My Teachers

Diana Clifton

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These are photos of Diana from 1961, when she used to send them to Iyengar for him to have a look at and then send them back with his comments written on the reverse side. For example Iyengar said  for Diana's Paschimottanasana


 

 

 "Good pose, still requires spine stretch".

 

  

The Beginning of Iyengar Yoga in London 1961

The interest in Iyengar Yoga started when an article appeared in the Daily Mail on Friday 16 June 1961.  See the enclosed copy.  I saw this and wondered if it would be possible to meet this Indian Yoga teacher.  Luckily the next day a letter appeared from Mr. Angadi who was the director of the Asian Music Circle saying that Mr. Iyengar was willing to teach a few specially selected ordinary people! A phone no. was given.
Feeling rather nervous I rang Mr. Angadi telling him that I had only been practising from a book.  To my surprise he said that he also had only been working from a book and that I would be very welcome to cone to the first class on Monday next, the 19th of June.  So it seems that I was the only one that had so far replied.  Of course, no one had heard much about yoga in those days.  These classes were held at Mr. Angadi’s house which was the headquarters of the A.M.C. There I met fellow pupils, Angela Marris, who was the secretary of the A.M.C., and Silva Mehta, who had met Mr. Iyengar in India.
We three were in that first class.   I think Mr. Iyengar said there were five persons; he must have included Mr. and Mrs. Angadi who did not take part in the class.
The classes continued over the following 3 weeks getting too big for Mr. Angadi’s room!  We also had classes in the garden when the weather was fine.
I remember Clifford Curzon, the famous pianist, and his wife coming to some of the first classes, as did many of A.M.C. members: also Jaqueline du Pre came once or twice.
I was a bit ahead of the others as I had been practicing yoga for 6 months previously from a book.  At that first class I asked Mr. Iyengar if I could learn to teach, and he nodded agreement – how did I have the nerve I wonder!  Of course during that first year he was quite gentle!  Also in that first year he did 3 demonstrations, one of them at the Everyman Theatre.  We stood outside with leaflets encouraging people to come to it: few people had heard of Yoga in those days.  Inside it was full of the smell of cigarettes; I rushed around lighting joss sticks to cover up the nasty smell!
After one of these demos, people crowded around Mr. Iyengar asking him where they could go to learn Yoga.  He pointed to me!  I was staggered.  It was true I had had the temerity to ask him if I could learn to teach and he had nodded in that typical Indian way, but I had not the slightest idea that I would be called upon so soon!
After Mr. Iyengar had left to return to India, a group of us got together to consider what to do next.  Mr. Angardi wanted us to continue at his house, which was the headquarters of the A.M.C. The group voted that I should lead them and that we should meet once a week, making a charge of2/6 which we all paid.  This was to collect enough money to pay for Mr. Iyengar’s air fare the following year.  This, I was known as the leader.  At first we thought it best to continue working only with those that had also been working in Mr. Iyengar’s classes.
Gradually, however, we found so many wanted instruction that one by one they came in.  Of course, we did not take people with medical difficulties.  We asked them to wait for Mr. Iyengar’s return.
I was very conscious of the responsibility and sent photos of myself doing the postures to India.  Mr. Iyengar returned them with written comments on the back.  I still have these photos if anyone is interested.
 

Never say "You are too old..." to a yoga teacher!

Diana is still an inspirational teacher to all her very lucky students as you can see from the photos on the left. Diana is now in her late 80's.

Meeting Diana Clifton, one of Britain’s first and most senior yoga teachers and Honorary Member of NELIYI and IYA(UK)

I met Diana Clifton at her home in Southgate on one of the hottest days in July.  The front door was held open by a large fruit bowl to encourage a through draft, and I was ushered into the study by Diana’s husband, Adrian.  Diana, who had recently had an eye operation, looked immaculate in linen slacks and shirt, perched on a low swivel chair.  Supplied with a soft drink, and cooled by an electric fan, I asked Diana to tell me how yoga came into her life.

 “My son, who was then about 16, was always in the library, and he brought me back a book called “Forever Young, Forever Healthy” by Indira Devi. I thought it sounded gimmicky and I put it to one side.  One day I had to do the washing and I didn’t want to – I was always tired.  I picked the book up, read a few pages, and thought, ‘My god, this is what I’ve been looking for’.

Diana’s first husband was killed in a car crash when her children were six and eight, and she married her second husband, Cliff, five years later. She says that, though she didn’t know it at the time, she was probably anaemic. “When life gives you a big knock you start to look more seriously at things. So when I found this yoga book, I realised it’s what I needed and I practised like mad from it. I’d been sinking into feeling that I couldn’t cope and I had a lot of headaches, constipation – all sorts of little things. So yoga saved me. It was like a dart from Eros”. 

 After about a fortnight, she began to feel much better.  “I had more energy, the constipation vanished and I was saying to everybody, you must do yoga, it’s a magical thing, marvelous.  They looked at me blankly and just didn’t take any notice.  So I stopped trying to push it and just got on with my practice”.

 Shortly afterwards, she read an article in the Daily Mail about the violinist, Yehudi Menuhin, doing yoga with Mr Iyengar, and the next day there was a letter in the paper by Mr Angadi, the Director of the Asian Music Centre in Finchley, which was sponsoring Mr Iyengar in the UK, inviting those interested to join Mr Iyengar’s classes.  “I rang up and spoke to Mr Angadi, explaining that I’d only been doing yoga from a book, and he said that was fine, just come along.  There were only two others in that class – Silva Mehta and Angela Marris, the secretary at the Centre.  We did standing poses and then Mr Iyengar asked if I had done head balance? I said yes, but could I do it by the wall?  He said “I’m better than the wall – I’ve got arms.  So I did head balance and he just left me there. I hadn’t had the courage to do it in the room before.  He just made me do it.”

 After that first visit to London, Mr Iyengar asked Diana to lead the students who had been to his classes and wanted to continue to practice.  “I told him I would like to teach at the first lesson.  I don’t know how I had the nerve, but I was so enthusiastic.  To me yoga was a jewel - I wanted everyone to do it”.

 Mr Iyengar returned for three or four weeks every summer for the next 15 years, and Diana assisted him at his classes, and watched everything he did.  “He would take somebody up into headstand and make me stand behind them while he took up another one”.

Diana took all her students to him every year, so Mr Iyengar could see how her teaching was going. “I got ticked off quite a lot and my students got pretty upset the way he shouted at me. I remember once two of my students were doing forward bends, catching their toes, and Mr Iyengar said ‘Good’. And one of them was upset because he’d been so cross with me and said ‘Thanks to Diana’, and he said: “No, thanks to yoga’. He could see what the danger was for me – he didn’t want me to get an inflated ego. You see, when you’re a teacher, you get so much praise, so much gratitude. He would bash me on the head – wham, that was my ego being knocked down”.

 It was only after about ten years that at last Mr Iyengar told Diana that her yoga had improved and that in another three years she would be a very good teacher.  “I couldn’t believe it.  Praise from Mr Iyengar after all those years”. 

 I asked Diana about her first visit to Pune, India in 1976.  “Mr Iyengar was taking an advanced class with Dona Holleman, Mary Stewart, Angela Farmer and myself. We stayed at the Institute and we had had a wonderful time but it was like being in a convent. We had to be in by 9pm and that wasn’t always easy because we’d go and have a meal in Pune and couldn’t always get back in time. The place would be locked up and we’d have to climb in. One night Dona and I took a rickshaw and Angela was on her own in another rickshaw. We got back just as Mohan, the servant, was locking the door and we asked him to wait for Angela.  But he said, ‘Angela climb over’.

 “We used to get a bucket of hot water every morning at 6am for washing and that sometimes came late, so we had to rush to get up to the asana room for the first class. In the morning, the birds would fly in if we had the window open and peck the buffalo milk – there was no fridge. At night we’d make yoghurt and in the morning it was almost hitting the ceiling. I was the only one that ever cleaned up – I was the housewife, after all. One day I was boiling a dishcloth and forgot about it. We went up to the asana class and when we came back the place was full of smoke. We were frantically trying to wave it out of the window - we lit joss sticks and tried to get rid of the smell, when Geeta came in and said ‘What’s burning?’  So I owned up. We were like schoolchildren. We got the giggles every day because we were so tired”.

 Diana semi-retired from teaching for six months after the death of Cliff, her second husband.  He had been very ill for two years, and during that time, Diana stopped taking classes in her home.  Although she always continued with her own practice, she had virtually given up teaching when she met Adrian at the Vegetarian Society.  They became friends and gradually she introduced him to yoga. “He had a very bad knee from playing rugger at school, and was the stiffest man I had ever seen.  Some of my students can remember.  Now he is very supple and I point to him in class, and say, ‘If Adrian can do it, so can you’.”

Adrian tried to persuade Diana to go back to teaching, but she felt that she had retired and explained that when you stop, you lose confidence. One day, a friend and yoga student who had moved to America rang to say she would be in London for a day and could she come to a class. Diana contacted some of her old students and asked them if they’d like a class; from that point, her yoga teaching started again. “When Adrian came along, the teaching feeling came back”. 

She went to the USA several times when Iyengar yoga was just beginning to take off there. “One of my former students asked me to come over as she was very unimpressed with the teaching there. But it was extremely difficult because these people were so noisy and excitable. I really had to take control and after a week or so they quietened down. I went back a year later and I was quite astonished to see how they’d changed, how much quieter they’d become in that year, practising Iyengar yoga in the right way”. 

I asked Diana to tell me about Mr Iyengar and his philosophy teaching.  She told me that in the early years he would sometimes take his students to Regent’s Park after classes: “They were lovely occasions – he would talk to us about philosophy and meditation.  He would say ‘You won’t understand now but you will understand later”.  Once we were all listening to him telling us mythical stories, and all of sudden, there was a flight of birds taking off with a whoosh from a tree above us and we all looked up and that, he said, was meditation.  As we looked up we became that rush of air – egos were all forgotten in that moment”.

Now, Diana teaches two classes a week in her home: one general class, and one for teachers and teacher trainees. “I tell the teachers and trainees that when they do their meditation or just savasana, they must give to their students whatever comes from their own experience, not from anybody else. I’ve tried to point out that meditation comes in everything – it can be with you all the time. Yesterday I was taking some pranayama and afterwards one of the students told me it was the first time anybody had ever taught her how to meditate. I said, ‘I didn’t teach you how to meditate’ – you can’t teach anybody how to meditate – you can only point people in certain directions. It comes to you when you are ready for it”.

I asked Diana why many Iyengar teachers held back from teaching pranayama.  “I think people are more confident about teaching the asanas and in fact they incorporate everything that’s in yoga.  From the very beginning you can go from moving into the asana into concentration, from concentration to contemplation – then if you’re really involved, it is meditation”.

Adrian commented that Diana was not inclined to define meditation.  Diana agreed: “It’s like the birds in the park – whoosh.  A lot of people have these moments without realising what it is – looking at a beautiful picture, perhaps – they lose themselves – it’s like a little death”. 

Diana concluded: “I love teaching because yoga is such a wonderful thing, and I’ve always wanted to pass it on to others.  I feel I’ve got to give as much as I can, while I can. And now I see these younger ones coming on, I’m really pleased about it”.                                Diane Maimaris 

 

Sheila Kenton (mum)

Here Mr B.K.S. Iyengar is asking my mum to demonstrate Trikonasana in 1979.

 

Sheila is still helping my students today, here with their shoulder stand.

Sheila started Iyengar yoga after seeing the wonderful effects it was having on her sister Rayner Curtis who still teaches (aged only 82), see her classes advertised in Brighton..." COURSE - IYENGAR YOGA BEGINNERS YOGA with Rayner Curtis

This course is suitable for complete beginners. BKS Iyengar developed this method of yogic postures through seventy years of practising and teaching in both his native India and the West. His method is characterized by precision, safe practice and progression. A key feature is the use of props (belts, blocks, chairs etc) which help you achieve poses in a more supported way. Iyengar Yoga improves posture, flexibility, and concentration, and promotes physical health, mental calm and emotional well-being."

Sheila's other sister Barbara Feinstein is also a qualified teacher, so I had the great fortune of seeing and absorbing yoga from family all around me.

 

 

Essential Qualities of a Yoga Teacher

     By B.K.S. Iyengar

1. Teaching is a difficult art, but it is the best service you can do to humanity.

2. Be strong and positive in your approach. The moment you show doubt in your teaching, you plant seeds of doubt in your pupil.

3. Be affirmative when teaching so as to create confidence in the pupil. Be negative within yourself so that you and reflect upon your work. Work on your own self, quietly at home, to find where you yourself have committed mistakes either in your explanations, or in the method of correcting your pupil.

4. In the art of teaching you have always to work as a learner. Teachers learn from their pupils, as ever pupil is different in body and mind. It is the duty of the teacher to bring about unity in the body and mind of each individual pupil with varying traits.

5. You should have the humility to say that you are still learning the art. Never say, "I am a teacher so I can teach." That is pride.

6. It is the nature of us all to protect out own bodies. When taking care of the bodies of your pupils, you have to be much more vigilant than of your own body.

7. Outwardly the teachers should be tremendously strong but deeply receptive to the needs of the pupil. Serve the pupil who has come to you, as if serving divinity.

8. Whilst teaching show differentiation that your pupil is a pupil and you are his teacher.

9. Do no expect too much from our pupils, still generate the interest of the pupil so that you can extract more effort from him.

10. Never fail to admonish your pupil for mistakes or for not putting forward his best effort. Never praise a pupil, telling him that he is very good. The moment you lavish praise, your are praising your own self. The self-laudatory praise leads to the downfall of both teacher and pupil as it creates an attitude in the mind of the pupil that he is a very superior person.

11. Strive to forge ahead with your pupil. Build him up physically, mentally, and spiritually by your own actions and example, and not mere words.

12. In the beginning children are dependant upon their parents. When the children mature, wise parents treat them as equals. Your approach towards your pupils should be similar, for you are their parent and your pupil are your children. When your pupils become mature, tread the path of learning together with them, for further refinement.

13. When you notice a pupil using the energy created by your yoga teaching only for gratification of the senses, never tell him that he is indulging in sensual pleasures. Attempt to turn his mind towards the spiritual aspect of life. This is a challenge to you as a teacher.

14. Do not judge a pupil by your own standards. The way your pupil talks and behaves will tell you his state of development. Descend to the level of your pupil and then guide him onwards slowly, with love and affection, till he reaches your standard.

15. Try to have a fresh approach for every lesson. Though you may be greatly advanced in your studies, you have always room for improvement. The deeper you probe, more fresh points will come to light. Then you will become a humble, respected and a lovable teacher.

* From http://www.yoga.net.au/teacher_qualities (Last access 25/07/08)