When BBC Radio 4 celebrated the 80th birthday of the internationally renowned yoga teacher BKS Iyengar, who has died aged 95, the programme started with him answering questions standing on his head. Guruji, as he was known to his followers, said the position was as natural for him as standing on their feet was for others. This was only one of the yoga asanas he taught the pupils from all over the world who flocked to his school in the Indian city of Pune, to the south-east of Mumbai.
More than any other practitioner, Iyengar was responsible for the spread of interest in yoga in the west over the last half-century, having originally introduced the violinist Yehudi Menuhin to the art in the early 1950s. Iyengar used to say "my body is my temple and asanas are my prayers". He lived up to that maxim, keeping himself supremely fit. Yet during his childhood he was, in his words, "a creature of contempt for my people" because of his constant ill-health.
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