Teach Yourself Yoga

by James Hewitt

James Hewitt provides a clear and practical account of Hatha Yoga and Raja Yoga - the Yogas of bodily health and mental health respectively - whose regular practice produces greater energy, relaxation, poise, and serenity. The great value of this book is that the broader dimensions of Yoga are fully considered. A program of Yoga postures and breathing exercises, and advice on relaxation and diet, are followed by a full consideration of Yoga meditation and its aims. Through regular Yoga practice and meditation you can attain greater vitality and suppleness, deep psycho-physical poise and relaxation, serenity, and self-realization.

Genres: Self Help, Reference, Health

182 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1979

About the author

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Reviews

[Illiterate · Rating 2 out of 5]

Nice practices. Shame about the spirituality.

[Judita · Rating 5 out of 5]

A great book for a beginner of yoga. Good and easy way to familiarise with yoga practices and philosophy.

[Amanda Ure · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is the main book I learnt Yoga from, in about 1981. I would incidentally disagree with the assessment that it leaves out spirituality, which is the main reason I'm commenting. At the time, my evangelical Christian mother was concerned that I was almost adopting it as a religion because I carried out, for example, much of the meditation and the kriyas and considered going vegetarian I think too (I eventually went veggie five years later).

The other aspect of it probably applies to any book and probably video. Twelve years after, I married a Yoga teacher and it turned out that whereas I was putting my body in roughly appropriate positions for the asanas, the distribution of the forces, as it were, was completely wrong in many cases. I also seem to have injured my knee joints. This is not, however, a criticism of this book in particular as an observation of the difficulty of learning Yoga from a book.

Only a few minutes ago, I thought back on this book while I was doing my regular daily Yoga session and used several of the asanas in it.

[Nathan Smith · Rating 2 out of 5]

Decently interesting, but so often just goes on weird tangents and is not at all representative of what most commonly seen western yoga looks like. Weird disucussion of race and culture included too. Descriptions of movements are quite vague.

[Kobina Amissah-Fynn · Rating 4 out of 5]

Learning a lot about the meditation aspect of yoga

[Stella · Rating 4 out of 5]

Concise and inspiring with recommended hatha yoga programme.