Yoga for Everyone (A Step-by-Step Illustrated Guide to Iyengar Yoga)

Join B.K.S. lyengar - one of the world's greatest yoga gurus - on this unique path to health, happiness, and spiritual well-being. Perhaps the most popular school of yoga in the world, lyengar Yoga is meant for both beginners as well as advance practitioners. Characterized by great attention to detail, Iyengar Yoga takes students from simple asanas to more complex ones. In this book, the master himself takes you through the asanas following an easy, step-by-step approach, explaining the physical and mental benefits of each.

Yoga is for everyone. You need not be an expert or at the peak of physical fitness to practise the asanas described in this book. The strain of modem life can lead to physical pain and illness, as we neglect our bodies in the race for material success. The stress of modem life can also lead to mental suffering: feelings of inadequacy. Isolation, or powerlessness. Yoga helps to integrate the mental and the physical plane, bringing about a sense of inner and outer balance, or what I term alignment. True alignment means that the inner mind reaches every cell and fibre of the body.

During seventy-three years of teaching and practising, I have observed that some students pay attention only to the physical aspect of yoga. Their practice is like a fast-flowing stream, tumbling and falling. which lacks depth and direction. By attending to the mental and spiritual side, a sincere student of yoga becomes like a smoothly flowing river which helps to irrigate and fertilize the land around it. Just as one cannot dip into the same river twice, so each and every asana refreshes your life force with new energy.

My effort in this book has been to focus on techniques, so that even the beginner will have a thorough understanding of how to practise asanas in order to obtain the maximum benefit. By using a few simple props, students with different capabilities can gradually build up strength, Confidence, and flexibility without the threat of strain or injury. The yoga techniques described and illustrated in this book can also help those with specific ailments. Regular practice builds up the body's inner strength and natural resistance, helps to alleviate pain, and tackles the root, rather than the symptoms, of the problem. Across the world, there is now a growing awareness that alternative therapies are more conducive to health than conventional ones. It is my hope that this book will help all those who want to change their lives through yoga. May yoga's blessing be on all of you.

**Contents and Sample Pages**