Interesting yoga books

I recently read two interesting books about Yoga from Alistair Shearer, an expert translator of Sanskriet and historian of Yoga. The first is his translation and comments from Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras. This is often used as a justification for Hatha -Yoga, which in the West has mainly developed into what Shearer calls “Body Yoga” with emphasis on stretching and other physical exercises. There is little emphasis on “Mind Yoga”, with the exception of a short guided meditation at the end of the classes, usually while you lie in the “Corpse pose“This does not mean that this type of class is not valuable, I have taken a lot of it and found them very useful for stress lighting and Limmer as we get older.

The Sutras are a series of short statements that occur in essence a meditation manual. Eight limbs of yoga are taught. The first two refer to ethical behavior, a series of 5 “DOS” and 5 “Don’s”. The third is about Asanas, where the confusion about Hatha Yoga arises. Asanas are poses or postures that are common in yoga classes. But in the Sutras it is quite clear that what is being discussed is the correct posture for meditation, essentially upright sitting with the spine upright, in a position that can help comfortably for a longer period, but is not conducive to fall asleep. The fourth limb is pranayamaOr breathing exercises, intended to calm ourselves to prepare for meditation. The rest of the eight limbs are consecutive stages in meditation, starting with “withdrawal of the senses”, then concentration, meditation and eventually Samadhi or Union with our true nature. This union is what yoga really refers to and is the point of the whole goal.

In a second book The story of YogaShearer pieces together possibly the entire history of yoga to this day. He makes a clear distinction between the evolution of “mind” and “body” yoga in the book. Tracing history is difficult because it disappears back in the mists of time and often written records are insufficient. But it still provides a fascinating story. We are very happy in the West that this great gift from multi -year wisdom has been migrated here from India.