'This is such a wonderful book for yoga beginners and experts alike ... If you love yoga, you need this book.' - VOGUE.co.uk In Yoga: A Manual for Life Naomi Annand shows you how to use the ancient practice of yoga to live better in the modern world. Utilising simple, breath-led movement, this beautiful practice companion teaches you how to wake up feeling energised, calm an anxious mind, sleep better, feel inspired. Ideal for total beginners to more experienced yogis, this manual includes everything you'll need to live a more balanced, grounded life, from five-minute lifehacks to longer sequences with specific goals in mind. Always accessible, Yoga: A Manual for Life has at its centre the principle of authentic self-care. Be calmer, happier and more creative.

Once you have learned the basics of yoga, where do you go? This book has been written for teachers and serious practitioners who want to use yoga to bring complete balance to the body. Stiles provides a comprehensive overview of the spiritual philosophy of yoga and its many branches, and discusses everything that a beginning student needs to consider when choosing a practice, including how to find a yoga teacher. Then he shares his solid understanding of anatomy and kinesiology (how specific muscles and bones react during movement) so that you can understand how each asana affects your body.

A historical and comparative study grounded in close readings of important works, this book explores the dynamics of the theory and practice of yoga in Hindu and Buddhist contexts. Author Stuart Ray Sarbacker explores the fascinating, contrasting perceptions that meditation leads to the attainment of divine, or numinous, power, and to complete escape from worldly existence, or cessation. Sarbacker demonstrates that these two dimensions of spiritual experience have affected the doctrine and cultural significance of yoga from its origins to its contemporary practice. He also integrates sociological and psychological perspectives on religious experience into a larger phenomenological model to address the multifaceted nature of religious experience. Speaking to a broad range of methodological and contextual issues, Samadhi provides numerous insights into the theory and practice of yoga that are relevant to both scholars of religious studies and practitioners of contemporary yoga and meditation traditions.

When Rajavijayan, a Tamil tea picker, murders a top official – the tea taster – of a tea estate in Sri Lanka, the young man is forced to flee to Nepal via India. Traveling through the wild and hilly country, Rajavijayan chances upon a swamiji (Hindu mystic) living in the Nepalese mountains. With the swamiji’s help, he gets a job at the nearby tea plantation at the foot of the Himalayan Mountains. Here he hopes to conceal his identity and live a normal, quiet life. But the wanted man is slowly drawn in by the spiritual teacher, moving him to live with the old guru in his cave, where Rajavijayan sets upon a journey of inner enlightenment. He seeks divine secrets, and most importantly, acceptance from his new master. And when the son of the man Rajavijayan murdered is supposed to arrive at the Nepalese tea plantation, the killer-turned-neophyte will have to face his crime, and reconcile with whom he must keep the temple running as per his master’s final instructions.

Turn Your Vagus Nerve into a Spiritual Powerhouse for Healing The vagus nerve is the great communicator between most systems in your body, including major organs of the brain, digestive system, and heart. It also corresponds perfectly with the seven chakras. Trauma therapist C. J. Llewelyn reveals how these two systems work together to heal your past and clear your body of intense reactions that no longer serve you. With her guidance, you can access the compassionate energy of your inner light. Chakras and the Vagus Nerve teaches you how to identify the information your nervous system is sending and work toward calming it. You'll discover the psychological dimensions each of your chakras hold and how to release pain instead of running from it. Featuring more than forty-five exercises and prompts, this book demonstrates how to fully engage with your energies. When you understand your wiring, you can heal body, mind, and Soul. Includes a foreword by Ann J. Clark, PhD, RN, Michael Newton Institute Life Between Lives Facilitator and Usui Reiki Master

The continuing saga of a contemporary mass leader who sought out a vision and a method to amalgamate yoga and health care into the mainstream consciousness Baba Ramdev’s emergence as the new ideologue of a national and global spiritual resurgence is considered by many as a curious phenomenon. This work is a study on the making of the Ramdev spectacle with all its inescapable assertiveness, mass enthusiasm and, of course, controversies. It seeks to locate his philosophy in today’s socio-cultural milieu, while tracing its origins in Indian spiritual history, and the past landmark reformist movements that have been initiated in the country by earlier path-breakers including Sri Aurobindo, Swami Dayananda, Paramhansa Yogananda, Swami Sahajanand Saraswati, Bhagwan Nityananda, J. N. Krishnamurty and Sri Ramana Rishi. Indeed, Ramdev represents a renewed continuity to the great revival of the ancient Indian spiritual traditions and yoga that took place in the twentieth century and received recognition worldwide. With his own version of holistic yoga as a ploy for instituting the universal right to health, Baba Ramdev has proposed two distinct ideological alternatives to the current established order of the world – pranayama and the yogic way of life as the key to health restoration and well-being; and manifestation of an enabling spiritual environment for personal and social transformation. Ramdev’s arrival once again underlines the continuing significance of Oriental spiritualism the world over as it offers perhaps the most promising insights for the creation of a ‘new spiritually-awakened man’ – a man at ease with himself and with the world around him.

Gurus of Modern Yoga explores the contributions that individual gurus have made to the formation of the practices and discourses of yoga in today's world.