The result of a lifelong study, yoga, its most famous teacher says, has given him the gift of life. He says if he hadn’t found it, he simply wouldn’t have been alive. This week on Being Legends, CNN-IBN’s Anuradha SenGupta meets BKS Iyengar at his Pune residence.

Anuradha SenGupta: Your first book Light on Yoga, your latest book Light on Life – these two titles pretty much sum up uyour changing attitude towards yoga, isn’t it?

BKS Iyengar: Yes, right. As I practised, something started striking me. How my body functions, how my nervous system functions, how my mind functions, how my intelligence reacts, how my consciousness behaves. So as the stages developed and people asked me what more had I learnt, I had to add. So from Light on Yoga, I wrote five-six books till Light on Life. Light refers to the light that dawned on me.

Anuradha SenGupta: You started out practising yoga purely for its physical benefits…

BKS Iyengar: For gaining health.

Anuradha SenGupta: Yes, first for gaining health, then as a means to gaining a livelihood and then to a higher level. And you keep stressing this to people, isn’t it?

BKS Iyengar: This is the way. Life’s like this. Someone masters something. After mastering, one shares. So naturally, earning starts. Then later, one wants to know better than what they knew. Then the last stage is experiencing self hidden within oneself.

Anuradha SenGupta: At various pints of time in your life, you have lost your hold or mastery over yoga. 1956 was one such point. Why do you think you lost it?