reviews

The Science of Yoga: The Risks and Rewards 

Reviewed by Chris Holt

 

The New York Times article ‘How Yoga Can Wreck Your Body’ sent journalist Willam J. Broad’s new book, The Science of Yoga, racing up Amazon’s list of best-selling yoga books – even before it was published. My copy has arrived and I’ve been reading his assessment of the “risks and rewards” of yoga this weekend.

The NYT article was undoubtedly a great piece of marketing; would it have got any publicity at all if it had been headlined “How Yoga Makes You Feel Good”? But after all the hype, what does Broad actually tell us about a scientific assessment of yoga? He certainly did his homework; over five years trawling through nearly a thousand scientific papers that have studied yoga over more than 100 years.

On the risks, Broad has definitely done a service in highlighting those posed by some yoga asanas (postures) and pranayama (breathing techniques), if not taught carefully and individually to students by knowledgeable teachers.

He gives a biological explanation for what many careful yoga teachers already know; postures that strain or put weight on the neck, such as shoulderstands and  headstands, should not be taught in group classes at a “general” or “beginners” level. He explains why: there is a risk of damaging arteries supplying blood to the brain, causing nerve damage or stroke.

For the same reason, avoid taking the head too far back in postures such as Cobra and the Wheel, or turning the head too far round in spinal twists.

That’s not to say these postures are bad for us; in the chapter on “Mood”, he explains how inversions such as headstand and shoulderstand can be deeply relaxing, reducing physical stress responses and lowering blood pressure. It’s just that in a group class, of perhaps over-enthusiastic and inexperienced students, it is hard for a yoga teacher to ensure everyone is practising the postures safely.

It is beyond the scope of the book, but it would be useful to make a comparison with the risks associated with other physical activities; is yoga more risky than football, tennis, skiing, basketball, jogging – especially if played too hard for someone’s physical ability or not coached by a knowledgeable and sensitive teacher?

Only one chapter of the book covers risks; a further six chapters assess the evidence for the effects of yoga on health; athletic fitness; healing of injuries; psychological well-being; sex; and creativity. Some are stronger than others; the best are those where there is a wealth of scientific study to draw from.

The chapter on health asserts there is good evidence that yoga:

• reduces stress, with physiological benefits for blood pressure and the immune system
• aids cardiovascular health by raising levels of anti-oxidants in the blood (preventing cell damage) and reducing blood pressure, blood sugar, cholesterol and atherosclerosis (thickening of artery walls)
• slows physical ageing by improving spine health and balance, thus preventing back and limb pain and falls; and, through stress reduction, slowing the “biological clock” in the DNA of cells.

On fitness, he concludes that yoga has no more beneficial effects on athletic fitness than regular walking; and that because it slows the body’s metabolic rate, yoga is not a powerful tool for weight loss. Although he adds that its capacity to encourage mindfulness, and awareness of desires could explain why many people claim yoga helps keep them in shape.

His understanding of the health benefits of yoga emphasise the power of asanas and pranayama – and their ability to cultivate physical and mental relaxation – to enable us to take control of some of the biological functions of the body, in particular the balance between the sympathetic (fight-or-flight) and parasympathetic (rest-and-digest) responses of the autonomic nervous system.

There is a wealth of evidence that while the fight-or-flight response is really useful when we need to escape an immediate danger (it enabled our forbears to close down bodily systems such as digestion and reproduction in order to focus on the biological necessities of running away very fast from a wild animal), to be constantly in such a stressed state causes long-term damage, for example to the immune system.

And yet many of us today live in a semi-permanent state of stress or anxiety, perhaps explaining why yoga is currently so popular.

In the chapter on “Mood” Broad likens yoga practice to gaining control of the accelerator and brake pedals of the body’s nervous system. He outlines scientific studies that have confirmed yoga’s power to tackle anxiety and depression. It “succeeds brilliantly at smoothing the ups and downs of emotional life,” he concludes.

The book is less convincing on subjects where the scientific evidence is more scarce: on sex and creativity, for example. And it barely touches on the spiritual and ethical aspects of yoga, and which the scientific method has yet to explore. Along the way it gives a readable and useful explanation of the history of modern yoga and its journey from magical and religious practice in the East to exercise classes in gyms throughout the West.

Understandably for a book about science, Broad focuses on the physical aspects of yoga and that which can be measured. But that is only half of the story of yoga. He concedes that science is crude. “It ignores much about reality to zero in on those aspects of nature that it can quantify and comprehend… No equation is going to outdo Shakespeare.”

So impressed is Broad with the health and healing power of yoga he envisages a possible future where yoga will be prescribed by doctors instead of drugs to help an ageing population enjoy greater well-being in our extended years. But he comes with an agenda; for this to happen he wants greater medicalisation of yoga training and teaching, and with it greater regulation. This is something strongly resisted by many in the yoga community, particularly by those such the UK’s Independent Yoga Network, who fear that the spiritually liberating aspects of yoga will be lost if it is taken over and regulated by the physical fitness industry.

The quietening the body and mind through yoga brings a serenity and awareness in which it is possible to experience spiritual insight. This experience is no less a part of reality because it has not yet been explained by science.

For me this debate is fascinating and exciting; it’s where science and spirituality come face to face; the 400-year-old scientific approach that has done much to free us from dogma, and self-serving authority meets the universal and timeless yearning of the human soul for meaning.

Broad’s book shows us that science has begun to explain why people for thousands of years have benefited physically and psychologically from yoga. It does nothing to explain the internal spiritual landscape that is revealed by the practice of yoga and meditation. For that you need other books, such as David Fontana’s The Meditator’s Handbook or Jack Kornfield’s After the Ecstasy, the Laundry.

TO FIND OUT ABOUT CHRIS’S WORK CLICK HERE

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YOGA BODY by Mark Singleton

Reviewed by Alan Roberts

This article is to represent some of the arguments put forward in Mark Singleton’s Yoga Body: The Origins of Modern Posture Practice, that I feel are particularly relevant to us  - today’s Yoga practitioners, and to draw from that analysis some points for consideration and debate by groups such as the IYN.  In doing this I in no way wish to detract from this well written book but rather to bring out aspects that I feel are very important to those of us who use asana postures in our practise.  Indeed, part of my purpose in producing this review is to draw in like-minded people to read the fullness of his argument contained within the book.  

It is worth mentioning here for consideration that his book does not stand alone, but he makes steady reference to scholarship and academic pieces already available and also in process (page 17-18) that will further endorse his findings and serve to sustain his view and also, I feel, keep it strongly in the public eye. 

He argues that Yoga as it is popularly known today, heavily concerned with health and recognisable by its asana practice, is a creation of many strands and that the European bodybuilding and physical culture of such as Sandow and Maxick, of French dance and women’s gymnastics, and Swedish exercise are much more in direct evidence than any debt to an Indian Yoga tradition.

Firstly the historical survey presented by Singleton is both precise and revelatory in that it spotlights the remarkable lack of early evidence for the practice of asana.  The first chapter gives a rapid overview from the ‘Pasupati Seal’ depiction of a Siva-like ‘Lord of the Beasts’ some 2000 years BCE and its speculative Yoga-like position, then continuing on through the texts of the Siva Samhita (15th century) which mentions 84 postures and describes 32;   HathaYogapradikpa (15th – 16th century) outlining 15 postures; to the Gheranda Samhita (17th – 18th century) also describing 32 postures.  What comes across is the flimsy - and that is a generous description - nature of the ‘ancient’ textual evidence of posture practice in India.

Pranayama is also present to convey some degree of congruency with the westernised Yoga of the present day but as Singleton goes on to point out the emphasis in these texts is on the ‘subtle physiology’ of hatha Yoga on which these asana and pranayama practises are based.  And that these are directed solely towards the ‘transmutation of the human body into a vessel immune from mortal decay’ (p28).  This direction for hatha Yoga and indeed this whole chapter may remind some of us of the feel of Theos Bernard’s writing from the early fifties with its athletic purifications and obscure austerities and its almost industrial cleansing rituals - none of which I would suggest, any of us practiced – at least not for long.  This again was because of course echoing Singleton’s point, we did not go directly to the sources, or question the assertions, we assumed . . . . .

Perhaps we assumed that there was an oral tradition underpinning this practise that had fascinated us.  This is something that I felt Mark Singleton does not and cannot directly prove or deny, but he nails it clearly by describing the paucity of what he does find in this vast sub-continents centuries old civilisation - and Indian art is so wonderfully representational.  The very emptiness seems to give even the thought of a hidden oral tradition, a deeply hollow ring.    Meditation poses are readily represented, as are sexual proclivities and couplings on temple walls and in vivid miniatures;  battle scenes and mythic situations dance and spread across pots and shards, books and city walls;  all human life is there, whereas asana, well apparently not very much at all.

Manuscripts are recounted by later advocates of posture based exercise, but these are never produced and fade before any open form of scrutiny; one tragically even being ‘eaten by ants’.

More telling perhaps is the universal de-negation of the physical practices associated with mendicants and fakirs which Singleton finds copious accounts of from foreign travellers and indigenous commentators.  The most telling of which is from Vivekananda, one of the most highly revered and quoted of the elucidators and relaters of Yoga to the West.  His Raja Yoga (1896) was very often in my suitcase and certainly revered and quoted to me and by me often enough at weekends and courses.  His synthesis of all the systems of Yoga, lucidly depicted gathered and codified, delineated for us western souls the range of Indian spirituality and philosophy.  It is very telling to read his;

‘There are sects called Hatha-Yogis . . . they say the greatest good is to keep the body from dying . . . Their whole process is clinging to the body.  Twelve years training!  And they begin with children, otherwise it is impossible’ (p71)

If Vivekananda opened our eyes to the value of Eastern spirituality we must recognise that it was also a counter motion or perhaps retro-grade motion to a Western re-discovery and re-engagement with the body and physicality during the 19th Century.  There was a re-involvement with sport and exercise as uplifting and developmental exemplified and culminating with the first modern Olympic Games (1896).  Singleton shows how this ‘spiritualisation’ of human physicality will enwrap and absorb the dialogue and patina of Indian concepts for its own already forming attitudes and aspirations (p81).  But the forms, exercises and the poses he traces are from several sources – all in Europe and America .

This movement towards a healthy physicality was involved and entangled with nationalistic movements throughout Europe, which had its share of new and young nations, and the Americas.  It was directly linked with ideas of masculinity and military independence, strength and fitness became quasi-spiritual ideals. Similarly, in India the author points out the enthusiastic receptions given to Physical Culture practitioners and their systems and their rapid adoption, both covert and overtly, into its nationalist movement and anti-colonial societies.

The wealth of detail and range and depth of scholarship given regarding the re-forming and subsequent back-dating of modern postural Yoga is beyond the range of this article but is intelligently and sensitively put by Singleton.  It is also engagingly human as well as overwhelming, particularly so when the story shifts to Mysore in the 1930s where the author finds a few surviving participants in the ‘Krishnamacharya industry’ ;  designing, reviving and re-packaging what we would now begin to recognise as Yoga from the manuals and systems of physical culture.

Singleton refers to this ‘modern Yoga’ as ‘Anglophone’ – English language -Yoga, it is a separate and very different beast to the Yoga of pre-modern Indian tradition and he uses this title to clearly distinguish them.  Anglophone Yoga is transnational but tends to be in written in English or another European language as opposed to Sanskrit, although it incorporates and anglicises many Sanskrit words.  It is written in English for it is designed from English and European sources and always was designed for a worldwide or non-Indian setting, to place Indian culture internationally.  And it is international, and it is also very valuable;

‘Since the 1990s, Yoga has become a multimillion dollar business, and high profile legal battles have been fought over who owns asana.  Styles sequences, and postures themselves have been franchised, copyrighted, and patented by individuals, companies and government . . . . In 2008 it was estimated that US Yoga practitioners were spending 5.7 billion dollars on Yoga classes, vacation, and products per year [Yoga Journal 2008]’    (p3)

Singleton’s point is that Anglophone Yoga is a global construct created out of international influences.  He concludes by drawing the Vivekananda/Olympic link full circle by stating that Bikram Yoga ‘is negotiating with British Olympic Committee chairman Sebastian Coe to make Yoga an event at the London Olympic Games in 2012’. (p209)

It is very clear though that he implies no censure in his depiction of the ‘osmosis between modernity and tradition’ and he puts his attitude clearly in his concluding reflections:         

‘This does not mean that the kind of posture-based Yogas that predominate globally today are “mere gymnastics” nor that they are less “real” or “spiritual” than other forms of Yoga. . . .

Historically speaking, then, physical culture encompasses a far broader range of concerns and influences than “mere gymnastics,” and in many instances the modes of practice, belief frameworks, and aspirations of its practitioners are coterminous with those of modern, posture based Yoga.  They may indeed be at variance to “Classical Yoga,” but it does not follow from this that these practices, beliefs, and aspirations (whether conceived as Yoga or not) are thereby lacking in seriousness, dignity or spiritual profundity.’  (p208)

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YOGA BODY by Mark Singleton

Reviewed by Jeremy Jones

This article was originally planned as a book review but is rather opinionated and includes a lot of material and comments that are relevant to but not included in the book itself, so “review” would perhaps be a dishonest description.  “Reflections” will have to do, even though it is not quite what I mean.  First things first.  Yoga Body is subtitled The Origins of Modern Posture Practice and has stirred up something of a hornets’ nest amongst yogins.  That’s OK – why should the hornets have a quiet life?  Despite my reservations, it is an excellent, well-researched book, which anyone with an interest in the history of modern Yoga should read - despite its occasional lapses into that strange dialect of the English language I call “Academicese”.

The general thrust of the author’s argument is simply this.  Modern, posture-based Yoga is not an ancient discipline but essentially a late nineteenth and Twentieth Century phenomenon, largely based on Western exercise methods, including military callisthenics.  The engine powering modern Yoga in India was not spirituality but nationalism and a belief (not mine, I hasten to add) amongst Indian intellectuals of a nationalist mindset that Indian men had become effete and lacking in the necessary vigour and courage to fight British colonialism and move the nation forward towards independence.  This lack of vigour, it was argued, was a legacy of years of colonialism and foreign domination.  “Muscular Hinduism” was called for.  Interestingly, the same attitude was found amongst Christian activists here in Britain (and, no doubt, elsewhere in the West).  Young British men had become degenerate, it was argued, with far too much interest in pleasure (especially the pleasures of the flesh) and a vigorous Christian revival in the form of “muscular Christianity” was called for.  It was an attitude that led to the formation of the YMCA and other Christian youth organisations and was enthusiastically embraced by the British public schools, with an austere, joyless regime of all weather outdoor “sport” and physical education, cold showers and liberal use of corporal punishment.  Society (East and West) has been “going to the dogs” and we have all been “going to hell in a handcart” since the time of the ancient Greek philosophers and probably long before that but we’re all still here, with most of us behaving reasonably ethically and peacefully, so the progressive degeneracy paradigm of world society is deeply flawed but that is another argument altogether.  Right or wrong, it was (and still is) a powerful and emotive driving force of an almost primal (but quite irrational) nature.  A natural offshoot of that argument (there are many others) is the “Yoga is going to the dogs” school of thought, which is becoming more and more vocal at the present time.

It seems to me that we need to take on board two inescapable facts that are largely ignored by the book and its “we told you so” chorus of admirers.  Firstly, there is no such thing as a hermetically sealed culture and there never has been.  Yoga, remember is a culture or practical philosophy, rather than a set practice, spiritual or physical.  Different cultures have always interacted and influenced each other, peacefully by trade, migration and art and (later) violently by conquest, oppression and religious conversion, then (later still) the mass media.  Secondly, all things are in a state of constant evolution and flux.  This is not just a Darwinian argument; it is an obvious and inescapable fact.  The English I speak is different from the English of Shakespeare, which is in turn different from the Middle English of Chaucer.  The music I enjoy listening to is different from the music that Shakespeare’s audiences would have enjoyed as part of the on-stage entertainment.  Language, art, science, war, technology, philosophy, religion, you name it – every conceivable stream of human activity is in a state of constant change and interaction.  Why should Yoga be any different?  The pace of change today is sometimes a bit frightening but the reality of change has always been with us, ever since our remote ancestors decided that a spear was a rather more efficient hunting implement than throwing a stone.  If an Indian guru invented new postures or adapted existing Western techniques, what’s wrong with that?  Influence is a two-way street.  Lots of the stretches that have appeared in recent years at the end of aerobic style exercise classes in the West have been borrowed (stolen, the purists might say) directly from the Hatha Yoga tradition.  Pilates has been heavily influenced by Yoga, either consciously or unconsciously.  Who knows which – and does it matter?

We must first ask the question “When did modern Yoga start?”  As soon as we ask that question, we realise that it has no intelligent answer that is not entirely arbitrary, because of the gradualist and evolutionary nature of the subject we are discussing.When did “modern art” start? Picasso?  Kandinsky?  Van Gogh?  The French Impressionists?  It is a completely fruitless and meaningless avenue of enquiry.  What is Yoga anyway?  Most informed yogis would use the classical Patanjali definition “A stilling of the mind” - translations vary a bit but the general meaning is the same.  If a “stilling of the mind” means what I think it means, namely a meditative state of altered consciousness, then Yoga is very ancient indeed, practiced universally by prehistoric cultures and not specifically Indian, though it is only in India for complex social and historic reasons that it has evolved into its present splendid and extravagant sophistication and universality.  There is probably not a single nation in the world where some sort of Yoga is not practiced by someone and this universality is no coincidence.  Yoga is universally practiced because it is adaptable to almost any culture.  Everyone is interested in the human body because we all own one, so an increase in physicality generally is inevitable.  To deny the body is to deny the self – or should it be Self?  Everyone is interested in health because we all get sick occasionally and we all have physical limitations, which sometimes frustrate us.  The modern day preoccupation with the body and its functions is not unhealthy but quite the opposite.  What is unhealthy is our superficial obsession with its appearance and aesthetic but most people who take up Yoga for the “wrong” reason of personal vanity soon find the “right” reason or give up.  If the modern Yoga mag gives a different impression, that is hardly the fault of the present day teachers, most of whom rightly deplore the “glam Yoga” tendency.  In my opinion, if modern Yoga had not evolved along its present lines, it would probably have almost died out, practiced only by a small minority of Hindu fundamentalists.

It seems to me that Singleton has fallen into a trap that often snares unwary academics, namely that of ignoring inconvenient evidence.  The archaeological evidence of the ancient Harappan (Indus Valley) culture may be enigmatic but it is quite untrue to say that we know absolutely nothing about the religious beliefs of this and other pre-classical ancient societies.  We know from extensive research into prehistory that they all practiced a form of altered consciousness to enter the spirit world and were all shamanist/animist in their belief systems.  The spirits that inhabited the ancient world later hardened into the polytheistic gods of Rome, Greece, Egypt and other classical societies.  However, this is unlikely to have happened at the time of the Harappan culture, which was almost certainly blessed with a rich spiritual mythology, which fused seamlessly with everyday life.  The female principle (“goddess” might be too strong and emotive a term) would have been admired and greatly respected.  Society was more matriarchal and matrilineal.  The Harappan culture was probably on the cusp of the change from this type of society and the later, more authoritarian patriarchal cultures epitomised by ancient Egypt.  The famous seals found in the ruins of a number of Harappan sites often show a meditative, shamanic figure with elaborate headdress in an extremely advanced sitting posture usually known today as Gorakshasana.  Now, such a posture is impressive but a far cry from modern posture practice.  Few of today’s yogis can manage such a posture without risking a nasty knee injury.  However, if we jump into our time machine and fast forward to the medieval period, we find in the Hatha Yoga Pradipika a wide range of sitting postures (including Gorakshasana and the well known “Spinal Twist” Ardha Matsyendrasana) and many other physical practices, often of daunting difficulty.  Standing postures are, however conspicuous by their absence.  Therefore, it seems that the theory that standing postures are a later innovation seems valid.  We must ask, however “how much later?”  If we fast forward again to the Gheranda Samhita (probably written around 1700 CE (AD) and well before British rule or strong Western influence), we see a standing posture that is very familiar to modern yogis, namely the Tree Posture (Vriksasana), albeit executed in a slightly different way from the way most of us would perform it today.  So the idea of standing postures is not a Nineteenth or Twentieth Century, market led creation, although it is fair to say that the huge variety of standing postures available to today’s yogi are certainly a creative tribute to modern innovators, especially Krishnamacharya.  

Those who decry the “physicalisation” of modern Yoga should not, however point a finger of blame at Krishnamacharya.  Singleton dismisses the Bihar School of Yoga (also known as Satyananda Yoga and purveyors of a pretty robust style of Yoga themselves) as having almost no influence in the West but this is simply not the case.  Thanks to their excellent publications offshoot, their books are highly influential and essential reading for all Yoga teachers and dedicated yogis.  They also train teachers and have a network of centres around the globe.  Satyananda, as far as I am able to ascertain, had no connection to Krishnamacharya at all, yet many of the postures and other practices he describes in Asana Pranayama Mudra Bandha are (almost) identical to many of those that appear in the Mysore tradition, though interestingly often with different Sanskrit names.  This suggests a common ancestry going back much further than Krishnamacharya.

I have recently made another interesting discovery, wearing my amateur historian hat.  In her book The Ancient Indus – Urbanism, Economy and Society, Rita P. Wright illustrates a narrative Harappan seal which shows a (spirit?) figure in a tree.  There’s nothing remarkable about that, of course.  However, the figure is in a most unusual posture – one I have not seen in my fairly extensive library of Hatha Yoga books.  It is a type of squatting twist, which I am unable for technical and copyright reasons to reproduce in print or online but had little difficulty in performing, using the reproduction of the seal as a source.  So – maybe, just maybe - twisting postures (unsuitable in the main for meditation) are much older than the medieval Hatha Yoga Pradipika, which in itself may have been circulating orally for centuries before it was finally committed to paper, which did not exist in India until about the Fourteenth Century CE.  Prior to that time, texts were written on highly perishable banana leaves and rewritten when they started to deteriorate.  Much must have been lost as a result of this laborious mode of transmission.  My point is, if I can make such a discovery, more or less by accident reading a library book, what treasures await the serious historian/archaeologist with some knowledge of Yoga?

Another point that is (quite properly) raised in Yoga Body is the almost complete absence of postures in Indian art and literature before the late nineteenth century.  All of life is there, including the more spiritual and reflective Yogas but no postures or other physical practices outside the classic Hatha Yoga texts, which must have had a very limited circulation, mainly amongst the highly dedicated.  The reason for this is, I believe very simple.  Until the run-up to independence, Hatha Yoga was practiced largely in secret.  It had (quite unfairly) a dubious reputation for sensuality, rampant sexuality, sorcery and (under the British Raj) nationalist violence.  Hatha Yoga schools and ashrams often found themselves the subjects of unfriendly visits by British military intelligence.  Tantra (overlapping but not the same as Yoga) was almost entirely suppressed by an unholy alliance of Hindu and British Christian puritanism, until being artificially resurrected in the West in a form that would be almost unrecognisable to its original practitioners.  Small wonder that Hatha Yoga teachers and their students liked to pursue their art with minimal public attention.

In conclusion, we can safely assert I think, that the origins of Yoga and its subsequent history (ancient and modern) are very complex and multi stranded.  Further, more strands have been added over time and no doubt will continue to be added.  This is not a reason to despair or condemn but rather to rejoice, even though it sometimes appears that a sharp pruning knife needs to be taken to the luxuriant foliage of the tree of Yoga.

SOURCES –

Singleton, Mark. Yoga Body – The Origins of Modern Posture Practice.  

ISBN 978-0-19-539534-1

Wright, Rita P.  The Ancient Indus – Urbanism, Economy and Society.

ISBN 9780-0-521-57652-9

Svatmarama, Yogaswami, commentary by Swami Muktibodhananda. Hatha Yoga Pradipika.

ISBN 81-85787-38-7

Mallinson, James, (translator) The Gheranda Samhita  ISBN 0-9716466-3-5

Satyananda Saraswati, Swami.  Asana Pranayama Mudra Bandha.

ISBN 81-86336-14-1  

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THE YOGA MAKARANDA by Krishnamacharya

Reviewed by Christopher Gladwell

The Yoga Makaranda or Yoga Saram (part one) was written by Sri T Krishnamacharya in 1934.

This work is a wonderfully erudite and thorough review of the rationale for the practice of Yoga at this time.

Rooted in Krishnamacharya’s personal practice and the study of the 27 texts listed in the bibliography, it offers a comprehensive view of practice at this point in Krishnamacharya’s teaching.

Why should Yoga practice be done?

Who should practice?
How should one practice?

This questions are answered through the lens of the Indian context as the rebellion against the British Raj began to peak. Yoga is presented as authentically Indian, offering social justice, peace, potency, personal wellbeing and peace.

“Who has the authority to practise Yoga?”

The answer of course is everyone!

However the proviso is that this study must be engaged in with an authentic Guru.

There have been many teachings on chakras some with four or five chakras or sthanas, some with forty. The most common rooted in the Sat-Cakra-Nirupana offers the six chakras and the crown or Sahasra that we all know. Here Krishnamacharya teaches about ten chakras. He also explores Patanjali’s limbs of Yoga presenting them as steps or kramas.

Before looking in detail at the practice of asana Krishnamacharya looks at the paths of Yoga, Hatha, Raja, Mantra Laya and so on. He also looks at the rules for Yoga practice (Yogabhyasa), the cleansing practices (Shatkriyas), the movement of prana through the body (Vayus), the 20 mudras, Nadis and more.

The section on asana may be familiar to practitioners of Ashtanga Vinyasa and what was called ViniYoga. It is helpful to see how the ‘5 breaths per asana style’ of practice can be a preparation for the depth of practice with kumbhaka as detailed by Krishnamacharya.

Forty two asanas with their relevant vinyasas and appropriate breath retentions (kumbhaks) are detailed. For each asana there are between 3-48 vinyasas (breath-movement synchronizations), all done with equal in breath and out breath.

Krishnamacharya states that:

“practitioners of Yogabhyasa ignore vinyasa krama and just move and bend and shake their arms and legs and claim that they are practicing asana abhyasa”

Practicing internal and external retention in asana as appropriate to one’s constitution is clearly important. As Krishnamacharya states:

“Those who ignore these rules and only do Yogabhyasa according to their wishes, by following picture books, will be unhappy as a result because they will obtain absolutely no benefits from this. These people then ridicule Yogavidya and their sanatana dharma, and start doing physical exercises that are contrary to our country’s ahara guna (diet), jala guna (water) and vayu guna (climate) and waste a lot of money on this.”

Part of the context of this work is that Western exercise, values and lifestyle are deemed as inappropriate and dangerous for the Indian population.

This quotation highlights the context of the Indians under the Raj:

“The foreigners have stolen all the skills and knowledge and treasures of mother India, either right in front of us or in a hidden way. They pretend that they have discovered all this by themselves, bundle it together, and then bring it back here as though doing us a favour and in exchange take all the money and things we have saved up for our family’s welfare. After some time passes, they will try and do the same thing with Yogavidya. We can clearly state that the blame for this is that while we have read the books required for the knowledge of Yoga to shine, we have not understood or studied the concepts or brought them into our experience. If we still sleep and keep our eyes closed, then the foreigners will become our gurus in Yogavidya.

We have already given the gold vessels we had to them and bought vessels from them made from bad-smelling skin and have started using these. This is a very sad state. Our descendents do not need these sorts of bad habits.”

This book was a clarion call in its day and today for Indians to claim back and develop their practice, their values and their lifestyle. It is nationalistic in places whilst not utterly demeaning to westerners. Krishnamacharya treads this balance well.

Interestingly Krishnamacharya asks why have people given up fencing and fighting with weapons and practicing archery? These martial arts he considers as the only other valid method than Yogabhyasa to practice authentic balance within joints and blood vessels, body and mind.

This book has to be read by any serious student of Yoga. It is a gem, a mine of information and allows a reappraisal of the context of Krishnamacharya’s teaching within its cultural context. As a key compilation of  the practices and lifestyle of the Yogabhyasin it is invaluable.

Special thanks to Steve Brandon for sending this item in for publication.

He has posted  a PDF copy on his website HERE so you can access it there and download a free copy.

The Rangathans requested that it is not sold or misused.

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THE YOGA MAKARANDA by Krishnamacharya

Reviewed by Godfrey Devereux

It was with unexpected delight that I glanced through Yoga Makaranda to find the postures and vinyasa system popularised as Ashtanga Vinyasa Yoga, although without reference to it as a fixed, formal system, presented visually, and mostly by a young and vigorous T. Krishnamacharya, though not in the case of those demanding a more extreme flexibility. There can be little doubting the eminent role played by Krishnamacharya in the modern renaissance of Yoga, both directly in India, and indirectly in the west, even if, as is claimed by some, his role was one of misleadingly blending east with west, Yoga with fitness training. Nevertheless, as I began to read the text through I found myself dragged down into that dark hole of doubt as to what Yoga actually is. I spent many years convinced that Yoga, in whatever form or through whatever methodology, must express the principles and processes outlined by Patanjali in the Yoga sutras: that it must be about internalisation of awareness into the subtle depths of cognition, perception and consciousness; about finding out, on the basis of deep, clear inner experience what and who we are, rather than making specific things happen by changing some of the things about us because we don’t like them. If not, I was sure, it could not accurately and fairly be called Yoga, and i would certainly not support any such misleading name-calling. Upon befriending the no less eminent, though less well known, Yogi Philosopher Dr Peter Yates I found myself compelled to review that conclusion, and acknowledge it to be nothing other than my own prejudice. Yet on reading this text and its hackneyed claims for Yoga postures and pranayama as agents of physical fitness (page 8 second last line), somatic therapy (page 9 lines 1/2 and paras 4&5, page 50 and throughout the text), energetic manipulation (page 10 para 1 and throughout the text in reference to chakras, nadis etc), social enhancement (page 9 para 3) and psychological transformation (page 7 para 3 etc) within a spurious contextualization of pop-psychology (page 6, last para etc), speculative neurology (page 7 para 3) and hand-me-down metaphysical philosophy (page 7 para 4, page 19 para 2/3, page 35 para 2 etc, etc), I found myself, once again, bristling with that same prejudice and objecting deeply to this comprehensive, speculative and dogmatic dumbing down of both human intelligence and the possibilities of Yoga, even if this time from an eminent Indian guru rather than a media-savvy former dancer or marketing executive. Although I have to say I was relieved that there were no overtly religious references or proprietarily claims in this opening section. The next section on the chakras plunged me deeper into the speculative metaphysics of subtle anatomy by which we have been relentlessly bombarded, along with its remarkable, and ridiculous, claims for the ability of pranayama to erase all physical disease and mental afflictions. As the text continued with further magical claims (page 14 para 3, page 16 para 3) and suggestions (page 36 para 2) and its implicit celebration of control as the key to Yoga (page 7 para 3 etc etc etc),  I found it harder and harder to bear with, or resist my prior prejudice against Yoga being reduced to a manipulative system of intention, effort, skill and accomplishment rather than being sensitive (ahimsa), honest (satya), open (asteya), intimate (brahmacharya), generous (aparigraha) self enquiry (svadhyaya) into that which is actually happening (sadhana). Then the pictures of the guru stretching his body with what appears to my concerned eyes an interest in form over function, quantity (of movement) (figs. 4.7, 4.12, 4.17, 4.19 etc, 4.29-32) over quality (of action) (figs. 4.46-48, 4.29/30, 4.46), getting rather than being, made it even more difficult to take this text seriously as anything other than yet another example of Chinese whispers masquerading as wisdom. May all beings ponder in peace, and pander as little as possible to the self-deceptive tendencies of human neurology and socialisation.

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MY BODY IS A TEMPLE by Christina Sell

Reviewed by Adele Cassidy

Christina Sell’s latest offering, My Body is a Temple, is a sequel to her previous book: Yoga from the Inside out. Yoga From the Inside out was a journey of ending the war and making peace with your body, through the honesty of Christina’s personal journey, enhanced by testimonies of her students and friends. My Body is a Temple builds on this, as is a journey of making a sanctuary within your body. Sell’s work is underpinned by the philosophies of the Western Baul Traditional, as presented to her via her spiritual teacher, Leo Lozowick and the Northern India (Kashmir Shaivism, primarily) and Sri Vidya traditions. The Northern India and Sri Vidya are Tantric philosophies, underpinning Anusara Yoga as taught to sell by John Friend.

Yoga from the Inside Out was very much a journey of self discovery made by Sell through her journey of practicing and teaching Yoga. My Body is a Temple is aimed to be a much more practical guide in terms of offering the reader questions to begin of continues their own journey of self discovery. She highlights the importance of this to the book by quoting Carlos Pomeda (a rare combination of academic and spiritual practitioners, he holds degrees in religious studies and Sanskrit and lived for over three decades as a monk in the Siddha Yoga ashrams): “knowing the philosophy without doing the practices is like being able to read a recipe in a gourmet cookbook but never getting to eat the meal.”

As an illustration of building your own temple, Sell weaves the story of building a temple and the firsthand accounts of those involved in building the Temple of Yogi Ramsuratkumar in Southern India in the 1990’s. Yogi Ramsuratkumar was Leo Lozowick’s Guru and whilst Sell never met him, she tells her story of her visit to the temple and how she felt the intention of Ramsuratkumar’s vision within its walls.

The book is split into six sections, each illustrating a principal Sell wishes to share:

1. Building Plans: Putting the highest first

2. Foundations: Establishing a Solid Foundation

3. Scaffolding: Erecting and Maintaining Strong Walls of Support

4. Entering the Sanctuary: Expanding the Inner Life

5. Worship: Life and the Shrine of the Heart

6. Outreach Ministry: Service and Celebration

Each section combines Yoga philosophy, the metaphor of temple building and contemplations for the reader to begin their own internal temple building project. The metaphor of the temple offers reader an opportunity to see spirituality manifested in bricks and mortar and the framework of Sell’s book offers us the opportunity for spirit to be manifest within the temple of our own body.

The book is heartfelt, practical and infused with Sell’s warmth and humour. It is accessible to any level of practitioner, student or teacher, combining both structure and flexibility to begin one’s own self enquiry. It does, however, assume a particular philosophical lens of the reader in that it is influenced by the Tantric Philosophies outlined above.

Christina Sell is a Certified Anusara teacher. She serves on the Anusara Yoga Certification Assessment Committee, the Anusara Yoga Curriculum Development Committee and the Anusara Yoga Ethics Committee.

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AN INTRODUCTION TO CHAKROLOGY: Chakra Theory, Balancing and Therapy by Jeremy Jones  

Reviewed by Mike Gould

Chakras are vital energy centres in the human body. They are a subject of considerable interest to complementary therapists and Yoga enthusiasts. When they are balanced, good health, both physical and emotional, is assured. This unique book shows how anyone with the right temperament, training and practice can learn how to locate, diagnose and treat the chakras. The author corrects the many myths and misconceptions that surround the subject and describes the anatomy of the chakra system and how it can be revitalised and retuned. He uses straightforward language aimed at aspiring (and existing) therapists and those who are simply interested in personal and spiritual development.

In his own words ‘I took the plunge because I was fed up with reading nonsense on the internet. It was mainly aimed at complementary therapists but yogis should get a lot out of it as well’.

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SWARA YOGA – THE TANTRIC SCIENCE OF BRAIN BREATHING

By Swami Muktibodhananda

Reviewed by Jeremy Jones

This book fills a crucial gap in the extensive and often repetitive literature of Yoga practice.  We need more books like this, instead of endless “how to” books by “me too” authors and publishers reiterating endlessly a stunted diet of basic asana, coupled with potted (and often patronising) Yoga philosophy.  There is of course absolutely nothing wrong with asana as part of a balanced Yoga practice.  I practice (and teach) lots but how many different versions of Trikonasana do I need to know?

Swara means “sound” and refers particularly to the sound of the air in the nostrils as we breathe.  The book explains how the two principal active Nadis (prana/vital energy channels) are believed to terminate at the two nostrils and a permanent imbalance effects the energy balance of the whole body but especially the two hemispheres of the brain, hence “brain breathing”.  The balance of the two sides should alternate roughly every 90-120 minutes.  If we are “stuck”, with one side dominant all the time (I found I was, when I checked) there is a risk of imbalance in the health of the body and mind.  Balance, with a free alternation of the two sides makes for clearer thinking and better sleep, among many other benefits.  The author offers plenty of “hard science”, as well as traditional Yoga teaching to back up his claims.  Indeed, the only criticism I can offer is that the book occasionally suffers from a slightly heavy going “too muchness”.  Still, that is most definitely preferable to the superficial “skimming the surface” style that mars so many Yoga books.

The physiology of the airway and brain are discussed in some detail and also traditional teaching on prana, kundalini and the chakras.  Inevitably (and quite rightly), pranayama, especially Nadi shodhana pranayama is discussed and it is this latter practice, the book argues, that holds the key to balancing any imbalance in the Nadis.  I personally would like to have seen rather more emphasis on jala Neti (nasal irrigation), which I found far more effective as a remedy for my imbalance, though I strongly agree with the importance of the former practice.  As with all Yoga practice, “try it and see” seems to be the best approach.  I must also cheerfully acknowledge that many yogis find the idea of Neti distasteful.  When I describe it to my students, I can invariably see the lips curl down in disgust!

Despite a few minor quibbles, I warmly recommend this book to Namaskaram readers, both for personal practice purposes and for teachers, as material for pranayama and/or kriya lessons and workshops.  Not light, bedtime reading, though.

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*SPECIAL FEATURE REVIEW*The SCIENCE OF YOGA by William Broad - reviewed by Chris Holt  

YOGA BODY by Mark Singleton - reviewed by Alan Roberts

YOGA BODY by Mark Singleton - reviewed by Jeremy Jones

THE YOGA MAKARANDA by Krishnamacharya- reviewed by Christopher Gladwell

THE YOGA MAKARANDA by Krishnamacharya - reviewed by Godfri Devereux

MY BODY IS A TEMPLE by Christina Sell - reviewed by Adele Cassidy

AN INTRODUCTION TO CHAKROLOGY: Chakra Theory, Balancing and Therapy by Jeremy Jones - reviewed by Mike Gould

SWARA YOGA – THE TANTRIC SCIENCE OF BRAIN BREATHING by Swami Muktibodhananda - reviewed by Jeremy Jones