Seetharaman Sundaram

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Seetharaman Sundaram
In Halasana, Plough Pose, 1928
Born25 February 1901
Died26 December 1994 (1994-12-27) (aged 93)
NationalityIndian
Occupation(s)Lawyer, Yogacharya
Known forYogic Physical Culture

Seetharaman Sundaram (25 February 1901–26 December 1994[1]) was a lawyer and pioneer of yoga as exercise, often known as Yogacharya Sundaram, and the first person to publish a handbook of yoga asanas in English, his 1928 Yogic Physical Culture. This was also the first yoga book to be illustrated with photographs.[2] He travelled India with the bodybuilder K. V. Iyer, helping to popularise the new blend of hatha yoga and physical culture.

Life

Seetharaman Sundaram was born in

high court judge was astonished to see Sundaram being seen off at Madras's Central Railway Station by a crowd of wealthy and powerful people, prostrating before the garlanded figure of the man he knew as a lawyer.[5]

Yogic Physical Culture

In 1928 he published Yogic Physical Culture, describing a modernised

Mark Singleton, the "tinge of religion" (Sundaram's phrase) makes yoga different from and superior to the purely material Western forms of exercise.[8]

The book describes just 13 asanas: the eleven

kriya, and two pranayama exercises. The format, essentially a field guide with the name of each item, a description in text, and a photograph, was adopted by all later yoga manuals including Light on Yoga.[9] It introduces a procedural innovation, too, creating stages in the adoption of each asana, something entirely missing from medieval texts like the Hatha Yoga Pradipika. The photographs are all of Sundaram himself, presented not as a new system like that of Sandow and the other bodybuilders like Bernarr Macfadden (whom Sundaram references), but as of Sundaram's way of practising an age-old system. The effect was to demystify the asanas: they turned from difficult, strange, even repulsive spiritual practices into mere exercises.[10]

In

Elliott Goldberg's view, Sundaram's detailed instructions moved the practice of asanas from what had "in all likelihood" been perfunctory and haphazard towards the precision of modern yoga, in which close attention is paid to the tensions in individual muscles. This approach, Goldberg argues, led to executing the asanas slowly and under control, observing one's body and making necessary adjustments accordingly to achieve correct alignment. All of this facilitated total absorption in the task of performing each asana properly, which in turn allowed the practitioner to go beyond pain or pleasure to the absolute.[11]

Legacy

Dr. Asana Andiappan, founder of the Sundara Yoga and Natural Living Trust and the monthly Asana International Yoga Journal, studied yoga under Sundaram as a child.[12][13]

Works

  • 1928 Yogic Physical Culture or the Secret of Happiness. Bangalore: Brahmacharya Publishing.

See also

  • Yogasopana
    , an earlier yoga manual, written in Marathi and illustrated with halftone plates

Notes

  1. Savasana
    .

References

  1. ^ "About School Of Yoga". School of Yoga. Retrieved 24 March 2019.
  2. ^ Goldberg 2016, pp. 152–178.
  3. ^ Goldberg 2016, p. 153.
  4. ^ Goldberg 2016, pp. 154–155.
  5. ^ a b Goldberg 2016, pp. 177–178.
  6. ^ Goldberg 2016, p. 177.
  7. ^ a b Singleton 2010, p. 126.
  8. ^ Singleton 2010, p. 127.
  9. ^ Goldberg 2016, p. 161.
  10. ^ Goldberg 2016, pp. 162–163.
  11. ^ Goldberg 2016, pp. 166–167.
  12. ^ "Guruji Dr. Asana Andiappan". Andiappan Yoga. Retrieved 24 March 2019.
  13. ^ "Dr Asana Andiappan to Receive the Maharishi Patanjali Award - 2005". IndiaDivine. 4 May 2005. Retrieved 4 May 2005.

Sources