The Abhijata Sridhar Iyengar Yoga Convention marked Abhi Sridhar’s first time in Australia. It was also the first Iyengar Convention since Abhi’s grandfather, Mr B.K.S. Iyengar, passed away at the age of 95 in August of last year.
Attended by over 350 people, the event was staged by the Iyengar Association of Australia and was a great success because of the hard work of many people. I was very fortunate to volunteer at the convention. The venue was beautiful, the yoga sessions were vigorous, the snacks were great and it was also heartening to see attendees donating so generously to a fund for Nepal.
In writing about this convention there were many aspects that would be worth speaking to, but I will speak to Abhi’s words. Her words struck me, it was English but not as I know it, for Abhi spoke a better English – the way she communicated during her teaching somehow enhanced the sound and enriched the meaning of our language, such that it was possible to experience something so familiar in a whole new way.
The Abhijata Sridhar Iyengar Yoga Convention marked Abhi Sridhar’s first time in Australia. It was also the first Iyengar Convention since Abhi’s grandfather, Mr B.K.S. Iyengar, passed away at the age of 95 in August of last year.
Attended by over 350 people, the event was staged by the Iyengar Association of Australia and was a great success because of the hard work of many people. I was very fortunate to volunteer at the convention. The venue was beautiful, the yoga sessions were vigorous, the snacks were great and it was also heartening to see attendees donating so generously to a fund for Nepal.
In writing about this convention there were many aspects that would be worth speaking to, but I will speak to Abhi’s words. Her words struck me, it was English but not as I know it, for Abhi spoke a better English – the way she communicated during her teaching somehow enhanced the sound and enriched the meaning of our language, such that it was possible to experience something so familiar in a whole new way.
‘You are not here to do. You are here to learn.’
As a teacher Abhi was tender and fierce. She missed nothing and involved the whole group by demanding answers to her questions, not moving on until we had responded with a coherent yes or no.
Throughout each session she made adjustments and used the room, utilising the whole the room. When it came to sirsasana she called all those who were not planning to do headstand to speak to her out the front. ‘Why are you not doing sirsasana?’ she would say and then listen to the answer, respond and send the practitioner away. ‘Next.’ At each stage of each practice Abhi’s focus was on the practitioner, at getting the most out of each individual.
‘You learn through me, from you.’
Abhi was firm in her instructions but also extended a severe and enduring respect to everybody in the room, reiterating notions of independence and personal responsibility throughout the weekend. Attendees were not students but ‘practitioners’. The most experienced teachers in the room were not senior practitioners, but ‘sensitive practitioners’.
Abhi’s delivery was always clear, always consistent. ‘That is wrong,’ she would say. Or: ‘Do not do this.’ Or: ‘That is your position. Got it?’ ‘You are cheating,’ she would say often. ‘Do not cheat.’ And this during Sunday’s pranayama session: ‘Whether you like yourself or not you have to be with yourself. I have told you what is to be done. So you will proceed.’
‘Every cell must be in its place.’
The importance of being firmly founded, in having tadasana feet in every pose, for example, was something Abhi always came back to. She explained how only from a position of being on solid ground was it possible to succeed.
In the same way Abhi talked about how each asana is a manifestation of the mental being – if your mind is shaky you cannot hold balancing or twisting poses. She had a clear way of explaining how to deal with these mental disturbances. It is not possible to pretend, she explained. What she said was: ‘Your consciousness can not see yourself, the seer, and the outside world at the same time.’
‘Raise the chest is just shorthand for expand the intelligence’
The teaching of philosophy and practice were not separated from each other in Abhi’s teaching. She made it possible to understand the more complex or obscure philosophical points because of the way she was able to communicate them in the moment. It struck me that given the diversity of attendees – each with different needs, expectations and tolerances – keeping everybody engaged (and in many ways entertained) was a pretty enormous feat.
‘If you are thinking about your memories you are not in the present moment.’
‘Memory can be a friend,’ Abhi said paraphrasing Patanjali, ‘but it can also be an enemy.’ This was also a theme she returned to throughout the weekend. ‘Memories are the past,’ she said. ‘The past is over. If you are thinking about your memories you are not in the present moment.’
Through each practice Abhi often talked about the hazard of becoming mechanical in your yoga practice. She talked about how as practitioners attendees have memories of certain poses but she encouraged us to think about how every day, every practice, the mind is different and the body is different.
‘Think about the tadasana that you learn today so it becomes ingrained,’ she said. ‘Practice so it becomes natural and learn the stability of the pose. Fluidity and stability should go together hand in hand.’
‘The prospect of svasana is a beautiful thing. I agree.’
There was a rigour to each practice and the sequence of practices as a whole at this convention. Physically the asana sessions were intense and psychologically Abhi challenged and sometimes chastised us. But always Abhi showed through her compassion, intelligence, tenderness, ferocity and sometimes even her words the possibilities of Iyengar yoga as a way forward for everyone and anyone – as a tool for health, wellbeing, and maybe even transcendence.
Abhi reminded us that the work we do in all our asanas is to prepare ourselves or pranayama. Pranayama was a focus of the weekend and taught for two of the sessions. During the first pranayama session there was a very beautiful moment when Abhi talked about how the Self and the Body meet during pranayama, during breathing. She went on to tell the group how it is like the breath in brings the child to the mother, and the mother has to hold the child before letting the child go.
‘The asana is not a position, it is a situation’
I was fortunate to have the opportunity to practice yoga under Abhi’s instruction. It will take me a long time to really process much of the teaching and to incorporate it into my yoga but something does stand out from one of the sessions I did. I really noticed how in that space, in that context, I made more of my pose than I might in an ordinary class.
It was in Ardha Chandrasana – I listened to Abhi and rotated my chest like she told me to and also held in my hip. When I did this my head turned and stayed turned and I was there, balancing like that and looking up. From there I could see the high white ceilings and the blue and yellow mosaic of the dome inside the hall. But I wasn’t looking at these things. And I wasn’t thinking about whether or not I was balancing. I was simply in the pose. I was simply in the situation.
Later, I wondered about this glimpse I had of the potential of the body. I wondered about how I could be so different in a pose in one situation compared to another. It was interesting to me because it was the same pose, the same position – and yet totally different. How could I have held steady when normally I cannot? It happened as if by magic. But it was not magic. It was yoga.
While it is true that the Abhijata Sridhar Iyengar Yoga Convention was about yoga and not about words, perhaps some of Abhi’s words capture the spirit of the event. Because as much as it was a weekend of asanas and philosophy, the convention was also about honouring Mr Iyengar’s own life, work and teaching. As Abhi said at the beginning of the first session, Mr Iyengar lives on through us and through Iyengar yoga, and in this sense this event was quietly about honouring the past, yes, but also about moving onwards and upwards.
And Abhi did move us.
