This is the story of Yoga in America, as told by 46 ardent teachers and devotees from every part of the Yoga spectrum. 46 unique and compelling essays on what Yoga is in America representing the major yoga traditions, Bikram, Kundalini, Ashtanga, Kripalu, Iyengar and some that are much less widely known. The 46 writers assembled in this book show both the great diversity of Yoga and its unifying principles. So dive in to any page and you will find a story or musing that offers you wisdom, profound inspiration, and perhaps even a touch of enlightenment. Here is a sample of some of the fascinating and fun chapter titles: "Hot Yoga in America-Roots and Offshoots" "Skip the Middle Man and Go Directly to Bliss " "How Yoga Saved My Life" "Firm Buttocks or Self-Realization?" "How Patanjali Comes Alive in My Classes and My Life" Proceeds from Yoga in America support Families of Fallen Firefighters.

Originally from Riga, Latvia, Yoga practitioner, author and teacher Indra Devi (born Eugenie Peterson) lived to 102 years! She became fascinated with India at age 15 and set out to India in 1927 to become a disciple of Sri Tirumalai Krishnamacharya, after which time she moved to different parts of the world and taught Yoga. She comes from the renowned tradition of Mysore. For thousands of years the culture of Yoga has existed in India, bringing to its practitioners remarkable health and spiritual well-being. In YOGA FOR AMERICANS Indra Devi has brought this ancient art to those who need it most: Americans, victims of a driving, competitive, tension-ridden society which suffers from its own superabundance. Here, in the richest country in the world, an alarming number of people still die from malnutrition and allied diseases; obesity, underactivity, and psychosomatic illness are commonplace; tension-inspired heart attacks are the worst killers of all. Here is an invaluable book, packed with sound, proven advice, including many extras such as an introductory question-and-answer session, lavish illustrations, special diets, and constructive advice for those suffering from arthritis, asthma, and overweight.

In The Subtle Body, Stefanie Syman tells the surprising story of yoga's transformation from a centuries-old spiritual discipline to a multibillion-dollar American industry. Yoga's history in America is longer and richer than even its most devoted practitioners realize. It was present in Emerson's New England, and by the turn of the twentieth century it was fashionable among the leisure class. And yet when Americans first learned about yoga, what they learned was that it was a dangerous, alien practice that would corrupt body and soul. A century later, you can find yoga in gyms, malls, and even hospitals, and the arrival of a yoga studio in a neighborhood is a signal of cosmopolitanism. How did it happen? It did so, Stefanie Syman explains, through a succession of charismatic yoga teachers, who risked charges of charlatanism as they promoted yoga in America, and through generations of yoga students, who were deemed unbalanced or even insane for their efforts. The Subtle Body tells the stories of these people, including Henry David Thoreau, Pierre A. Bernard, Margaret Woodrow Wilson, Christopher Isherwood, Sally Kempton, and Indra Devi. From New England, the book moves to New York City and its new suburbs between the wars, to colonial India, to postwar Los Angeles, to Haight-Ashbury in its heyday, and back to New York City post-9/11. In vivid chapters, it takes in celebrities from Gloria Swanson and George Harrison to Christy Turlington and Madonna. And it offers a fresh view of American society, showing how a seemingly arcane and foreign practice is as deeply rooted here as baseball or ballet. This epic account of yoga's rise is absorbing and often inspiring—a major contribution to our understanding of our society.

The masters profiled here represent radically different styles, from the exuberance of Rodney Yee to the quiet contemplativeness of Nischala Joy Devi. Whatever the tradition, they will help you yoke the power of the body and the mind toward liberation of the soul.

"Rollicking and well-researched...A story of scandal, financial shenanigans, bodily discipline, oversize egos and bizarre love triangles." -Wall Street Journal More than fifteen million Americans currently practice yoga (according to Yoga Journal), but how many of them know the true story of how Downward Dog first captivated America? Resurrecting a fascinating and forgotten tale, journalist Robert Love returns to the Gilded Age, when Dr. Pierre Bernard (né Perry Baker in Iowa) revived a discipline banned in Victorian India, packaged it for Americans, and taught legions of followers, who bankrolled his luxurious Hudson River ashram- the first in the nation. Filled with Jazz Age celebrities, heiresses, spies, and outraged clergy, The Great Oom is the enthralling life story of the unlikeliest of gurus, and a stunning saga of mysticism, intrigue, and the American dream.

This dissertation explores the ways in which various Western yoga teachers have interpreted and presented yoga to an American audience, and how media outlets have represented those yoga practices to a broader American audience between the 1890s and the 2010s. In particular, the case studies illuminate the ways in which contemporary concerns have influenced how yoga teachers and media reports have framed and responded to yoga practices. In this dissertation, I present a series of Western yoga practitioners that embody the most interesting and distinctive representations of popular understanding of yoga for their individual historical moments. Though the chapters do not reflect a linear development, recurrent discourses concerning Orientalism, postcolonialism, race, gender, sexuality, and class in the United States re-emerge in each chapter as different yoga schools respond to local and global concerns. Through these different vignettes, a trajectory of American yoga as taught and practiced by Westerners in the United States historicizes yoga in ways that are often overlooked in favor of the "timelessness" of the practice

This is not about yoga for the masses looking to improve their bodies. It is, instead, about the timeless essence of what yoga actually is. Written with Americans in mind, it explains the practical philosophy and psychology of the deep spiritual path of true, ancient yoga. Unlike a scholarly tome that gathers dust on library shelves, the author's words speak to regular people in their stress-filled daily lives. He applies yoga to the cultural matrix of earning a living, raising children, finding employment in a jobless market, aptly demonstrating how yoga psychology is meant to lighten our problem-saturated times.