page_title: Light on Yoga
section_title: Context
hierarchical_section_title: Light on Yoga / Context
caption_attribution_description: English: Autographed publicity photo of Yehudi Menuhin
context_page_description: Light on Yoga: Yoga Dipika is a 1966 book on the Iyengar Yoga style of modern yoga as exercise by B. K. S. Iyengar, first published in English. It describes more than 200 yoga postures or asanas, and is illustrated with some 600 monochrome photographs of Iyengar demonstrating these.
  The book has been described as the bible of modern yoga, and its presentation of the asanas has been called "unprecedented" and "encyclopedic".
  It has been translated into at least 23 languages and has sold over three million copies.
context_section_description: Yoga is a group of physical, mental, and spiritual practices from  ancient India, forming one of the six orthodox schools of Hindu philosophical traditions. In the Western world, however, yoga is often taken to mean a modern form of medieval Hatha yoga, practised mainly for exercise, consisting largely of the postures called asanas.
  B. K. S. Iyengar (1918-2014) was born in a poor family of Brahmins in Karnataka, India. In childhood he suffered from diseases including typhoid, malaria and tuberculosis, and became extremely stiff. At the age of 18 he decided to spend his life doing yoga, and by 1938 he was already performing the asanas fluently. The violinist Yehudi Menuhin became his pupil in 1952 and then invited him to teach in Europe, which he did from the 1960s. Iyengar made yoga popular, first in India and then around the world.
caption: The violinist Yehudi Menuhin invited Iyengar to teach in Europe.
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