Reflections of Guruji from RIMYI on His 103rd Birth Anniversary This article contains memories of teachers Rajvi Mehta, Jawahar Bangera, Pandurang Rao, Patxi Lizardi, Raya Uma Datta and Stephanie Quirk, who have all spent a lot of time with Guruji outside of the classes. The interview was conducted by Rajvi Mehta on 14 December 2021 on the Iyengar Yoga Official YouTube channel.
Left to right: Rajvi Mehta, Jawahar Bangera, Stephanie Quirk, Patxi Lizardi, Pandurang Rao, Raya Uma Datta
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 time 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 Datta started as a child and enacted a play during Guruji's 80th birthday. After that, Raya spent whole days at RIMYI for long periods of time. Rajvi Mehta is a senior teacher based in Mumbai, who studied with Guruji since 1979. She is editor of RIMYI's magazine, Yoga Rahasya. 4
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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, until 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, sometimes 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. After that Guruji told me I could go to his home where he was also teaching, with space for just five or six people. That is when I started my yoga journey. RM: Jawahar, Guruji was quite a disciplinarian, his practice was very regular. When Guruji went abroad, what happened with his practice? In 1984, you went with him for the first time. What were the schedules like – when and how did he practice?
JB: There was no change in his practice. Once he was settled in a place his practice was almost the same. Early morning, 4 or 4.30am, he would have his coffee, practice his prāņāyāma and then he would be out to practice by himself. If we were around him, we would all practice 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" After the practice was over he would have his coffee again and he would tell us, "The way you are practising, 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 notice 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.
he didn't upset his schedule. If there was time, 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 practice? PL: Nothing at all. His body was his prop and he was never missing practice. He was very strict on that duty towards his practice. The practices with him were sometimes, for me particularly, a little 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 after Rishikesh, in maybe 1997, we went to Mussoorie, a long journey on buses.
Of course there were very tight schedules, so we would always be ready with a light breakfast. Mostly, the host would provide this but there were times 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 difficult 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 time 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
Guruji during a visit to Rishikesh Iyengar Yoga News No. 40 SPRING 2022
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We reached the place we were staying and there was a yoga room. I wanted to practise, so I went to the yoga room and Guruji was there in strong Setu Bandha. I started my practice – this pose, that pose – Guruji was still in Setu Bandha. I changed again and again and he was still 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 after a long journey”, and he left. No props were needed for him during his travels and he was doing a wonderful practice. 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”.
After the timing was over I went to him and told him what had happened. He had a beautiful, hearty laugh and said, ”Now I'm ageing, I forgot to come down out of the pose!”. What looks like 20 minutes of practice on the outside, there's something different happening inside. It's not like you are just structurally holding that position, which I had tried to do, but something inside, the scuba dive that he would take in that apparent structure. SQ: Often in his practice, his stopwatch was always present, in his hand or nearby, somewhere that he could see it. He never used it for accumulation. He wasn't accumulating a better, 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 practice and in his
RM: Raya and Stephanie, we have seen pictures of Guruji practising from 2014. Do you want to say something about the time he was doing this practice? RUD: His connection 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 after I'd started practising on a more regular basis, I decided I'd do what Guruji does for that much time, 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 after 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 after 20 minutes when everything was burning to such a degree and I didn't know how to come out of that position, Guruji went down. Because I didn't know how to come up, I stayed for another two or three minutes, then finally had to pull myself out. The practice went on and he went on to do drop backs and other stuff. By then I was sitting down.
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later age he would use props. That merely meant he used long timings 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 times themselves, like a race. But he used it to see the change in his internal state. Once, I remember he had done a long practice and it seemed to me at least half of it was dedicated to the Sarvāngāsana positions. Setu Bandha, Halāsana, plus Sarvāngāsana. This was after having done some other work as well, and that period of time would have been at least an hour in the Sarvāngāsana positions. He came out of that practice and after Śavāsana he went to go back home, he had his doti over his elbow, and as he was starting to walk out he turned around, looked straight at me and said, ”You know, what I do doesn't matter. It's what I don't do, that's what's important”. This has been the biggest lesson that just continues; these very simple things, very simple observations, 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.
or in Notre Dame in Paris. I saw it in Spain in the cathedral of Toledo – the same attitude of respect towards the Christian church, the Virgin Mary.
"I will never forget that face, that state, that light, coming from him, and that state of absorption" In Jerusalem at the Holy Sepulchre, after queuing we were inside and I will never forget that face, that state, that light, coming from him, and that state of absorption 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 until 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: Guruji got absorbed in the pose. His practice or his Sādhanā, was his Īśvara Praṇidhāna, his surrender to God. Paxti, would you like to talk about Guruji's devotion to God? PL: When we were in Tirupati with him at the feet of Lord Venkateswara, it was normal to see him in that grade of absorption at the feet of the Lord. I will always remember those particular moments when he was there completely inside – I thought he was leaving his faith, his devotion, 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 concentration. I saw the same in France in the cathedral of Chartres,
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RM: Pandu, you were at the Institute with Guruji right from the start, you would have a lot of visitors coming to the Institute, 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 time. 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. Sometimes he would be writing letters. He would meet people between 3-6pm. After 6pm, he would go to the hall for classes to either help or do his own practice. RM: I remember an incident when there was a student from Mumbai who wanted to visit Guruji. She was a patient 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 time, 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. After some time Guruji came up and met that lady. After 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 therapeutic aspects. Raya, could you explain what was happening in the therapy classes? There would be 70-90 patients with all kinds of problems – how was that managed? RUD: The class timing was either 4-6pm or 6-8pm on Wednesdays. Typically, when we started, we would have a written sequence. Geetaji would have spoken with the patient 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 difficulties, the limitations, all in one. He would 8
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go from one end of the hall to the other. Typically, if there is a particular 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 different levels of corrections, 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 patient and they were in Pūrvottānāsana. He took a blanket and said, fold it this way and put in under his back in a particular position. 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 flesh 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 attention? JB: If you really wanted his attention, 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
– you're not paying attention. He would ask the person, ”Is there something wrong? Why are you not able to follow?” That was his compassion. Somebody didn't understand the language, he understood the accent was different and the person didn't follow. If that person didn't follow he went up to them, or he would bring them up to the stage and again if he would not follow he would ask somebody to translate to help the person. He always saw that everyone benefited from the session. Nobody went home dissatisfied. RM: In the therapy classes, there were at least 35 assistants, and each were possibly handling one or two patients. How could he read through the patient and see what was happening?
SQ: The medical class was always very interesting to be in it before it started. It was a very quiet thing, everyone was waiting. Some of the patients would turn up and get their initial poses ready but generally everything would be very quiet, until Guruji entered the room, and then more or less even the bolsters stood to attention. Everyone was very aware of him working and he would work often quite strongly, quite loudly, we would know exactly where he was in the room, and he would go from one person to the other, doing that miracle of knowing.
knew precisely what their sequence was because that's what he gave to them last week. He had this memory bank of what work he had done with them last week, plus the other 50 people in the room. He wasn't writing that down. The whole purpose of having the pieces of paper in the room was so that Geeta could be sure that the assistants would follow what was needed to be done – the Iyengars didn't need those bits of paper. Guruji would be very consistent in the work, and then every now and then it was as though he would see a change in the student and he would change their work. As the night wore on, he worked more and more with the patients, not so vociferous, strong or commanding with his voice, just quietly moving about. Often, he would hum to himself. He'd be working with somebody adjusting them, working with them hands on, not instructing assistants but hands-on on that patient, softly humming to himself. There was this part of him that was constantly in touch with an inner flow. I would come across that often in the library when he was quietly working away doing some writing. He obviously got some deep nourishment for himself from the process. People don't hum to themselves unless they're in a state of deep contentment, deep saṃtoṣa. I thought this was amazing for somebody so extraordinary, dynamic, with such a strong presence and powerful practice. Yet, there was this sweet, musical hum in the background when he was working. RM: I have always been amazed that Guruji has done so much, but whenever we saw him in the library he was always relaxed – you never saw him stressed. He was literally in the moment. There wasn't any thought, I have to do this or I have done this. With him things just flowed.
Photo of Raya Uma Datta: Geoffrey Fielding. To watch the full discussion go to the Iyengar Yoga Official YouTube channel: https://tinyurl.com/2p8c6ye8
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