Viktor Boyko

Best wishes to everyone.
Here you can read my short biography and a review of my life in yoga.

I, Viktor Sergeyevich Boyko, Russian (after my mother, although when receiving my passport I could register myself as Ukrainian, after my father, with equal ease) was born April 1, 1948, in the settlement of Ichki (Sovetskoye) of the Crimean Region. From 1950 till 1967 I lived and received education in Simferopol, graduated from Ten-year School No 3, then the Industrial and Civil Engineering Department of the Railway Technical School. From 1967 till 1969 I served in the army as a radio operator. In 1970 I entered the Simferopol branch of the Sevastopol Instrument-making Institute and graduated from it as a civil engineer. In 1975–1978 I worked, on a job assignment, in Evpatoria (at the all-union shock construction site of the pioneer camp “Young Leninist”). From 1978 I have been living in Moscow. Up to the year of 1999 inclusive I worked in the TsNIIEP (Architectural Projecting Institute) named after B. Mezentsev as the leading engineer. Since 1993 and up to this day I am the leader of the School of Yoga bearing my name.

I first came to know about Yoga from I.A. Efremov’s novel The Edge of the Razor (1964). Personally, I began practicing it in 1971 using B.K.S. Iyengar’s book Yoga Dipika. During the first several years, regular practice of asanas continued parallel to the search and study of the available literature and communication with numerous yoga enthusiasts of the Crimea and Ukraine. Being naturally solidly built, I had a poor flexibility from my childhood, and therefore, in spite of regular practice I failed to attain the utter flexibility even remotely similar that of Iyengar during five years – more than that, I realized that I was unable to do it in principle. This failure made me, on the one hand, examine my activities thoroughly and, on the other, consider the text of the original carefully. Besides, I had to turn to P.K. Anokhin’s theory of functional systems, the feedback and the biomechanics and physiology of movements, the history of the highest achievements in sports, oriental philosophical systems, the aspects of their practical application and so on.

Gradually, as the experience grew, an understanding of the essence of Hatha Yoga formed in the light of the information contained in the Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras. Improving my approach to the practice, I reached the results that were much more interesting than mere acrobatics might produce, and when the quality of practice had reached a certain standard, people with health problems began to appear in my milieu. The reasons for that remain obscure; possibly, such a development was prompted by the first experience obtained during 1972–1975 when I and Boris Yuganov, my fellow-student of the same year, began practicing the sadhana. Suffering from a chronic cholecystitis, Boris was a lean, icteric and mistrustful person, but after three year of practicing Yoga and graduating from the institute, he passed medical examination with excellent results, was found completely fit, served in the Karakum desert and forgot his liver once and for all. And somehow, I began specializing mainly in therapy.

Settling in Moscow, I began looking for people who studied Yoga seriously and places where this was done, but all my searches were to no avail. In the Institute of Medical and Biological Problems Named after O. Gazenko (IMBP) they examined me and said that I might be accepted as a tester; however, I regarded the trade in health as folly, and it proved impossible to be accepted to the space research system. In the process of familiarizing myself with the yogic milieu of Moscow I happened to visit the laboratory “on the Furmanny bystreet” where I was introduced to Mr. Spirkin. Later on I maintained rather prolonged contacts with Ms. G.S. Shatalova and Mr. Y.I. Koltunov, the head of the public group “Kosmos”. In one of the school gym halls near the Fili metro station I attended two times lessons led by a middle-aged brunet with holding eyes – he was Statsenko, the would-be “guru” Ar Santem.

By the beginning of the 1980s yoga had been forbidden in the USSR for ideological reasons, and I received people illegally, for pleasure and out of pure interest, not thinking that other possibilities might arise one day.

In 1985 I was shot in a featurette named “The Burning Mysteries of the Century” shown as a cine-magazine later on. I taught Yoga to composer Aleksei Rybnikov and Okudzhava’s relatives, to professional sportsmen and party officials, still continuing to work in my research institute and sharing my spare time between my family and yoga. In 1987 I began to cooperate with the All-Union Center of Vegetative Pathology (Moscow, the Rossolimo Street) headed in those days by Professor A.M. Vein. There was a close interaction with the laboratory of physiology of the clinics of nervous pathology and its head Ion Moldovanu (now the physician-in-chief of Kisineu). They examined me there with the help of the Center’s equipment and, besides, gave me a chance to use yoga practices for various types of neurotics.

In 1989 the First All-Union Conference for Yoga was held in Moscow; among those invited was B.K.S. Iyengar – thus I happened to meet my first idol and first guru in absentia 18 years later. I was 41 then, but, evidently, a certain result of practice was obvious since, in the process of demonstration lessons Guruji selected me out of some three hundred people for the demonstration of asana technique. Then Iyengar visited me at my place and gave me as a present the original of that same book we had used to learn Yoga. The inscription in the book says: “Wishing you to have an ashram of your own”.

Later he sent Yelena Fedotova and me invitations to attend a one-month course in Poona (the Ramamani Institute), but it was useless to me since by that time the understanding of the technique had been fully formed in me and I realized how different it was from the Iyengar-Yoga.

In 1989 a Yoga section was started at the J. Nehru Cultural Center (The Embassy of the Republic if India) led by the first Yoga master in Russia Lakshman Kumar. In 1991, on the initiative of the Secretary of Embassy Mr. Ganguli, eleven most successful disciples were selected and after a one-month course of intense study, they were issued certificates signed by Mr. Gonsalves (Indian Ambassador to the USSR) certifying their right to teach Yoga. It was an unprecedented case. These eleven included A. Lappa, R. Amelin, K. Danilchenko, V. Fentisov, B. Orion and the present author. It was July 31, 1991.

By a curious coincidence, on that very day the Tikhvinsky Executive Committee of People’s Deputies registered a small enterprise, the Center “Classical Yoga” with four founders: Viktor Boyko as Director, Boris Martynov as Sanskrit translator and chief accountant, Roman Amelin as musician and English translator, and programmer Konstantin Danilchenko. We were located at the Research Institute of Physical Culture. It was the first official organization in the USSR the title of which included the word “Yoga”.

The center engaged in active work: workshops in the Moscow Region (“Aksakovo”, “Beryozovaya Roshcha”) were held, and a series of publications came out (see the library on the site) on practical aspects of yoga. There were field seminars too – in Irkutsk, Yekaterinburg, Kustanay, Yaroslavl, Chernigov, Sevastopol, Novosibirsk, Chalyabinsk and other cities.

During that period of time I made acquaintance of Prof. V.V. Brodov, Ye. Fedotova, Ye. Ulmasbayeva, Yu. Belous, Ochapovsky, Svendrovsky, Polkovnikov, Golembo and many other persons who were involved in Yoga studies in some way or other.

In 1993 Roman Amelin abandoned us, and by 1996 the Center ceased to function actually, because K. Danilchenko switched to Sufism while B. Martynov started the realization of a publishing program of his own (which he completed by 2006 on the whole).

In 1998–89 I happened to teach Yoga therapy to Susan Wagner, Second Secretary of the US Embassy in Moscow. In 1994 and 1996, I was invited to conduct courses of Yoga therapy in San-Francisco, and in 2003 – in London. In 2000 the autonomous non-commercial organization “School of Classical Yoga of V. Boyko” was registered which became renamed simply “V. Boyko’s Yoga School” in 2005. In 1998 my book Yoga: Hidden Aspects of Practice was published, and in 2001 the book Yoga. An Art of Communication (1^st edn.) came out of print, it was followed by Yoga in Questions and Answers (Starklight Publishers 2002) and Yoga. An Art of Communication (2^nd edn., Moscow 2005, run-on of 2006, ISBN 5-8443-0037-8).

This ancient practice provides possibilities of disease prevention and of physical as well as spiritual healing practically for anyone. This Web Portal will give an idea of the fundamentals of the techniques of classical Yoga, as well as documentary information about its development in Russia, the USSR and the CIS.

As the fathers of the Church used to say, the truth may manifest itself in any point of time and space, there are no privileged places for it, and there is no need to travel the world far and wide in search of gurus; it is necessary to discern the quality of information, and to think and act productively. After some time of practicing Yoga everyone will naturally understand what Yoga is and what may be expected from its practice. Here I offer my own vast experience to all those interested who will be able to use it, thus saving their time, which is life.

Yoga: Art of Communication

Introduction

1. Novelty and Antiquity

2. About Sense

3. Why yoga?

4. The Communications

5. Ethics

6. The Body

7. Asana

8. For the beginners

9. Perceptions

10. The Practice of Yoga as guided by the Patanjali Sutras