Elizabeth Kadetsky

This book on yoga is mostly an autobiographical account of the author’s experience with yoga, and her struggle with personal and spiritual problems that yoga might have helped her to cope with. She was introduced to yoga in a college gym class at UC Santa Cruz. She continued to practice while working as a reporter in Los Angeles. Eventually, she decided to travel to India to study with the famous yogi B.K.S Iyengar at the Ramamani Iyengar Memorial Yoga Institute in Pune India. From first day in India, she doesn’t like the noise, smells, dirt, poverty and especially the stratified society. She does find that she likes B.K.S Iyengar, the famous yogi who runs the Iyengar Institute. While not always favorable, the first-person account of meeting with Iyengar and his family makes the book very interesting. With the help of a scholarship, she ends up taking a second trip to India, and this time her writing about India and yoga is noticeably more upbeat than on the first trip. The “transformation”, that seems to have occurred between the first and second trips to India is an interesting and unexplained feature of the book. What happened? Was it a result of the trip India and the yoga, despite how desperate she was to get away from the country by the end of her trip? Or maybe I just misread the book. On the second trip, she manages to visit other yoga ashrams, and even studies Ashtanga yoga. The book contains some interesting discussion on the history of yoga and on changes that resulted recently when India gained back its independence. One wonders if India's self-governance in some way was responsible for the introduction to the West of some of the great modern era yoga teachers (Iyengar, Jois, Desikachar).
The book might be mostly of interest to readers practicing yoga. But others may enjoy it as well. If your practice of yoga seems to be confined to the physical benefits of asanas, this book may inspire you to notice the complete yogic philosophy behind tadasana, vrkasana, savasana, etc.… (mais)