Insights and Words of Wisdom for Teachers by BKS Iyengar

Your job is not just to say what you think but to rethink about what you have said; at the same time weigh whether the said words have got imprinted in the students' minds and bodies. Monitor your words to fit into their frame of mind, body and understanding. Do not comment on the presentations of the students, but observe and look whether they respond to your words while they are doing. While teaching, look at the needs and the capacity of the student's mind and body and use only such words which they can understand. In case they do not understand your catchwords then demonstrate how those catchwords are translated into your body by demonstrating on yourself.

Do not unnecessarily waste time in explaining more than what is needed. Do not berate more than the students can take.

Qualities of a teacher

The teacher must be as soft as a petal as well as hard as a diamond depending upon what the circumstances command or demand. Softness alone cannot make one a yoga teacher nor hardness make a good teacher. Compassion and vigilance have to go hand in hand. The teacher may appear to be soft externally but must act like a dynamite to correct the wrong at once. A teacher who overlooks the mistakes is not a teacher. If the mistakes are overlooked then the wrong acts swallows one's energy and a great deal of time is lost in unlearning. So build up the qualities needed to become a teacher. All students cannot become teachers. Some can instruct but not in the real sense of teaching. Teaching demands qualities like religiosity, friendliness, compassion, determination, discipline and at times indifference. All these qualities should be built up to learn and cultivated in the art of teaching.

Humans get carried away by emotions. So the teacher has to keep in mind the emotional nature of the students whilst explaining intellectually. The teacher who fails to observe the confusion in the students, who is unable to build up confidence and develop the sense of earnestness in them is not a teacher at all.

The teacher has to nurture the minds of the students sooner or later to peep in on the entire body, both inside and outside, in the practice of yoga. As the body is dormant, first learn to use words that awaken the intelligence of the body while teaching the asanas. This is possible only when you talk to your heart, so that you teach heart to heart and not from head to head. This is the real hidden quality of teaching.

The Art of Teaching

The art of teaching is a mixture of technique and human emotional qualities. If the technique is from the intellect of the head, the feel of the technique is to be from the intelligence of the heart. The techniques of yogic explanation should be on an expressive experiential level so that they become really subjective. The other arts have objective techniques, but yoga has only subjective techniques. Objective techniques are views external, where as the subjective techniques are the dialogues from body to mind, mind to body then from mind to mind and then heart to heart. Man cannot be trained like birds or dogs, he can only be educated. Yoga is an educative art and science as it helps in culturing the body, the mind as well the self. All expressions of yoga are in this triangular field of body, mind and self in place and space, and space in place. The teacher has to talk to his or her own heart before using his or her head. The teacher has to observe each movement of the students and then express the words so that the students' minds catch and put into action the expressions of the teacher.

Know that the brain exists in the head of man, but the mind exists everywhere in him. For example, if a needle pricks the foot, you react at once. The brain is far away but you reach instantly as the hidden mind at once surfaces there.

As a teacher, I show how to teach and do; and as a student, I go on as an obedient student towards the teacher, though the teacher may be my student. I show both ways of approach. As a student I do as a raw student so that the teacher get, a chance to guide me to do in the right way and I imitate the teacher's words on the asana so that the teacher learns what distortions it creates in wrong or casual expressions.

On learning and practice

Many say or think that the process of learning is easy, whereas I say that "learning" is not that easy and to maintain what is learnt is still more difficult. (laughter). You laugh at this statement, but truthfully speaking it is the pride of limited knowledge which stops or restrains you from "learning". In order to learn, one has to be innocent, one has to sober one's intelligence. You see, watch, notice or understand only within the frame of your intellectual mind, which has its own limits, whereas, I keep my mind and intelligence open to see what few things flash forth, crossing my limited mind and intelligence. Due to this open-mindedness I learnt to see thousands of things flashing when I am practicing myself as a "1earner". A Learner" in me learnt to show or express through my available medium -the body -things that are simple, complicated, intricate, hidden and latent in each asana and made me to be a teacher. If you want to be a teacher you may have to scratch your head for a long time to trace the hidden qualities of yoga to come to the right grip on the asana.

Iyengar Yoga is not a brand. It is a quality. This qualitative yoga cannot be done like tasting different chocolates at the same time. One has to find out the skill in synchronizing the pranic energy of the body with the intellectual energy of the head and heart, or with the sharpness of the intelligence of the head and the heart with the right utilisation of pranic energy of the body!! One has to study and synchronise the intellectual intelligence and pranic energy in the body and mind and vice-versa. One has to synchronise these two to bring harmony between energy and intelligence, and intelligence and energy, whether it is in the arch of the foot, or the foot, toe, arm, wrist, finger or whatever . You need to have complete involvement in your teaching.

You need to have self-inquiry, self-criticism. As we judge the (I.Q.) Intelligence quotient or (E.Q.) emotional quotient, similarly, while practicing yoga, you need to have I.Q. - Intelligence Quotient, E.Q -Enquiry Quotient and S.Q - Spiritual Quotient. In the beginning, while learning one experiences 90% to 95% of words on physical matter, like joints, muscles; spine; arms, legs and so on, but as one advances words of matter are used less but intimacy of knowledge and awareness is brought to function more than the gross nature of the body.

Look at my friend! Did he connect his mind to the muscles about which I spoke. That is where the teacher's teaching plays the role: to make the student understand what is to be followed by the student. The teacher has to see, if he says, “Drop down so and so part", whether that part which has to be dropped down is attended by the pupils or not. If you impart 10% of what I give, later on you develop knowledge to construct further. Otherwise the enthusiasm and interest in the yogic line fades out, not only in you, but also in your students, By the grace of God, I have been practicing, teaching and learning from my own practice day in and day out for the last sixty years. I have not developed inertia in my practice. I love to go deep into the cave of my body. This is because I have a mind to learn while practicing. I do not practice for the sake of practice. I practice for the sake of learning, I am learning still, to know in what way, if I do, would it be still better than what I am doing now. I use the present to build up for future practice and at the same time I drop the present as it moves to the past. My practice inspires me to do research in my own work so that I penetrate and search further.

Being teachers, you do it for some time and you say, "I have no time to practice as I am tired from teaching." I do not feel the tiredness or monotony at all in my yogic practice. It is nothing but my love for my practice and nothing more. Similarly, if you devotedly practice daily without becoming a victim of the weather, of your body and mind, God will look after you, I am sure of this.

Education of the body takes a long time. Body does not obey your command soon. One may think that one has performed very well. But the body laughs because it says it cannot yield unless attended to and has been tuned and toned. The brain plays tricks as it is clever and calculative, while the mind is mostly innocent. Hence for the yogic practitioner and teacher brain and the mind has to say "you did correctly or not". Factually the mind follows immediately as the brain dictates. So learn to observe the ways of the brain and educate it to watch its behavior and adjust after reflection, so that the brain, the body and the mind co-ordinate with each other in harmony and concord.

We study the lifeless skeleton and we think we know the anatomy. It is all right as a theory. But as a practical approach one has to learn to observe by looking at the living individual's anatomical structure. This living anatomy is so different to that of the anatomy shown on dead skeletons. it opens lots of avenues to impart yogic movements to derive full benefit in a minimum time.

Also learn to study the investigative anatomical structure of the asanas and work out how you can use the actual anatomical structure of the body to fit in to the analytical anatomical structure of the asanas. Though you are getting it ready made from me. yet you have to think and investigate to bring these two sides of the anatomy to fit into your practice. It has taken me years to learn, unlearn and relearn to adjust the structure of the body to the structure of each asana. These adjustments do not come on a physical level, but on an intellectual enquiry along with mental alertness, attention and awareness. As we "rub" stones on each other to get light, I have rubbed and still rub the intellect of my head with the intellect of my heart to get light of knowledge from each asana.

As you tell the students that they have come to learn and therefore they have to listen to what you say, I say that though you are teachers become students here, as you are learning from me and learn with humbleness. My advice to raw students, “If a teacher comes to correct you’ll repeatedly, two or three times do not take it as an insult, but try”. If you do not do it, then have you not insulted the teacher who came to help you? So listen carefully. Do what the teacher says. Then a good rapport is built between the teacher and the taught.

Often, one takes it for granted that one has reached a certain level, but it may be on an explanation level with- out experiential feeling. By this intellectual fantasy, one may think one is very good, but this puts a block to one's inner growt1l. Here lies the failure in both teachers and students particularly in the field of yoga.

As a teacher, first get the feed back from your own practices in your own body and self. Then work out on your own what to give and how much to give, according to the calibre of the students. Do not experiment your ideas on your students but experiment on yourself to learn. Try on your own body before you try on some one else's body. Develop the foundation of each asana on yourselves.

On Teaching

Try to build up well from the bottom of the feet to cover the entire body up to the crown of the head and vice-versa. Then the linking of your words while imparting will never go wrong. As the water needs a vessel for storage and the vessel needs a floor, similarly, build up to construct words from the contact of the floor. so that the vessel (intelligence) reaches the content – the self.
If the brain the mind and the body of the students go back to their past grooves, the teacher should see with watchful eyes and recharge their brains and bodies and to bring them to the present by inspiring them with new presentations to lift them from that groove. Sometimes they remain inertia for too long and the cells loose their attention and memory or they may develop wrong memory and intelligence leading to wrong practices.

As teachers, you have to do some homework on how to work on your own in order to rejuvenate the students and make them fresh again. Second to second. millions and millions of cells are produced and generated to serve the life force and then they die. So learn to adjust the different parts of the body rhythmically and methodically so that the cellular system develops and functions well, with their own intelligence sending messages of correct alignment of the body for the intelligence to feel the right sense of exhilaration. The cells of the body send messages to the brain to look within; this "looking within" is reflection. This reflection helps to react \\rith correct adjustment. This re- action and adjustment is nothing but automatic reflective meditation. Sitting quietly in a lonely place allowing the mind to wander is not meditation. If the intelligence in your practice is full from the self to the skin and from the skin to the self, then it is meditation. If the intelligence is made to compartmentalise, know this as fluctuation. Though, it is necessary for a teacher to compartmentalise at the earlier stages, for students to grasp the parts of the body. Later, unite the compartmentalised intelligence as a total intelligence.

On Meditation

Meditation is the way of pacifying the senses of perception and then they are made to receive the reactions of actions and reflect on them. Then, they are made to turn inwards as watch dogs of the mind, so that the movements in mind, intelligence and consciousness are inversed to trace the source of existence of the life force, the causal sheath - the jivatman. It is nothing but yoking the principles of nature towards the self, so that they get integrated with the self. To earn this total passiveness is not an easy path. Yet it is possible through yogic means to earn this quality. Know that if the passivity in the subtle senses (intelligence, ahamkara and consciousness) is disturbed the tongue becomes active. Then it is not a meditation state but a fluctuation state. The tongue is a perceptive sense, when it is taut, passivity is lost, the brain becomes active, and meditation is lost.

Receptivity in the tongue, intelligence and consciousness even in dynamic action is meditation.

See the beauty of the ways of the mind's functioning. You think of legs and you forget your fingers. If you think of your fingers you forget your knee and hips. This is how it plays in the beginning of learning. When practice gets matured, one can workout all of the adjustments of the body, mind, energy and intelligence in one go in an asana or in the stance of pranayama.

As a teacher, if I say 'move' you stay and if I say 'stay' you move. The moment I said 'Virabhadrasana II', you all want to do, though I meant this as a future action. That is known as non-presence of mind. You do not listen carefully to the teacher's words. Similarly, you should know that YOUR pupils do not listen to you. Brain moves either to the future or to the past. Often it happens that when the body is in the future, the mind moves into the past and when the mind is in the future, the body is in the past. This cannot happen in your yogic practice. You have to build up tile energy of the body and the intelligence of the brain to be in the state of the present either jointly and in action and motion, or inaction and motion.

Students should be told not to think while they are being taught, as the thinking part is loaded on the teacher. What is the use of thinking when the subject is unknown and new? So tell them beforehand that the thinking part is the teacher's role and the doing part is their job. It is the duty of the teacher to tell them that they should just do what the teachers are teaching and guiding. The students should keep their thinking process aside while following the teachers explanations. When they go home and when they are alone then they can think on the subject and do accordingly. They can have discussion after understanding and put that into practice.

Teach them slowly, how to balance and adjust the intelligence accurately and evenly in their bodies in their practices of yoga. Here, the teacher also has to rub with his intelligence, as to how to use it to come in contact with each and every part (fibres, tendons, ligaments, muscles, joints and skin) of the body. First feel the physical attention. Then feel the length and width of your body and stretch your intelligence so that it covers the entire width of the body. As the body-pervading intelligence penetrates further, your attention moves towards consciousness and self, then to the big Self. While doing the asanas the conscious intelligence has to involute and the body intelligence has to evolute. The pranic energy of the body being the intelligence of the body, it has to move up like lightening, while the consciousness and intelligence of the body moves to penetrate the hidden space in the inner and interior bodies of the self. This is the union of the three, the pranic energy, intelligence and consciousness into a single unit. When I practice, I move and adjust my intelligence and awareness in such a way that both soak in from the periphery towards the core of the body. This guides the body what it has, to do to unite with its source - the eternal Self.

There are lots of black holes or dark parts in the body where the light of intelligence cannot penetrate at all. Our mind does not reach up to that depth. This dullness with no sensation is mistaken for mastery and success.

If yogic practice does not project the light of intelligence in the body then several dents are formed from within. These dents are nothing but the storehouses of ignorance, which cause dysfunction and disorders of the body and mind. Neither the intelligence nor the energy penetrates those areas. Hence, the means of yoga are meant to make the intelligence and energy to flow as suppliers of the life force. If you create avenues for energy and intelligence to flow with ease, then you are doing asana as yogasana (auspicious practice) and not as bhogasana (pleasure seeking practice).

^ back to top ^

<< back to reading main