U.S. Media Hail Iyengar As Among Greatest Yoga Gurus

WASHINGTON: Mainstream American media and yoga experts have mourned the loss of B K S Iyengar, calling him as one of the greatest yoga gurus who was instrumental in bringing the physical and spiritual exercise to West. Iyengar died at the age of 95 in Pune.

"No other individual has been as influential in turning yoga into a phenomenon that somehow retains the essence of its mystical aura while being continually made and remade in the image of a modern commodity," Joseph Alter, a University of Pittsburgh anthropologist who has written widely on the history and development of yoga in the West, was quoted as saying by the Los Angeles Times.

‘B K S Iyengar dies at 95; Indian guru helped popularise yoga in West’, The Los Angeles Times said in its headline.

‘B K S Iyengar, who helped bring Yoga to the west, dies at 95’, said The New York Times in a similar headline.

While The Atlantic wrote "In the twentieth century, one of the most influential figures in spreading yoga beyond South Asia was B K S Iyengar, an Indian guru", The National Public Radio had a special episode on the death of guru.

Yoga has a long history in America, but Iyengar helped shape the practices that are popular today, Masum Momaya, the museum curator at the Smithsonian's Indian American Heritage Project, told The Atlantic.

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