Friday, February 16, 2018

Friday Book Report: 30 Essential Yoga Poses


Judith Lasater is a major figure in American yoga.  Her book, 30 Essential Yoga Poses for Beginning Students and Their Teachers is mostly a book about yoga movement, but other aspects of yoga weave throughout the text.  The thirty poses and their variations provide lots of choices for practitioners.  There are a bunch of sequences laid out at the end of the book as well if a person does not want to figure out how to fit the poses together into a full practice.

Lasater very much approves of props for the access they can provide to challenging poses.  In her sequences, she often begins with a propped version of a pose to allow the body to accustom itself to what’s going on before moving into the full version.  Her directions are clear and the photographs do a great job of depicting the goals of the poses.

Her text provides plenty of context for the poses, both in terms of how the body moves and how the mind copes with the various challenges.  I ended up in a fascinating discussion with a colleague about the way shoulders work as a result, which is certainly nerdy, but useful.

Perhaps the best aspect of the book is the tone.  Lasater manages to encourage and soothe at the same time.  Poses that seem daunting at first become approachable because of her guidance.  She also emphasizes rest and relaxation as essential parts of yoga practice.


Definitely worth reading carefully and referring to often!

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