A writer, yoga teacher, and somatic psychologist, I’ve been passionate about yoga and the sacred arts ever since I encountered, on my parent’s bookshelf, the awe-inspiring art catalogue, The Manifestations of Shiva, an exhibit curated by the late, great art historian Stella Kramrisch. An adjunct faculty member in the Somatics MA program at the California Institute of Integral Arts, I have lived and traveled extensively throughout India, studying yoga there, and teaching in the U.S. In Berkeley, I write fiction and maintain a private psychology practice, incorporating yoga as a tool for nervous system regulation and embodied wellbeing. I also lead local and international yoga retreats.
This book is my go-to when anyone asks me to recommend the best book for learning and understanding yoga. It’s one of the few that integrates actual yoga practices with the meaning of yoga in clear, concise language, including a wonderful translation of Patanjali’s Yoga Sutra embedded within. The yoga of linking body, breath, mind, and relationship in a series of vinyasa kramas is timeless and doable. Each chapter is organized around a theme from the Yoga Sutras. The historic photos of the author and his world-famous yogi father, T. Krishnamacharya (who was the teacher of teachers, responsible for the wide reach of global yoga) are wonderful to peruse, as is the interview with Desikachar himself.
Sri Tirumalai Krishnamacharya, who lived to be over 100 years old, was one of the greatest yogis of the modern era. Elements of Krishnamacharya's teaching have become well known around the world through the work of B. K. S. Iyengar, Pattabhi Jois, and Indra Devi, who all studied with Krishnamacharya. Krishnamacharya's son T. K. V. Desikachar lived and studied with his father all his life and now teaches the full spectrum of Krishnamacharya's yoga. Desikachar has based his method on Krishnamacharya's fundamental concept of viniyoga, which maintains that practices must be continually adapted to the individual's changing needs to achieve…
Visually enticing, this book provides an innovative approach to yoga based on gravity and the spine. Care for your spine and you care for yourself. Scaravelli, a student of Desikachar, Iyengar, and the philosopher Krishnamurti connects the body to nature. The spine of a leaf resembles the human spine, an ocean wave, or the undulation of a back bend. We are nature, not separate from it. This book is full of stories, ancient myths, and her own blunt advice: “Do not kill the instinct of the body for the glory of the pose.” The yoga photos of Scaravelli in her later years will inspire you to keep up your practice. This book reminds me that yoga can be serious, joyful, and immediate all at once. Everything I need is already here.
A fully revised and updated edition of the classic yoga book, with a new foreword by B.K.S. Iyengar.
For more than twenty-five years, until her death at ninety-one, Vanda Scaravelli helped transform bodies and lives with her innovative approach to yoga through the proper alignment of the spine. She listened to the body and worked with—instead of against—it. She used gravity, grounding, and breathing to achieve dramatic improvements in health and wellbeing.
Awakening the Spine offers a gentle way to achieve and maintain overall health and a naturally supple spine at any age. Scaravelli’s lasting message reminds readers that, “if…
Floretta- the story of an old woman who discovers life beautifully anew thru the helping hands of a child. The chakra colors of dawn and twilight are woven through the pages as the cycle of life is magically composed. The subject of “heaven,” has the potential to open discussions with…
Art can serve as a support for meditation. Ritual brings the spiritual dimension of yoga into action. Mookerjee and Kanna’s breadth of living scholarship portray the ritual arts of the Indian Tantric traditions to be a form of yoga itself, one that reflects the non-dual or Advaita philosophy of Tantric yoga. This book is a practical guide, as well as a deep dive into Tantric symbolism, both satisfying and transformative. If you crave visual support for your practice, pick up this book.
In recent years, the West has shown a wide and enthusiastic interest in tantra and its application to everyday life. Though its roots are in Hinduism, tantra's goals are the universal ones of self-knowledge and liberated joy. Its methods and effects transcend geography and era.
Basing its approach on a historical and explanatory survey, this book deals in a detailed way with astronomy, astrology, alchemy and cosmology in tantrism. In addition, there is discussion of the different viewpoints of 'left-hand' and 'right-hand' tantrikas and their respective attitudes towards human sexuality and its place in ritual. The drawings and illustrations…
The sociologist, Andrea Jain, contextualizes the historical roots of yoga in this well-researched and readable book. For the yogi who has read everything, she provides a refreshing perspective. She addresses the yoga explosion in the West, linking spiritual consumer culture with late-stage capitalism without the typical moralizing, or nostalgia for a so-called golden age of yoga. She shows that yoga was never a fixed historical or essentialist enterprise, but rather, always changing and adapting to the culture that surrounded it. That culture, in turn, re-makes yoga over and over. While serious yogis can respect yoga’s roots, we’re also part of its innovation and evolution. This is a yoga history lesson worth reading, offering much to ponder.
Premodern and early modern yoga comprise techniques with a wide range of aims, from turning inward in quest of the true self, to turning outward for divine union, to channeling bodily energy in pursuit of sexual pleasure. Early modern yoga also encompassed countercultural beliefs and practices. In contrast, today, modern yoga aims at the enhancement of the mind-body complex but does so according to contemporary dominant metaphysical, health, and fitness paradigms. Consequently, yoga is now a part of popular culture. In Selling Yoga, Andrea R. Jain explores the popularization of yoga in the context of late-twentieth-century consumer culture. She departs…
Flourish from Within: Moving Beyond Survival, Beyond Thriving, to Living Your Best Soul Life!
by
Ann Marie Hoff,
Flourish From Within is a practical self-help spiritual book with many exercises to learn how to use spiritual tools to make your life more purposeful, more magical, more alive!
It covers clearing old soul contracts, learning how to work with your angel and spirit guides, how to manifest correctly, how…
This book of ancient vacanas- lyric verse of four saint-poets of South India- will seer into your heart. These mystical poems, translated by one of India’s most revered writers, bring the reader into direct experience with the divine, or God, or Shiva, cutting through caste, class, race, religion, and culture. Born of the bhakti (devotional) protest movement, these poems will remind you of Rumi. I’m always surprised that these soulful poems are not better known to Western readers. Read a verse. Sit in meditation. Notice what happens inside your body.
Speaking of Siva is a selection of vacanas or free-verse sayings from the Virasaiva religious movement, dedicated to Siva as the supreme god. Written by four major saints, the greatest exponents of this poetic form, between the tenth and twelfth centuries, they are passionate lyrical expressions of the search for an unpredictable and spontaneous spiritual vision of 'now'. Here, yogic and tantric symbols, riddles and enigmas subvert the language of ordinary experience, as references to night and day, sex and family relationships take on new mystical meanings. These intense poems of personal devotion to a single deity also question traditional…
365 Yoga is a daily companion for your yoga practice. Filled with thought-provoking and inspiring quotations from the greatest yogic texts and spiritual teachers throughout history, as well as invaluable instruction on specific practices, it is an essential resource for anyone who practices yoga or meditation. A celebration of the powerful practice that is yoga, this book guides readers - day by day - through centuries of philosophy and themes. 365 Yoga infuses yoga practice with a deeper understanding of the intricate connection of mind, body, and spirit.
Known more for his books on Mayas, Aztecs, and Spanish conquistadors, historian Matthew Restall's latest book takes his deepest dive yet into the history of pop music.
In the late-1970s, three music-obsessed, suburban London teenagers set out to make their own kind of pop music: after years of struggle, success…
Ancient Evenings is a study of consciousness presented as a series of fictional philosophical dialogues set at the height of the Roman Empire. These dialogues—on good and evil, truth and falsehood, life and death—are historical re-enactments of what persons representing the major Hellenistic schools of philosophy might actually have said…
