World famous yoga guru BKS Iyengar dies aged 96

Celebrity yoga guru Bellur Krishnamachar Sundararaja Iyengar, the founder of Iyengar yoga, has passed away in a Pune hospital aged 96. Iyengar was put on dialysis last Sunday at the Prayag Hospital following renal failure. A report in The Hindu yesterday quoted one of his physicians, Dr. Prayag, as saying that despite a second dialysis cycle, the yoga guru had not shown any improvement and was not responding well to the treatment. It added that his heart was weak and that his kidneys were not functioning normally, a condition further aggravated by complications owing to advanced age. [caption id=“attachment_1672183” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  BKS Iyengar in this file photo.[/caption] He had earlier been diagnosed with heart pumping failure and had suffered two heart attacks in 1998 and 2000. Iyengar was born on December 14, 1918 and according to his official website, was a victim of malaria, typhoid and tuberculosis in his childhood. The site adds that he was introduced to yoga at the age of 16 by his Guru Sri T. Krishnamacharya. He was sent to teach yoga in Pune at the age of 18. On 26 January 1973, he laid the foundation of the Ramamani Iyengar Memorial Yoga Institute (RIMYI) in Pune, named after his wife Smt. Ramamani Iyengar. The institute was inaugurated on 19 January 1975. Widely considered to be the father of modern yoga, and crediting with popularising it in the West, he was awarded the Padma Shri in 1991, the Padma Bhushan in 2002 and the Padma Vibhushan in 2014. He was named one of the 100 most influential people in the world by Time Magazine in 2004. His first book, Light on Yoga, was published in 1966 and has been translated into 18 languages. In 1998, he taught 800 of his students for a week on the occasion of his 80th birthday at Pune. Again, in the year 2000, he conducted a special course for senior “Iyengar Yoga” teachers from nearly 40 countries. Some of his more famous students include Sachin Tendulkar, Rahul Dravid, Naseerudin Shah, Meera Nair, Murli Manohar Joshi and the Queen mother of Belgium. He also carried out classes in military Academies, the police Force (carrying out special classes for commandos) and prisons in Israel