Yoga may be rooted in ancient India, but it's morphed into something new in North America today. Precisely what that might be, however, is difficult to say. Yoga is taught everywhere from spas to prisons, and for everything from weight loss to spiritual transcendence. With its chameleon-like ability to adapt equally well to advertising, athletics, and ashrams, contemporary yoga is a fascinating phenomenon that invites investigation. Written by experienced practitioners who are also teachers, therapists, activists, scholars, studio owners, and interfaith ministers, 21st Century Yoga is one of the first books to provide a multi-faceted examination of yoga as it actually exists in the U.S. and Canada today. CONTENTS: Introduction: Yoga and North American Culture - Carol Horton Enlightenment 2.0: The American Yoga Experiment - Julian Walker How Yoga Makes You Pretty: The Beauty Myth, Yoga and Me - Melanie Klein Questioning the "Body Beautiful": Yoga, Commercialism, and Discernment - Poep Sa Frank Jude Boccio Bifurcated Spiritualities: Examining Mind/Body Splits in the North American Yoga and Zen Communities - Nathan Thompson Starved for Connection: Healing Anorexia Through Yoga - Chelsea Roff Yoga and the 12 Steps: Holistic Recovery from Addiction - Tommy Rosen Modern Yoga Will Not Form a Real Culture Until Every Studio Can Also Double as a Soup Kitchen and other observations from the threshold between yoga and activism - Matthew Remski Yoga for War: The Politics of the Divine - Be Scofield Our True Nature is Our Imagination: Yoga and Non-Violence at the Edge of the World - Michael Stone How Yoga Messed With My Mind - Angela Jamison Afterword: The Evolution of Yoga and the Practice of Writing - Roseanne Harvey

Gurus of Modern Yoga explores the contributions that individual gurus have made to the formation of the practices and discourses of yoga in today's world.

'An indispensable companion for all interested in yoga, both scholars and practitioners' Professor Alexis G. J. S. Sanderson Despite yoga's huge global popularity, relatively little of its roots is known among practitioners. This compendium includes a wide range of texts from different schools of yoga, languages and eras: among others, key passages from the early Upanisads and the Mahabharata, and from the Tantric, Buddhist and Jaina traditions, with many pieces in scholarly translation for the first time. Covering yoga's varying definitions, its most important practices, such as posture, breath control, sensory withdrawal and meditation, as well as models of the esoteric and physical bodies, Roots of Yoga is a unique and essential source of knowledge. Translated and Edited with an Introduction by James Mallinson and Mark Singleton

A history of yoga’s transformation from sacred discipline to exercise program to embodied spiritual practice • Identifies the origin of exercise yoga as India’s response to the mania for exercise sweeping the West in the early 20th century • Examines yoga’s transformations through the lives and accomplishments of 11 key figures, including Sri Yogendra, K. V. Iyer, Louise Morgan, Krishnamacharya, Swami Sivananda, Indra Devi, and B. K. S. Iyengar • Draws on more than 10 years of research from rare primary sources and includes 99 illustrations In The Path of Modern Yoga, Elliott Goldberg shows how yoga was transformed from a sacred practice into a health and fitness regime for middle-class Indians in the early 20th century and then gradually transformed over the course of the 20th century into an embodied spiritual practice--a yoga for our times. Drawing on more than 10 years of research from rare primary sources as well as recent scholarship, Goldberg tells the sweeping story of modern yoga through the remarkable lives and accomplishments of 11 key figures: six Indian yogis (Sri Yogendra, Swami Kuvalayananda, S. Sundaram, T. Krishnamacharya, Swami Sivananda, and B. K. S. Iyengar), an Indian bodybuilder (K. V. Iyer), a rajah (Bhavanarao Pant Pratinidhi), an American-born journalist (Louise Morgan), an Indian diplomat (Apa Pant), and a Russian-born yogi trained in India (Indra Devi). The author places their achievements within the context of such Western trends as the physical culture movement, the commodification of exercise, militant nationalism, jazz age popular entertainment, the quest for youth and beauty, and 19th-century New Age religion. In chronicling how the transformation of yoga from sacred discipline to exercise program allowed for the creation of an embodied spiritual practice, Goldberg presents an original, authoritative, provocative, and illuminating interpretation of the history of modern yoga.

Yoga - The Art of Balance is a yoga instruction book with photos of people of all ages and body types demonstrating a complete yoga workout that guides the reader from the beginner to the intermediate level and beyond. There is also helpful information on how to find the right style of yoga for you, the right studio, the right teacher and how to practice yoga without injuries. There are sections on the history of yoga as well as on yoga philosophy. The information and ideas presented are not only non-dogmatic, they are accessible and useful to people of all faiths or no faith. This book is unique in that it will help the yoga practitioner find their own yoga. The emphasis is on self-discovery and balance, not conformity to an existing norm, ancient or modern. Yoga - The Art of Balance will help you balance your body, mind and spirit. You will build strength and flexibility as you learn to relax and really enjoy this journey, called life, to its fullest.