Remembering Yoga Pioneer BKS Iyengar
LU STOUT: Coming to you live from Hong Kong, you're back watching News Stream. Now sun salutation, downward dog, warrior pose -- now yoga has come a long way from its ancient Indian roots and a lot of that is because of one man, BKS Iyengar. And the respected yoga guru, he died on Wednesday at the age of 95. Sumnima Udas looks back on his life and his legacy.</s>SUMNIMA UDAS, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: If there's one man many credit for turning the ancient Indian tradition of yoga into a worldwide phenomenon, it is BKS Iyengar. He took the mystical discipline, which was once only passed down from master to student to the masses, popularizing the practice in the west, in particular. He took on yoga to treat his own illness, tuberculosis, but then made it his mission to propagate what he had learned.</s>BKS IYENGAR, YOGA GURU: I saw lots of people practicing yoga. Well, there's absolutely no foundation or formalness in their presentations. And I thought that this type of yoga is not going to help anyone, because it's going to die, because it's like a dust -- gathering dust.</s>UDAS: He traveled the world performing thousands of demonstrations, simplifying the theory behind the tradition so it's more accessible, transforming the once esoteric practice into a science. The focus of his brand of yoga, known as Iyengar yoga in the west, is on precision and proper alignment of the body. Modern yoga has now taken on various styles and names and become a multibillion dollar industry, something Iyengar himself did not approve of.</s>IYENGAR: Yoga is a science, which makes one to associate the body with the mind, and mind to the intelligence, intelligence to the consciousness and consciousness to the self. When such a noble subject today it is -- has become a commercial presentation, it's painful to me.</s>UDAS: Tributes are now pouring in for Iyengar. The Indian president calling his death a national loss. Sumnima Udas, CNN, New Delhi.</s>LU STOUT: You're watching News Stream. And still to come, as British authorities try to identify the apparently British ISIS militant who executed an American journalist, we investigate the road that leads some westerners to join extremists in Syria and Iraq. And the relative calm in the streets of Ferguson, Missouri after nearly two weeks of unrest over the police shooting of an unarmed teen.