‘What is important is for you to find out these things for yourself, so that you are free and not second-hand human beings’ – J. Krishnamurti
To truly progress on the path of Himalayan Iyengar Yoga, as prescribed by our Master Yoga Teacher Sharat Arora, you must pass from student in the yoga class to self-practitioner, thereby eliminating the yoga teacher and the class environment. In order to eliminate the yoga teacher you need to reach a certain level of understanding and awareness of the practice and so for this reason we recommend that students complete at least three 5-day Courses with us at the HIYC. Completing the 5-Day Courses will equip you with enough skills to continue on your path as a self-practitioner.
Of course the class environment offers innumerable benefits; the teacher will instruct and offer corrections and advice and the assistants will help you to implement the corrections. That is the role of the teacher and assistant, to help you to gain sufficient comprehension of the poses. In addition you benefit from the collective energy of the class, of a group of people coming together to work towards the same direction. However, you also lose energy to the group and to listening to the teacher and paying attention to the assistants and this is why the daily practice is so amazing because it teaches you to move from an intellectual understanding of the poses to a deeper one that arises from intense observation of yourself. You learn to listen with your inner ear and to see with your inner eyes and to feel, which will in time take you right down to the subtlest level of awareness of the energies in your body. In this way in your self-practice you will come to a true knowledge of yourself. Awareness is knowledge and understanding in the deepest sense. Yoga is the path of awareness and we aim to help you on that path. By refining our awareness we hone our inner teacher and enter a dialogue with ourselves in which we are at once the teacher and the student. This is a constant process that begins on day 1 of class and ends perhaps not in this lifetime.
Thus, to eliminate the yoga teacher does not imply that you have reached the level of yogi, or even that you are necessarily ready to stop coming to class, but that you have found the yoga teacher within. You have become a self-practitioner. Elimination of the yoga teacher is synonymous with the elimination of disruptive external influences, bringing you within and to a state of independence that is as revolutionary as it is evolutionary as it brings you to your own truth. That is the one truth and this is the path towards it.
Himalayan Iyengar Yoga Centre
Maria Chandler
