When­ever I try to come to grips with some­thing, I tend to want to get a book — it’s a kind of emo­tional crutch. When I was research­ing dur­ing my Peru days, I ended with a huge library. But that was before the Web. Now, I am look­ing at buy­ing books more judi­ciously. I plan on doing some book reviews here so that peo­ple can under­stand which ones are worth pay­ing for.

All the book links go to Ama­zon where your pur­chase will gen­er­ate a small com­mis­sion to help me defer the costs of run­ning this site.

Start­ing Point

Jon Kabat-​​Zinn is a linch­pin for me. I started read­ing about his work at the Cen­ter for Mind­ful­ness in Med­i­cine, Health Care, and Soci­ety, and the Stress Reduc­tion Clinic at the Mass­a­chu­setts Uni­ver­sity Hos­pi­tal. I bought some inex­pen­sive audio CDs of guided exer­cises in relax­ation, yoga and med­i­ta­tion from his Mind­ful­ness Tapes web­site and began explor­ing. The CDs (there are now three sets of them) actu­ally allowed me to have a first taste of a home prac­tice of gen­tle yoga — some­thing even a klutz could do — and over­come any fear that I might do some­thing wrong. These sim­ple ses­sions gave me a taste for yoga and med­i­ta­tion, hun­gry  to find out more. I then read most of his books. If you’re a visual per­son, you can find sev­eral videos of his pre­sen­ta­tions on YouTube.

• Com­ing to Our Senses: Heal­ing Our­selves and the World Through Mind­ful­ness (Hype­r­ion, 2005) is a really ambi­tious book that addresses the per­sonal and the global. It is not the eas­i­est read because it is so extensive.
• Wher­ever You Go, There You Are: Mind­ful­ness Med­i­ta­tion in Every­day Life (Hype­r­ion, 1994) con­sists of up of short chap­ters that are con­cise invi­ta­tions to med­i­ta­tion. It is very acces­si­ble and highly rec­om­mended for the novice.
• Full Cat­a­stro­phe Liv­ing: Using the Wis­dom of Your Body and Mind to Face Stress, Pain, and Ill­ness (Delta, 1991) explains the sci­ence and med­i­cine that sup­port the increas­ing inter­est in mind­ful­ness and med­i­ta­tion in the heal­ing process. It was the first coher­ent assess­ment of the value of mind­ful­ness as an aide to heal­ing and alle­vi­at­ing human suf­fer­ing and pain.

Gen­eral read­ing about yoga

• Yoga and the Quest for the True Self (Ban­tam Books: 1999) by Stephen Cope is a great nar­ra­tive about the trans­for­ma­tion that occurs in body, mind and spirit. I’ve com­mented about this in my blog: here, here and here.
• The Wis­dom of Yoga: A Seeker’s Guide to Extra­or­di­nary Liv­ing by Stephen Cope (Ban­tam Books: 2006) is com­men­tary to Patanjali’s Yoga Sutra, but also a nar­ra­tive about a group of friends at the Kri­palu Cen­ter.
• Happy Yoga : 7 Rea­sons Why There’s Noth­ing to Worry About by Steven Ross (Regan­Books, 2003) intrigu­ing title because it under­scores yoga’s base­line. It’s not about poses or vinyasas. Steve Ross is a trendy teacher in LA and stars in Oxy­gen TV’s Inhale yoga program.
• Yoga : The Poetry of the Body by Rod­ney Yee with Nina Zolo­tow (St. Martin’s Grif­fin, 2002): Cre­ative mix­ture of pos­ture and posi­tion mechan­ics with yoga phi­los­o­phy. This was the first book that I bought to under­stand yoga. I went back and thumbed through it recently and was reminded that it’s a nice approach because it pro­vides eight rou­tines or prac­tices, end­ing with Sun Salu­ta­tion. In the sec­ond half of the book, Yee empha­sizes mod­i­fi­ca­tions on key posi­tions, as well as breath­ing and restora­tive poses. Many arf­tul and instruc­tive black and white pic­tures. A more lus­ciously col­or­ful pre­sen­ta­tion is made in Mov­ing Toward Bal­ance : 8 Weeks of Yoga by Rod­ney Yee with Nina Zolo­tow (Rodale Books, 2004). The book includes a step-​​by-​​step process to trans­form your home practice.
• Yoga: The Spirit And Prac­tice Of Mov­ing Into Still­ness by Erich Schiff­mann (Pocket Books, 1996). This book has turned into a clas­sic. The open­ing sec­tion is about get­ting your bear­ings in yoga by under­stand­ing some cen­tral con­cepts (still­ness, the core of good­ness, why yoga, what does it feel like, asana fun­da­men­tals, the wind through the instru­ment, lines of energy and play­ing the edge). Then, it’s on to the asanas and pranayama.
• Cool Yoga Tricks by Miram Austin. (Bal­len­tine Books, 2004). This book has proven really use­ful because it focuses on how to mod­ify poses so that peo­ple like me, with impaired flex­i­bil­ity, can mod­ify poses to make them more acces­si­ble. Lots of pic­tures, tips and hints.
• First There Is a Moun­tain: A Yoga Romance by Eliz­a­beth Kadet­sky (Lit­tle Brown 2004) is a curi­ous, but com­pelling tes­ti­mony of a writer’s inquiry into the his­tor­i­cal roots of yoga in India, the con­tem­po­rary prac­tice in India and the United States, and her own quest to under­stand her demons. She stud­ies under B. K. S. Iyen­gar and then switched to the Ash­tanga school. The blend of his­tor­i­cal research and per­sonal nar­ra­tive make it a book that stands out in the lit­er­a­ture of yoga.

Breath­ing

Breath­ing or pranayama is a core part of yoga; indeed, yoga’s breath­ing tech­niques may be what dis­tin­guishes it from cal­is­then­ics or aer­o­bic exercise.

• Yoga for Depres­sion: A Com­pas­sion­ate Guide to Relieve Suf­fer­ing Through Yoga by Amy Wein­traub (Broad­way Books, 2004). Don’t be mis­led by the title, the book is really about yoga’s capac­ity to ener­gize the spirit and restore psy­cho­log­i­cal and emo­tional bal­ance.  Accord­ing to the Depres­sion and Bipo­lar Sup­port Alliance, 20 mil­lion Amer­i­cans suf­fer from depres­sion and another 20 mil­lion suf­fer from anx­i­ety dis­or­ders. No won­der Paxil and other psy­chotropic med­ica­tions are big money-​​makers for the phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal indus­try. But I believe that a lot of these symp­toms are due to the dis­tor­tions of mod­ern life and the dis­con­nect between the body and the mind under stress. Yoga gives you tools to man­age the imbal­ances bet­ter. This was the book that opened my eyes to the yoga’s poten­tial. Other opin­ions about this book from expe­ri­enced yoga teach­ers can be found at YogaLifeStyle.com. Amy also has audio CDs and a DVDs. More infor­ma­tion at her web site. I’ve taken a work­shop with her, and she really crammed a lot of wis­dom into a cou­ple of hours. Other arti­cles include this one and that one.
• The Yoga of Breath: A Step-​​by-​​Step Guide to Pranayama by Richard Rosen (Shamb­hala, 2002). A detailed, thor­ough primer on how to begin the yogic dis­ci­pline of breath con­trol. This is for the seri­ous prac­ti­tioner. I am work­ing through the book slowly. Rosen’s meth­ods are in the Iyen­gar approach, which means grad­ual pro­gres­sion, start­ing with reclined positions.
• Donna Farhi has been an early pro­po­nent of breathing’s cru­cial role in yoga: The Book of Breath­ing: Vital­ity and Good Health Through Essen­tial Breath Work (Owl Books, 1996). Also see her Yoga Mind, Body and Spirit: A Return to Whole­ness (Henry Holt and Co., 2000) and Bring­ing Yoga to Life: The Every­day Prac­tice of Enlight­ened Liv­ing (Harpers San Fran­cisco, 2004).

Med­i­ta­tion

Med­i­ta­tion flows on the breath and the energy that yoga creates.

• Breath by Breath: The lib­er­at­ing prac­tice of Insight Med­i­ta­tion by Larry Rosen­berg with David Guy (Shamb­hala, 2004)
• The med­i­ta­tive mind : the vari­eties of med­i­ta­tive expe­ri­ence by Daniel Gole­man (Harper­Collins, 1999)
• Peace­ful Mind: Using Mind­ful­ness and Cog­ni­tive Behav­ioral Psy­chol­ogy to Over­come Depres­sion by John R. McQuaid (New Har­bin­ger Pub­li­ca­tions, 2004)
• The Mind­ful Way through Depres­sion: Free­ing Your­self from Chronic Unhap­pi­ness by J. Mark G. Williams, John D. Teas­dale, Zin­del V. Segal, and Jon Kabat-​​Zinn (The Guil­ford Press, 2007)
• Rad­i­cal Accep­tance: Embrac­ing Your Life With the Heart of a Bud­dha by Tara Brach (Ban­tam, 2004)

Ref­er­ence and Classics

• Sci­en­tific Keys Vol­ume I: The Key Mus­cles of Hatha Yoga by Ray Long (Author) and Chris MacIvor (Illus­tra­tor) (Bandha Yoga; 2006) is a remark­able ref­er­ence book because of the strik­ing illus­tra­tions and the thor­ough­ness of the knowl­edge about poses and phys­i­ol­ogy. There have been three edi­tions already, each time with aug­mented pages and more illus­tra­tions. I’ve decided to affli­ate with Band­hayoga and fea­ture the book on the site.
• Light on Yoga by B.K.S.Iyengar (Schocken; Revised edi­tion 1995)
• The Heart of Yoga: Devel­op­ing a Per­sonal Prac­tice by T.K.V. Desikachar (Inner Tra­di­tions; New Ed edi­tion 1999)
• Auto­bi­og­ra­phy of a Yogi by Parama­hansa Yogananda (Self-​​Realization Fel­low­ship Pub­lish­ers; New Ed edi­tion 1979)
• Anatomy of Hatha Yoga: A Man­ual for Stu­dents, Teach­ers, and Prac­ti­tion­ers by H. David Coul­ter (Body and Breath, Inc. 2001). Coul­ter applies West­ern sci­ence to map out the inter­sec­tion between body and phys­i­cal discipline.
• ExTen­sion : The 20-​​Minute-​​a-​​Day, Yoga-​​Based Pro­gram to Relax, Release & Reju­ve­nate the Aver­age Stressed-​​Out Over-​​35-​​Year-​​Old Body by by Sam Dworkis and Peg Moline (Fire­side, 1994). Prob­a­bly faster order­ing from Dworkis’s own web­site.

Wait­ing List

• Mas­ter­ing the Secrets of Yoga Flow by Doug Swen­son (Perigee, 2004)
• Yoga for Trans­for­ma­tion: Ancient Teach­ings and Prac­tices for Heal­ing the Body, Mind, and Heart by Gary Kraft­sow (Pen­quin Com­pass, 2002)
• The Spirit of Yoga by Kathy Phillips ( Bar­rons, 2002) This actu­ally has an excel­lent tree of yogic philos­phy show­ing the roots and branches of modern-​​day lineages.

Other list suggestions

• JJ Gormley’s read­ing list for teacher training
• Doug Keller’s list of books and videos. He pro­vides a short review of each selection.