Google Doodle celebrates what would have been the 97th birthday of guru who popularised yoga in the West Google is marking the birthday of BKS Iyengar, the guru who took yoga to the West, with one of its famous doodles.
Iyengar founded a style of yoga and taught Aldous Huxley, the author, and Yehudi Menuhin, the violinst.
Today Iyengar yoga is taught in more than 70 countries and its founder is credited with doing more than anyone else to popularise the discipline, first in India and then in the rest of the world.
Iyengar, whose full name is Bellur Krishnamachar Sundararaja Iyengar, died in 2014 but Monday would have been his 97th birthday .
He was born in 1918 into a poor family in southern India – one of 13 children, of whom only 10 survived.
He was sickly as a child – suffering from malaria and typhoid – and was introduced to yoga by a brother-in-law who ran a school in Mysore as part of an effort to restore his health.
His brother-in-law was Tirumalai Krishnamacharya, who is often referred to as “the father of modern yoga”.
At the age of 18 Iyengar became a teacher in the city of Pune, practising what he called an “art and science”. His career would last more than than eight decades.
It was in Pune that he began to teach Menuhin. The music maestro had complained that he could not relax or sleep, but in an interview with the veteran India broadcaster Sir Mark Tully in 2001, Guru Iyengar said “within one minuteâ€, he was “snoring happily awayâ€.
The violinist was so impressed that he invited his guru to Switzerland in 1954.
It was the break that launched him on the West, and visits to the US and the rest of Europe followed.
Menuhin introduced him to many of his famous friends and the Queen Elizabeth of Belgium is said to have learned his trademark sirsasana headstand at the age of 80.
Schools teaching his brand of yoga opened around the world and a string of books soon followed – starting with Light on Yoga. He pioneered the idea of teaching yoga to groups, and encouraged women to take up the practice, even during pregnancy
“The West knows yoga because of Iyengar. He developed a style of yoga for ordinary people. He introduced simple props and aids like ropes, blankets, wall to facilitate people to make it easy for the masses,” said Yogi Santatmananda Saraswati of Swami Dayananda Ashram, in Rishikesh, at the time of his death.
