Wagging My Tail

I am most pleased, that a friend has joined my teacher's yoga class purely on my recommendation. There's nothing that interests me now more than yoga. And I truly believe in the Iyengar way of teaching and practising yoga - for his depth of understanding of the workings of the body and his holistic view of yoga. The various parts of yoga is not to be picked and chosen as one likes; nor to be patented or copyrighted as if its a wholly new creation from yesterday.

I have tried yoga classes with their attendant fancy monikers, and it scares me that there are people out there teaching harmful ways of getting into the asanas all for the sake of making their classes fun, or challenging. I've seen people desperately trying to balance on headstand with no support, and not being guided to align their spine correctly. I cannot imagine the damage they are doing to their neck or back five years down the road. Even now, when I am not mindful or careless when practising shoulderstand or headstand (with support), I can feel the pain in my neck and shoulders easily for a week after that.

So to be able to convince friend who's interested in yoga to take an Iyengar is most satisfying. As a fellow yogi would say, I'm wagging my tail in downward dog.

Great Grandmaster

I never thought of searching for yoga on YouTube. After all, it is a practice. What is there to see? Until B suggested, so I thought why not? He typed in "Iyengar Yoga". And we found videos of our teacher's grandmaster - Mr B.K.S. Iyengar himself! The video below is from 1938, so he was 20 when he did this demonstration.

And if you haven't said "Wah lau eh! How he do that har?" by this point, here's a video of him practising when he's 73.

And if you want to be even more inspired, watch the video of his teacher, Krisnamacharya, who lived to 101.

If only I could do just 10% of what they could do. And I want to be as fit when I'm 73.