WAWADIA Update #18: One Hundred Years of Yoga in One Big Apple Day

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I spent October 13th in Manhattan, doing two interviews for the #WAWADIA project. I’ll tell the story of that day here, and then publish excerpts from some of the source interviews soon.

My first meeting was in the morning with Lindsey Clennell, a 40-year practitioner of yoga from Britain, and an award-winning film maker to boot. I wanted to ask him about the documentary that he’s making with his son Jake, called “Sadhaka”. The film is an homage to the legacy of his teacher, B.K.S. Iyengar. I was especially interested in asking about the visual metaphor that opens the gorgeous trailer they’ve released to help promote their project. (The trailer is linked below.) In the metaphor, Lindsey and Jake compare the work of Mr. Iyengar on the human body to the work of a local stonecutter carving an icon of Hanuman.

The first words of the trailer belong to the grizzled artist:

One cannot begin work on a sculpture without courage. The nature of a stone is that it is strong. To transform it into a sculpture, and see God within it, requires immense strength. If one gives up or is daunted by the strength of the stone or injuries, the sculpture will never come to life.

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