richard rosen - yoga faq

 


I am going to dictate this book review while I am driving home to Maryland for Mother’s Day. Happy Mother’s Day to all of the moms out there. This is a nonfiction book and it is not too long. I just started taking yoga at the request of my therapist. I am taking yoga to help myself relax because I have anxiety problems. I have taken about 30 classes thus far. This book talks a lot about the history of yoga, including the most important historical books. Also it discusses a lot of the official yoga terminology which comes from the Indian language Sanskrit. If you enjoy foreign language, this is a good book for you as the author is constantly talking about root words and what they mean; the book is very academic. It is not light reading. The next book about yoga that I’m going to read will be more fun and less academic.

Yoga is a difficult topic. It is kind of like a religion, although the author says it is not a religion. There are many texts written thousands of years ago and no one really knows who compiled the texts and they do not really know if they were written thousands of years ago. There are different yoga schools based on dualism or monism. There is a lot of debate among scholars as to the meaning of the different yoga texts. There is a debate among Western scholars and traditional Indian scholars. Apparently, traditional hatha yoga is all about meditation. There is a difference between hatha yoga and classical yoga (dualism vs. monism).

This book does not have to be read in chronological order as it is an FAQ. There was no mention of hot yoga in this book.

I really enjoy yoga because it helps me to stretch and breathe and I sweat a lot, which is good. However, much like religion I am not convinced by this book that yoga is one concrete thing, but rather an interpretation of texts written many years ago. We do not know much about the origin of these texts. That being said, I intend to keep practicing yoga.

In sum, this book was academically pretty good, but in terms of convincing the reader that yoga is one concrete thing I think it did not do it. However, the point of the book was not to convince you to practice yoga or that yoga holds the answers to your life. Therefore, I say if you like yoga, you should read it otherwise do not read it. If you are interested in learning about the history of yoga also read it. page it! maybe

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