She didn’t know how to express her gratitude when she gained the confidence to move her fingers after 12 long years. Her silence met with her guru’s mystical smile he was so known for. Nivedita Joshi’s life flashed before her eyes. Fifteen-year-old Nivedita was like any other teenager. Then one day, she couldn’t get up after her daily prayer. She was diagnosed with slip disc-cervical spondylosis, a condition that affects the spinal cord, making it extremely painful to move limbs. Her parents tried every method to alleviate their daughter’s ailment. Her father, former Union HRD minister Murli Manohar Joshi, stood behind her like a rock, never losing hope and his conviction in Indian system of healing.
Her confidence was in shackles when her physiotherapist, a disciple of BKS Iyengar, suggested her father to meet her guru. “I had somehow convinced myself that I will never lead a normal life,” she says. The BJP leader and former physics professor at Allahabad University landed in Pune at the Iyengar ashram. Things were never the same after that day.
“A glimpse of my neck was enough for guruji to tell us where the problem lied. He didn’t even touch my medical reports. He asked me to see him from the next day,” Nivedita recalls. In just 12 days of practising Iyengar yoga, Nivedita could lift her fingers and legs. “More than just physical movements, I’ve regained my lost confidence. I could feel that I can reclaim my life,” she says. Her father’s faith in the depth of Indian system of alternative science was strengthened further. Guided by the yoga guru—whose techniques have found a place in the Oxford dictionary—Nivedita practiced six to nine hours every day for a year. Her guru would change the sequence of asana and improvise based on her progress. She has been learning new asanas from the yoga exponent until last year before he passed away in August at the age of 96.
A lot has changed in Nivedita’s life in last 18 years of practicing Iyengar yoga. She has not only been running the only Iyengar yoga centre, Yogakshema, in Delhi but has penned several books—a collection of poems Nange Paun and a collection of Iyenagr’s quotations Guruji Uwach—and directed television series, Dharohar and Arogya Yoga, for Doordarshan. But for this microbiologist by training, running a yoga centre was never a part of the plan.
“It was my guru’s insistence. He chose the city too: Delhi over Allahabad. Everything just fell into place,” says Nivedita. She began with five students. Today hundreds of people of all age groups, with or without physical impairment train under her. So, what disappoints her in a student, we ask. Iyengar Yoga, she says, is not easy to practice. One needs to have perseverance and no ego. “Lack of practice and attention to detail irks me,” she says. Nivedita also gets elated when a student progresses towards a healthy life through practice.
It was Iyengar who believe d that Nivedita could feel other people’s pain and help them in their battle. Everything she has done so far and plans to do in the future is an ode to her guru.
Her latest book titled Yogikasparsh—to be published in Braille by Indian Heritage Society this June—is another step towards propagation of her guru’s teachings to benefit others. The idea of a book struck when one of her visually impaired students expressed his anxiety over not finding any book in Braille. Based on Iyengar’s techniques and sequencing of asanas, the book, she says, would lead many towards a gradual but systematic progression.
“Above all, it’ll lead to mobility with stability,” Nivedita adds. Although the instructions in the book are simple to follow, which she completed in six months, she advises to work under the guidance of a teacher to start with. She hopes to bring out a series of books and e-content in Braille in the future.
Iyengar would tell Nivedita that yoga is a light which, once lit, will never dim. The better you practice, the brighter the flame. Nivedita finds herself repeating it to her students more often than not.