Report From Bellur – Michael Lucey

WHAT’S NEW WITH THE BKSSN TRUST?

BY MICHAEL LUCEY

Students from the high school and pre-university college provide a yoga demonstration for visitors. Photo: Michael Lucey

Toward the end of the Yoganusasanam intensive with Geeta Iyengar in Pune, the organizers held an auction for various banners that had been on display around the room. All the proceeds, we learned, would be donated to the Trust established by B.K.S. Iyengar to improve and enhance conditions in and around his birthplace. On Friday, Dec. 12, 2014, two days after the end of the intensive, a group of participants from around the world made its way to Bellur, Guruji’s native village, about an hour’s drive from the Bangalore Airport. We visited the village itself as well as the campus of the Bellur Krishnamachar & Seshamma Smaraka Niddhi (BKSSN) Trust, set up by Guruji in 2003.

Guruji’s first philanthropic project in Bellur dates to 1967, when he built a primary school in the village. That school is now run by the Indian government. The 16-acre campus of the BKSSN Trust is a short distance from the village. Early activities of the Trust included the construction of a yoga hall over the primary school in the village. That hall also serves as an additional classroom and as a place for village social functions. The Trust also built a huge water storage tank to meet the needs of the village for clean drinking water.

In the early years of the Trust, a hospital, a high school, offices, and a guest house were built on its own nearby campus. The Trust runs the school and provides uniforms, books, materials, and a daily meal to the students enrolled there. Students come from Bellur itself as well as the surrounding region. More recently, the campus has seen the addition of a pre-university college, where students who have finished high school can continue their studies. In May 2014, Guruji attended the inauguration of a new technical vocational training and research center on the Trust’s lands.

Exterior view of the yoga hall under construction on the Bellur Trust campus Photo: Michael Lucey

Construction projects currently underway include a large yoga hall with accompanying accommodations and dining facilities.

The program arranged for those of us visiting on Dec. 12 began with a tour of the site of the new yoga hall, which will be big enough for a group of 300 students to practice together. After touring the site and hearing about various features in its design, we were taken to the village, where we attended pujas at three temples, including the Patanjali temple, built in 2004 with the support of Guruji and his family, the Hanuman temple, and also the ancient Rama temple, which Guruji helped to restore.

After our tour of the village, we returned to the Trust’s campus to attend a program prepared for us by the administrators of the Trust and the students and teachers of the high school and the pre-university college. At the beginning of the program, we watched an interview with Guruji from May 2014 while he was visiting the campus. Then the students gave a truly remarkable yoga demonstration as well as music and dance performances.

After the school program, the staff of the technical training center demonstrated for us the prototype of a mini power tiller that they had developed. Useful for small farmers, this prototype was made at a cost of Rs.17,000 (approximately $273), whereas imported models cost Rs. 100,000 (approximately $1,605).

The program concluded with a lunch provided for us by our attentive and generous hosts.

The BKSSN Trust has an ambitious set of aims for Bellur and the surrounding region. In the area of education, its aims have been to improve existing schools and build new ones, creating better prospects for the young people of the region. Its social

Interior view of the yoga hall under construction on the Bellur Trust campus Photo: Michael Lucey

goals are to raise the general standard of living, provide clean drinking water, and help create awareness about the latest developments in agriculture. Its goals in the area of health have been to improve public health and establish healthcare centers. Finally its cultural goals have been to promote the technical and artistic skills of rural people in the field of traditional handicrafts and other cottage industries. It was wonderful to experience this vision in action and see the latest addition to the project taking place: a yoga center that will bring more visitors to the region, enhancing the economy and creating new forms of cultural exchange. I hope that many IYNAUS members will have the chance to visit the area and practice yoga in the new hall in the years ahead.

I also want to thank all of the yoga centers, teachers, and students across the United States who made time in late 2014 and early 2015 to hold fundraisers for the Bellur Trust. As I write, contributions are still coming in from across the country, from Unity Woods Yoga Center in Washington, D.C., to Clear Yoga in Rhinebeck, New York, from the Southern California Regional Association to the Ann Arbor community, from Rose Yoga Center in Ashland, Oregon, to Bija Yoga in San Francisco. Many individuals have made contributions both large and small as well. Every contribution helps us sustain a connection with Guruji’s vision for uplifting the place of his birth. We hope to encourage a strong yearly tradition of benefit classes and workshops for Bellur around the time of Guruji’s birthday, so that IYNAUS and its members continue participating in this remarkable project as it goes on unfolding.

Michael Lucey is president of IYNAUS and a professor at UC Berkeley. He teaches yoga at the Iyengar Yoga Institute of San Francisco and around the San Francisco Bay Area.