continue to explore and grow with.
I continue to move though the mundane world today, beautiful in it’s hidden translucence, the nature of the universe carefully obscured in sense and texture. Yet inside I am aware of a light, dispursing. As though in death, some essence spreads out and expands infinitely, and I like a child, reach out in vain to catch hold of a fleeting spark. May the spark always live on in me, and every yoga practitioner connected to BKS Iyengar. For a man I’ve only known through his students, who are my teachers, I say farewell with overwhelming gratitude.