The Heart of Yoga: Developing a Personal Practice

If you want to dig deeper into Yoga this is a great book. This was a required prerequisite reading for my YTT. I actually purchased it twice. My first copy got ruined with bug spray on my flight to Bali for my teacher training. As soon as I got back to the States I purchased a second copy. It has great information on the 8 limbs of yoga, yogic philosophy, mantras and the yoga Sutras. Highly recommend. It was a wonderful background of knowledge to have going into my training and reading it again as I love having this information on the forefront of my mind.

In reading this book, I was first taken by the interview at its beginning. I began bookmarking quotes for transfer to my personal noebook (taken to each class), and soon found myself with nearly every other page bookmarked! The quotes available in this book are outstanding. And not just in the interview section. There are many interesting points Desikachar makes in his approach to asana sequencing: the importance of breath, the importance of tailoring the pose (and the sequence) to the individual, the importance of resting before engaging in a counter pose. One of my favorite quotes from this book (attributed to the Mahabharata) is “Speak the truth which is pleasant. Do not speak unpleasant truths. Do not lie, even if the lies are pleasing to the ear. That is the eternal law, the dharma.” To my mind this is much more practicable to practice than “Always tell the truth”. Another is “We can never experience our real nature if we do not expose ourselves to change”. I take this as at once being both a caution in life style, and also in becoming too comfortable in one’s yogic pursuits, including asanas and meditation. Then we get to “The Yoga Sutra of Patanjali” with Translation and Commentary by T.K.V. Desikachar. “If you tell a person who cannot find their own house that there is a pot of gold inside, they would be happier had they not had this information. What use is the gold if it cannot be found? It only causes pain. First they must find the house and enter it. Then there are many possibilities.” I take this to mean that everyone must start at the beginning…everyone must find their own house [way, path]. His views on dualism: (3.35 “The mind, which is subject to change, and the Perceiver, which is not are in proximity but are of distinct and different characters.” as opposed to Reductionism are also presented in this book. This Dualistic approach is softened later “Thus the mind serves a dual purpose. It serves the Perceiver by presenting the external to it. It also respects or presents the Perceiver to itself for its own enlightenment.” leaving open the possibility of a more Reductionist interpretation. This section of the book is the one I shall most refer to in future.

This needs to be required reading for all teachers. Too many schools just run these teacher training money machines with little depth or scope, and consequently a ton of people out there call themselves teachers when their own practice is still in its infancy. Whether you just wish to find deeper meaning and understanding within your own practice or wish to teach, you need this book. Yoga practice is not meant to be the same daily repetition of sequence, nor is it meant to be the same for every student. It should wrap itself around the practitioner and few teachers approach it this way. Yoga is meant to be prescriptive. Bishnu Ghosh understood this as well. All true teachers do. This is beautifully written and a treasure trove of applicable wisdom. If I had to recommend one book on yoga it would be this, followed closely by Light on Yoga.

I liked the fact that yogic facts are presented in a scientific manner. Opportunities and reasons to modify practice based on one’s desire are demonstrated. Satisfactory reading.

Enlightened, educated, and so happy I was encouraged to read this by my yoga instructor.

This is a very sophisticated and detailed description of the interplay between breathing, doing the asanas, and maintaining a meditative state. All three combined are the essence of yoga. Much information and techniques. A great book

I wish I'd had this book thirty years ago when I first started yoga. The discussion of dynamic and static poses, and using dynamic poses to move into static poses is excellent, as is the discussion of modifying poses and variations of breathing. The book is eminently readable and it's true that this is the kind of book you use every day to improve your own practice. AMENDMENT: I wrote the review above several years ago, but have decided it doesn't really cover some important parts of the book, so it's time for an amendment. I keep going back to this book, and recently I realized I hadn't included one of my favorite aspects of the book in the review. What I found most surprising about the book is the ideal that you can change the way you breathe through specific asanas. Probably because I can be annoyingly literal at times, I had always adhered to the breathing sequences I'd learned from my two primary teachers. Turns out, you can use different breathing patterns for a single asana! Imagine my surprise. It's impossible to exxagerate how important this book is to any serious or even semi-serious student of Yoga. Read it now and get years of benefit.

Classic book on yoga. Highly recommended

very nice book, mainly focused on the theory of yoga but also gives some useful practices and guidance to design your own practice.

The book covering the fundamentals of yoga, written by lifelong teachers.

Gutes Buch über die leider weniger poluläre Linie von Desikachar, die einige wichtige Dinge ander behandelt als Iyengar oder Jois.

つまんねえ。まあ、個人的感想だが。

Good book on yoga