Reflections of Guruji from RIMYI

on His 103rd Birth Anniversary

This artcle contains memories of teachers Rajvi Mehta, Jawahar Bangera, Pandurang Rao, Patxi Lizardi, Raya Uma Data and Stephanie Quirk, who have all spent a lot of tme with Guruji outside of the classes. The interview was conducted by Rajvi Mehta on 14 December 2021 on the Iyengar Yoga Ofcial YouTube channel.

Pandurang Rao’s life with Guruji started much before he was born – his father and Guruji were friends before Guruji was married.

Jawahar Bangera from Mumbai has been a student of Guruji since the 1960s. In 1984, Guruji took him to the US with Birjoo Mehta.

Patxi Lizardi from Madrid spent a lot of tme travelling with Guruji in Europe and Israel. Guruji stayed in his house in Madrid.

Stephanie Quirk and the RIMYI library were synonymous with each other for many years. She's played a major role in typing out Guruji's books.

Raya Uma Data started as a child and enacted a play during Guruji's 80th birthday. Afer that, Raya spent whole days at RIMYI for long periods of tme.

Rajvi Mehta is a senior teacher based in Mumbai, who studied with Guruji since 1979. She is editor of RIMYI's magazine, Yoga Rahasya.

RM: Pandu, any memories of your childhood with Guruji?

PR: I knew him since I was eight to ten years old. He used to come to my father’s shop on Lakshmi Road. I only knew he was teaching yoga. For about ten years, untl about 1969 when I was 17 or 18, I used to ask him if I could come to yoga. He said, ”Don't ask me because I know you're not going to come”. I said, “I will come,” and went to the school where he was teaching. There were a couple of students at the classes from Pune, sometmes Amma [Ramamani] would come with him on the scooter, Geeta and Prashant on another scooter, and also medical students. I remember there was one bad case of asthma, and he was completely cured. Guruji was giving him special treatment just doing general classes. Afer that Guruji told me I could go to his home where he was also teaching, with space for just fve or six people. That is when I started my yoga journey.

RM: Jawahar, Guruji was quite a disciplinarian, his practce was very regular. When Guruji went abroad, what happened with his practce? In 1984, you went with him for the frst tme. What were the schedules like – when and how did he practce?

JB: There was no change in his practce. Once he was setled in a place his practce was almost the same. Early morning, 4 or 4.30am, he would have his cofee, practce his prāņāyāma and then he would be out to practce by himself. If we were around him, we would all practce in the livingroom. Everything was silent. If we saw Guruji doing standing āsana, we did standing āsana. If he did back bends, we started doing back bends. All the while he would observe what we were doing.

"He knew exactly where to touch you and in an instant you just got the pose"

Afer the practce was over he would have his cofee again and he would tell us, "The way you are practsing, I don't think you are going to make any headway. When you are observing, you have to look with very sharp eyes to what I am doing, and then maybe you will get something or other". Then the compassion in Guruji would resurface, he would come and quietly adjust us. You wouldn't even notce he was there. He knew exactly where to touch you and in an instant you just got the pose. That was his silent way of teaching – you didn't have to tell him what was wrong.

Of course there were very tght schedules, so we would always be ready with a light breakfast. Mostly, the host would provide this but there were tmes when we were just among ourselves, so he would have something very light, preferably dried fruit=, milk, and that was his diet for the day. It was very frugal and he carried on for the rest of the day. Once we asked him, “In a place where it was very difcult to get vegetarian food, how do you manage?”. He just smiled and said, ”There's always milk and bread available. Milk and bread is enough to sustain you”. That's how he sustained himself most of the tme during the earlier days, before we joined him for his travels.

The other advantage of being with Guruji was that he took everyone along. When somebody went out the host would say, “Guruji, would you like to go out somewhere?” He never said no, provided he didn't upset his schedule. If there was tme, he agreed to do something nearby and we had to go with him, nobody even argued. Even if you felt like you wanted to rest, you had to go. We were always together like an entourage.

RM: Patxi, when you were travelling, would Guruji carry his props with him or did he need props for practce?

PL: Nothing at all. His body was his prop and he was never missing practce. He was very strict on that duty towards his practce. The practces with him were sometmes, for me partcularly, a litle bit hard. Once, in a house in Paris, where there were seven or eight people, including Jawahar, he started doing forward bends: each side 20 minutes. All the poses – staying, staying and staying. Nobody was coming up before him, of course. It was killing me!

I remember once afer Rishikesh, in maybe 1997, we went to Mussoorie, a long journey on buses.

We reached the place we were staying and there was a yoga room. I wanted to practse, so I went to the yoga room and Guruji was there in strong Setu Bandha. I started my practce – this pose, that pose – Guruji was stll in Setu Bandha. I changed again and again and he was stll in Setu Bandha, for more than 45 minutes. He came out of the pose and he looked at me and said, “This is the best pose afer a long journey”, and he lef. No props were needed for him during his travels and he was doing a wonderful practce.

JB: Even on the staircase, he would know how to use it to do the inversions. Once he asked, “How long can you do Śavāsana?“ I said, ‘I don't prefer Śavāsana, I would rather do Ardha Halāsana supported.” Then he said, “I can stay absolutely silent for 105 minutes in Śavāsana”.

RM: Raya and Stephanie, we have seen pictures of Guruji practsing from 2014. Do you want to say something about the tme he was doing this practce?

RUD: His connecton internally and externally was such that you could see a structurally arranged Guruji and suddenly you would not know what was happening. When I started, I was around 20. At some point afer I'd started practsing on a more regular basis, I decided I'd do what Guruji does for that much tme, supported. So Guruji went into Dwi Pāda Viparīta Daņḍāsana. He was facing the rope wall and just went into the pose, so there was no way that he could have seen me. I went to the chair and stayed in it for the pose, then afer about eight or ten minutes things began to burn. I'm stretching the quadriceps as he's stretched out his legs, I'm doing it on the chair, I'm 20, he's about 83 or 84. I tried to stay and stay, and afer 20 minutes when everything was burning to such a degree and I didn't know how to come out of that positon, Guruji went down. Because I didn't know how to come up, I stayed for another two or three minutes, then fnally had to pull myself out. The practce went on and he went on to do drop backs and other stuf. By then I was sitng down.

Afer the tming was over I went to him and told him what had happened. He had a beautful, hearty laugh and said, ”Now I'm ageing, I forgot to come down out of the pose!”. What looks like 20 minutes of practce on the outside, there's something diferent happening inside. It's not like you are just structurally holding that positon, which I had tried to do, but something inside, the scuba dive that he would take in that apparent structure.

SQ: Ofen in his practce, his stopwatch was always present, in his hand or nearby, somewhere that he could see it. He never used it for accumulaton. He wasn't accumulatng a beter, bigger, brighter, fuller anything – he wasn't trying to gain more minutes, more muscle, more breath. On a certain day of the week, he would do his backbend practce and in his later age he would use props. That merely meant he used long tmings as well. He would do the same pose over the same props, always on a Thursday, and he told us that the reason he used the stopwatch was so that he could watch his internal state, when restlessness or a change in his mind –state would arise – that's why he used the clock. Everybody else tmes themselves, like a race. But he used it to see the change in his internal state.

Once, I remember he had done a long practce and it seemed to me at least half of it was dedicated to the Sarvāngāsana positons. Setu Bandha, Halāsana, plus Sarvāngāsana. This was afer having done some other work as well, and that period of tme would have been at least an hour in the Sarvāngāsana positons. He came out of that practce and afer Śavāsana he went to go back home, he had his dot over his elbow, and as he was startng to walk out he turned around, looked straight at me and said, ”You know, what I do doesn't mater. It's what I don't do, that's what's important”. This has been the biggest lesson that just contnues; these very simple things, very simple observatons, the fact that he talked about the use of his cloth. The fact that for him, what was important was what it was that he wasn't doing. These were important lessons for all of us – which aren't given out in the classes or the books. It's just his pure experience.

RM: Guruji got absorbed in the pose. His practce or his Sādhanā, was his Īśvara Praṇidhāna, his surrender to God. Paxt, would you like to talk about Guruji's devoton to God?

PL: When we were in Tirupat with him at the feet of Lord Venkateswara, it was normal to see him in that grade of absorpton at the feet of the Lord. I will always remember those partcular moments when he was there completely inside – I thought he was leaving his faith, his devoton, to his family god. I was surprised when I saw him in a similar way in front of Moreneta in Monserrat, the Virgin Mary statue in Catalonia. When he was in front of her, he was also like this – concentrated inside, looking inwards and in a full state of concentraton. I saw the same in France in the cathedral of Chartres, or in Notre Dame in Paris. I saw it in Spain in the cathedral of Toledo – the same attude of respect towards the Christan church, the Virgin Mary. never forget that face, that state, that light, coming from him, and that state of absorpton"

In Jerusalem at the Holy Sepulchre, afer queuing we were inside and I will never forget that face, that state, that light, coming from him, and that state of absorpton there with the hands holding the palms in front of the chest, how he was living that moment. The watchman, the keeper who was there for the queue, was stopping the people from coming in because he didn't want to interrupt that state that he was seeing in Guruji. He stopped everyone untl Guruji bowed and got ready to leave. That was clear proof for me that when he was saying that any way going towards the summit of the hill is a good way – all the ways are good, all the religions bring to the same God. He was really living that in day-to-day life.

RM: Pandu, you were at the Insttute with Guruji right from the start, you would have a lot of visitors coming to the Insttute, people from all classes, backgrounds. Anything you would like to say about how Guruji would greet them?

PR: Normally, Guruji used to come to the library by 2.30 or 3pm and I used to come at the same tme. Whoever came to see Guruji would sit near my table. I used to brief him and tell him who had come to see him, then he would ask them to come down. Then they would meet him. Sometmes he would be writng leters. He would meet people between 3-6pm. Afer 6pm, he would go to the hall for classes to either help or do his own practce.

RM: I remember an incident when there was a student from Mumbai who wanted to visit Guruji. She was a patent with Parkinson's, old and could barely walk. Her son said she suddenly had this desire to meet Guruji and they didn't have an appointment but decided to go there anyway. At this tme, Guruji would have been in his 90s. The son met Pandu, who told him Guruji was in the library. Since she can't walk down, they said they would take a chance and wait. The old lady was possibly 25 or 30 years younger than Guruji. Afer some tme Guruji came up and met that lady. Afer a few days she passed away but the son said that the joy he was able to give his mother. It just shows how much compassion and value that Guruji had for every human life.

RM: Iyengar yoga is famous for its therapeutc aspects. Raya, could you explain what was happening in the therapy classes? There would be 70-90 patents with all kinds of problems – how was that managed?

RUD: The class tming was either 4-6pm or 6-8pm on Wednesdays. Typically, when we started, we would have a writen sequence. Geetaji would have spoken with the patent and would have prepared a sequence that we would try to go through. When it came to Guruji, he didn't have to look at a paper to see what was wrong with a person. He could see the person and he could see the problem, the difcultes, the limitatons, all in one. He would go from one end of the hall to the other. Typically, if there is a partcular assistant, he would quickly come there, look at the person, see how they’re helping that person and just say, ”Do this way, not this way”. It was diferent levels of correctons, adjustments, inputs. Before you know, he's gone to work on some other people and from that corner he has an eye on you to see if you're doing whatever he's told you properly.

"There would be so many non-verbal things going on. You can't put it into words – he would just show you."

There was a heart patent and they were in Pūrvotānāsana. He took a blanket and said, fold it this way and put in under his back in a partcular positon. I remember the way his hands used to move, how to fold it. There would be so many nonverbal things going on. You can't put it into words – he would just show you.

JB: One of the experiences when we were on the trips abroad, Guruji would just walk into a room and look at a person far away and say, that person has a problem with the spine or something like that. There was one instance where he walked into the class and everybody was in Jānu Sīrṣāsana He saw one man struggling, so he just went up to him and said, ”Remove your t-shirt”. He removed his t-shirt and there was a piece of fesh missing from his spine. It had been excavated because that person had had cancer in that region. The man is clothed, Guruji walks into the room, he picks out that person. This was his divine sort of vision with which he could see from a distance what was wrong. We have seen it also in the mega classes that he conducted.

RM: When Guruji taught such large numbers, how did you get his personal atenton?

JB: If you really wanted his atenton, all you did was not follow what he was saying. In a group of people who didn't know him who would come to class, he would immediately catch the person