Q & A with Mr. Iyengar and Annette Bening
I wasn't sure what to expect from a Q&A session between Mr. Iyengar and the actress Annette Bening. She's a movie star, nominated for two Academy Awards. She is also a long time, serious yoga practitioner. She's smart, focused, funny, lovely, and tough.
Mr. Iyengar, known as the "Lion of Pune" because of his silver mane and fantastic eyebrows, entered the stage, his cream colored robes pressed perfectly. They sat angled towards each other on wooden chairs. "How important is a sense of humor for a yoga practioner?" asked Ms. Bening. And with that, the 500 plus audience cracked up, as did Mr. Iyengar. "If there is no sense of humor," he answered, "then life is not worth living".
Mr. Iyengar can answer questions quickly, dismissively, or elaborate at great lengths, this last, as evidenced by his next answer. Ms. Bening asked Mr. Iyengar why he developed his approach to yoga based on alignment in asana. "My intelligence did not present itself in any way but in asana," he answered. He then talked at length about working with students who had medical problems, how alignment in asana could cure many illnesses, and how the very advanced practitioner can even learn to extend and contract the cells through focused intelligence.
Yoga can be an esoteric discipline. But Ms. Bening brought it right down to earth with the next two questions. Let's talk about lust, said Ms. Bening. The audience roared and I believe I saw Mr. Iyengar blush. She asked Mr. Iyengar to elaborate on the passage in "Light on Life" where he writes that as a teacher, he was exposed to temptation with his students. He said he developed a fierce demeaner to keep his female students at arms length. "A man faces lots of temptation in life," [women, too]. "I used to have students try to kiss my legs while demonstrating Virabhadrasana III." Everyone laughed loudly at the image of attractive young women kissing Mr. Iyengar's outstretched legs. And then came the lesson."I learned from my teachers not to do what they do. That if I fell prey to temptation, what would happen to my practice? It would die."
For those of us in partnership and with families, the next question and answer was a gift. Ms. Bening asked Mr. Iyengar to comment on a passage in "Light on Life," where he writes that being a householder is a form of spiritual practice. "Is yoga only to be practiced when you cannot face the disturbances of life? There is a frequent misunderstanding of the journey inward, that it's a rejection of the practical. To the contrary, spirituality is not ethereal but palpable, in our body. If we tidy and clean our house enough, we might notice that divinity has been sitting in it all along.
View a video clip of Ms. Bening reading a passage from Light on Life
Ms Bening's last question was, "Is yoga a religion?"
"There are two kinds of religion," Mr. Iyengar replied. "God made and man made. Man made has branches and demarcations. God made has none. And that is Yoga."
