The Science of Yoga

in only male students. But that policy soon changed. By 1926, Gune was calling his reformulated yoga “peculiarly fitted for the females.” His observation was farsighted, given the traditional male chauvinism of Hindu society and yoga’s eventual popularity with women.
    To say that Gune was pivotal understates the case. Even so, he remains virtually unknown in the West except among scholars. Joseph S. Alter, a medical anthropologist at the University of Pittsburgh and author of Yoga in Modern India , argues that he “probably had a more profound impact on the practice of modern yoga than anyone else.”
    Of Gune’s many admirers, one of the most politically astute was the Wodeyar clan of Mysore, a city and state of southern India rich in silk and incense, coffee and sandalwood. The benevolent rajahs ruled over a realm about the size of Scotland, their ornate palace dominating the capital. Mysore was the most progressive of India’s princely states, and historians say the ruling family played a skillful role in the politics of Hindu nationalism, including thepromotion of yoga as a way to build an Indian national identity.
    Like Gune at his ashram, the Mysore palace sponsored a version of the ancient discipline that was far removed from the world of Tantra and eroticism. It was quite unmystical. For decades, members of the family had practiced an eclectic style that drew on Indian martial arts and wrestling as well as Western gymnastics and physical fitness techniques, including those of the British. It aimed at promoting martial culture, hardening the body, and producing feelings of pleasurable fitness.
    In 1933—a decade after Gune had turned to the scientific study of yoga—the palace hired a teacher to run its yoga hall. This short man of quick temper and considerable erudition, Tirumalai Krishnamacharya, had spent his early life learning Sanskrit, Indian medicine, and other classical disciplines as part of the Hindu revival. He now developed a style that drew on the palace’s gymnastic ethos.
    Krishnamacharya refined postures, sequenced them with logical rigor, and combined them with deep breathing to create a fluid experience.
    None of this would matter very much except that Krishnamacharya (1888–1989) produced a number of gifted students who eventually made him history’s most influential figure in Hatha’s modern rise. His passion and ideas about pose development led to the emergence of the Sun Salutation and eventually other flowing poses and styles, including Ashtanga and Vinyasa, Power and Viniyoga.
    The Mysore palace sent Krishnamacharya on tours around India to publicize yoga, with the participants openly referring to the trips as “propaganda work.” In 1934, the maharajah asked Krishnamacharya to visit Gune’s famous ashram up north and study its methods. Krishnamacharya did so, traveling by train.
    The following year, the palace guru adopted the theme of therapeutic benefits in his own book, Yoga Makaranda (Honey of Yoga), which the maharajah published. This sequel to Gune’s therapeutic efforts was even more tenacious. For instance, it hailed the benefits of Utthita Parsvakonasana—a triangular pose known as the Extended Side Angle. The student bends one leg and keeps the other ramrod straight, lifting one arm over the head and bringing the other down to the floor. As a result, “pains in the abdomen, urinary infections, fevers and other diseases will be cured,” the book declared with no hint of qualification, or proof.

    Extended Side Angle, Utthita Parsvakonasana
    Krishnamacharya may have been stubborn,gruff, and domineering but he trained a student who proved to be particularly important to the spread of Hatha yoga—his brother-in-law, B. K. S. Iyengar (1918– ). The young man had been sickly all his life, and at first the yoga sessions in Mysore went poorly. Krishnamacharya soon lost interest in his new student. But Iyengar kept at it and eventually became healthy. Increasingly, like his guru, he looked to yoga for its restorative powers. He began touring India with Krishnamacharya and displaying his newfound skills, effortlessly tying his body in knots.
    Iyengar, a young man of eighteen, at this point began to draw on the insights of medicine. It helped him ground his approach more deeply in the modern view of the body. His strategy was similar to what Gune and his colleagues had done—but in miniature.
    The immersion began in 1936 when a surgeon by the name of V. B.