One Tree
"There is no Iyengar Yoga at all." This is straight from the lips of Mr. Iyengar.
Today he basically told us to let go of the distinctions we make about the various schools of yoga. "Iyengar, Viniyoga, Pattabhi Jois--we all have the same roots... Don't think of the branches," he said, reaching his arms skyward until they nearly touched--"think of where the branches meet!"
Looking around the room, I saw many schools of yoga represented. Among my classmates were Cyndi Lee, Sharon Gannon, David Life, Baron Baptiste, and many, many teachers from other yoga traditions. And in the dining room, I've talked to almost as many Ashtangis as Iyengar yogis. Here, we're all just yogis, without distinction (student-teacher or Iyengar-vinyasa) learning together.
Each morning, Mr. Iyengar greets his students with a bit of philosophy and this wish: "May God bless all of you." You can feel the sincerity in his blessing. In the past several days, he has told us many times that the reason we're here is to get what he has to offer; that he's not coming back and doing this again. Taking this in on two levels, I see how important it is to him that we each be present to what is being offered--right here, in this moment (Whether that's here in Estes Park, or a week from now when we're all back home)--and also that while he's on U.S. soil he wants us to experience his teaching as something beyond the limitations our minds might have assigned to Iyengar Yoga.
Again and again, he shows how his senior teachers are still learning, and tells us how he is still learning, and encourages us to keep on learning--not to be arrogant or lazy in our poses. "I learned from Krishnamacharya," he told us. "Now you are all seeing me." He seems to be saying that he doesn't want us to mischaracterize this yoga that bears his name. He doesn't see it as a static teaching, but as a living thing. Like all yoga, his teaching is really all about continual self-observation.
"If you know the body well, you know the soul," he said. "If you don't know the body well, you don't know the self." He added that while philosophers may say that you can't know the infinite through the finite, that in his experience, the end of the finite is the beginning of infinity.
