My memories with Felicity Green began when she was a wise crone at the age of 73.
She took me on as her student and I as her mentor. I would study Yoga with her on Lopez island where she lived. I was one of her last students who she mentored through Iyengar assessment. In her home above the sink was a picture of Swami Sivananda Radha and BKS Iyengar sitting together that she had taken. She studied directly under them both at different times in her life. Each played a relevant part in her Yoga journey which began in 1963. She told me they were her spiritual parents.
The last book written by Felicity was, Who Are You? For thoughtful People Who are Curious About Creating a Life of Awareness. It Is her auto biography from the frame of the philosophical attitudes and lessons that she learned from these spiritual parents. It is incredibly personal and honest, and it includes her favorite quotes. At the end of each chapter, questions are presented to the reader in order to personally examine the teachings.
What I retained
from studying Yoga with Felicity is a strong sturdy foundation in Asana and Pranayama and how to integrate these limbs with the Yamas and the Niyamas. In her book The Principles of Yoga for Beginners. the questions presented integrate the ethical philosophy of the first two limbs while in the posture. It prompts the student to reflect and use intelligence while performing an asana. This is such a strong teaching that comes from BKS Iyengar. She called this a guild book not a rule book. Another lesson I learned from Felicity was to always work with Yoga on the experiential level not merely on the mental or physical levels. Felicity was extremely well read but not for the accumulation of
knowledge alone. She was an Occupational Therapist as well as a Yoga teacher. She would teach an entire class on the rhomboids, addressing the mechanics of the shoulder girdle. She would teach how this focus brings the back of the body towards the front of the body for a lesson on body integration. Next, she had students observe if they were doing the pose from the heart or the head, bringing in the deeper spiritual work. She had the ability to teach complex cosmology as it pertained to the body by using simple metaphors from a variety of eastern religions and western body modalities. She had a piercing clarity because she had explored the philosophy on herself for decades.
Felicity's Yoga was grounded not on reaching pure bliss
but to live with peace of mind through strong moral integrity. In her eighties she began to study death by reading about it and then taking actions to understand her own views and experiences with death. She once told me that she did not want to reach enlightenment because she wanted to come back.
For now, she will be dearly missed. -Tara Bernstein
