Yoga for the Three Stages of Life

"Because he covers all the bases. He starts off defining yoga classically. In the very beginning, he starts by saying a bit about himself, which is a very traditional way of doing things, explaining how he has some authority to speak. He explains how he studied with a man called Krishnamacharya. If we’re talking about yoga and the West, you can trace everything back to him. All the great teachers including B K S Iyengar, Pattabhi Jois and many others were his direct students. I can trace my teachers back to him. He did an enormous amount to popularise yoga in the early 20th century and lived to a ripe old age. Ramaswami starts by saying who he is, who his teacher was, and gives us the classical definitions and goes into detail with a lot of Hindu stories. Then he goes on to deal with the physical practice (asana), not in huge detail but enough, and then he covers breathing practices (pranayama) and also says a little bit about yoga for women and little bit about the yogic texts. So he’s covered everything. It’s a great book for anybody who wants to find out more about yoga. You can’t really learn yoga from a book, but this book is a great point of reference for some postures and for breathing and so on. After all, would you learn how to swim from a book? Is that even possible? Maybe for one or two people . . . but for most of us it’s best to have a teacher."