26/02/2018
Geeta Iyengar :
“ I started practicing in the year 1955 when I was 11 years old . I had a type of nephritis so I did start practicing but I was very irregular. I did not realise how important it was to practice regularly. I would do some asanas , neither regularly nor maintaining any timing. I had an inclination towards it from my childhood but I seriously started doing it from 1957. I did not know anything about the rest of the subject. But even in those days, I felt that the asana practice was somehow helping me.
Whatever asanas that I did or taught were based on ‘the album’. Guruji had made an album of his photographs in different asanas to present it to the first Prime Minister of India, Pandit Nehru. I used to open it and look at the asanas and do them.
Guruji used to teach all the mornings. So , when he would travel, some of the students said that let us at least come and do so that we can practice. And then they asked me, make us do something so that we can continue to practice. So that was the time when I really started religiously studying and teaching. So it is not learning and then teaching. It went on simultaneously.
Perhaps because of my inclination, I had a better understanding on what I should grasp; what is coming to me or should come to me. This part is difficult, so I should not teach it to somebody else until I am clear about it. And that inner guidance was enough for me. Maybe it was ‘purva-karma ‘ maybe an imprint. All that helped me in my teaching process.
When Guruji wrote the ‘Light On Yoga’ he did not first write the book and then started practice. But the practice was first - certain things came to the surface then he thought of writing the book. Light On Yoga came much later after his practice. The book did not come first. That sequence of learning has to be understood.
For me a healthy yoga addiction is better than other addictions. The fire of yoga must remain burning without smoke in the spiritual heart throughout the practice, the sadhana. The interest of the practitioner, sadhaka, needs to be affirmative and dynamic. However, this interest should not be a wildfire burning down the forest; the interest in yoga should not be disoriented and disarrayed.”
