competing with all other bodies in speed and strength. There are today
in India yoga "Olympics" where yoga practitioners can compete with
one another. I do not decry this. In my life, I have given many demon
strations around the world in an attempt to popularize yoga. While this
was yoga as an exhibition of art, the essence of yoga is not about ex
ternal display but internal cultivation. Yoga is beautiful as well as Di
vine. Ultimately, the yogi searches for the inner light as well as inner
beauty, infinity, and liberation. Once I was called "Iron Iyengar" by a
journalist, and I had to correct him that I am not hard like iron, but
hard like a diamond. The hardness of a diamond is part of its useful
ness, but its true value is in the light that shines through it.
How then should we approach and practice asana in a way that
leads to health and purity? What is the way that leads from flexibility
on to divinity? The Yoga Sutras by the sage Patanjali provides the foun
dation for the yogic life. Interestingly it has only four verses that deal
specifically with asana. Each mention then is all the more worthy of
close reading and deep understanding. Patanjali said that asanas bring
perfection in body, beauty in form, grace, strength, compactness, and
the hardness and brilliance of a diamond. His basic definition of asana
is, "Sthira sukham asanam." Shtira means firm, fixed, steadfast, en
during, lasting, serene, calm, and composed. Sukha means delight,
comfort, alleviation, and bliss. Asanam is the Sanskrit plural for asana.
The presentation of an asana should therefore be undisturbed, unper
turbed, and unruffled at all levels of body, mind, and soul. Or, as I have
lranslated it before, "Asana is perfect firmness of body, steadiness of
intelligence, and benevolence of spirit."
Ultimately, when all the sheaths of the body and all the parts of a
person coordinate together while performing an asana, you experience
lhl· cessation of the fluctuations of the mind and also freedom from af
flictions. In asana you must align and harmonize the physical body and
all the layers of the subtle emotional, mental, and spiritual body. This
is integration. But how does one align these sheathes and l'XJWril·nn·
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