You also move in different places, so the weak parts of the body gain strength and the stiffer parts relax. Even if you desire the pace, sweat, and performance qualities of ashtanga, Iyengar is a good place to start. The people I know who are really dedicated to ashtanga yoga often do have alignment backgrounds of an Iyengar student. Depending on your perspective and preference, however, Iyengar yoga may well be the most intense and at the same time most accessible form of this ancient tradition. Iyengar pioneered the use of props to help virtually anybody learn and benefit from yoga.
Some purists wonder out loud if it's cheating.
Some of these props help people who would otherwise not be able to get into the poses assume the positions correctly. And sometimes those props actually make the pose more intense. Iyengar is also the first yoga style to offer up specific regimens for women. Iyengar's daughter, Ayurvedic physician Geeta Iyengar, has spent the last several decades developing routines for women to use during menstruation and menopause. For women going through menopause, Iynegar teachers focus on staying loose to avoid the rigidity that can set in, bone strengthening, and counteracting depression and lethargy.