Two Gurus

Wow, what a week. Over the the past week, there has been widespread rioting in my hometown and two of my gurus have passed on. Since the killing of Michael Brown and the rioting/looting that has followed has been widely covered in other areas and it increases my anxiety dramatically when I let myself obsess about it, I'll focus this post of the loss of my two gurus, neither of whom I ever met personally but both had major influences on my life. While from the outset, it would appear that they had almost nothing in common, these two men were both fierce individuals who greatly influenced their respective fields. RIP Jay Adams and Sri BKS Iyengar.

In my life, before yoga, there was skateboarding and Jay Adams is skateboarding.  As the tattoo on his chest indicates, Adams was 100% skateboarder.  As skateboarding has become so mainstream and dare I say accepted in today's world, it can be hard to believe that one small group of teenage boys, the Z-boys of Dogtown, were widely responsible for bringing skateboarding to the masses.  If it wasn't for Jay and the rest of the Z-Boys, skateboarding would probably still be limited to a very small group of surfers.  Additionally, what Jay Adams brought was the the determination to be himself and the attitude to go for it 100%. From whenever he started skating until the day he died he did not quit. As he famously said, "You didn't quit skateboarding because you got old, you got old because you quit skateboarding." Thanks to him, I continue to skate as much as I can. Yes, it has, to some extent, kept me from getting old.  Hopefully in whatever afterlife he finds himself in, Jay is continuing to rip up an empty pool.

Just as Adams personifies skateboarding, nobody better represents yoga than BKS Iyengar.  When I started practicing yoga, I took two classes a week at the Yoga Circle in Chicago.  The Yoga Circle was and is one of the Midwest's premier Iyengar yoga studio. Thanks to the excellent teachers there, notably Gabriel Halpern, Patrina Dobish, and Bob Wittinghill,  I received a vigorous introduction into Iyengar yoga.  Iyengar yoga can be very intense, demanding and difficult, just as I've been told Guruji could be.  In the end, though it is also very illuminating and ultimately very freeing.  From his humble beginnings 95 years ago, BKS Iyengar went on to change the world through yoga.  If you haven't read his book Light on Life, stop whatever you are doing and go find a copy. It's that good! I can go on and on about how he modernized yoga by introducing the use of props or was revolutionary in the field of yoga therapy by recommending specific practices for specific symptoms but his greatest impact can be simply summed up by saying that whatever "your yoga" is, it has been influenced in some way by Guruji.  For this I am and will remain forever grateful.  I hope that wherever he is, Guruji has achieved "ultimate freedom."
Lokah Samastah Sukhino Bhavantu