Blurb:

Using the creation of B.K.S. Iyengar’s Light on Prānāyāma (1981) as a case study, this chapter challenges two common assumptions about how embodied traditions are transmitted, suggesting that embodied traditions should be understood as dialogical processes in both creation and transmission. In contrast to the often-assumed “legitimate” transmission of a South Asian tradition within a guru-śisya paramparā (student-teacher transmission lineage), Iyengar’s development of prānāyāma demonstrates that his practice developed primarily from an ideomotor exploration of his own embodied experiences. Records around the publication of Light on Prānāyāma show that Iyengar drew upon surreptitious observation of Krishnamacharya’s practice, as well as ideas introduced by Krishnamācārya, Krishnamurti and Yehudi Menuhin filtered through his own rigorous, interoceptive sensory explorations. Light on Prānāyāma can be understood as a roadmap for the reader’s own inner ideomotor explorations, an intense and psychologically demanding interoceptive process. Secondly, in transmitting the results of his embodied knowledge in the text of Light on Prānāyāma, it becomes clear that effective transmission on the part of the guru is a complex dialogical process at the point of transmission, as well as being an interpretive experience in reception. To make the later point, this chapter explores the hidden labor of Iyengar’s editor Gerald Yorke, as well as several (uncredited) women, especially Mary Stewart and Beatrice Harthan, as being essential to the eventual publication of Light on Prānāyāma. Light on Prānāyāma was only published after Iyengar’s articulations were tested against others’ experiences and a process of clarifying his written instructions with experienced practitioners as well as non-practitioners and experts in other fields.