YOGA [teach yourself]

This book (okay not exactly that one, I got an edition from 1960 that I can't even find on Amazon, having found it in the 50p second-hand bargain bin of a bookshop near the park) by James Hewitt is pretty much what you'd expect from a fifty-seven year-old introductory guide to yoga: full of extremely deep New-Agey guff about mind over matter and expanding your consciousness (there's a chapter entitled 'Psychic Powers'), a few dashes of pseudo-scientific-sounding health benefits of meditation (which admittedly I've googled and there's a lot of science backing up the benefits), some good quotes selected from a variety of scriptures,* several highly-dubious claims about what masters of yoga can do (e.g. drink poison, bury themselves alive for two weeks, go a year without water); and FAR from the best thing for anyone who wants to start practicing yoga to turn to. I mean, seriously - the prose is clunky and inaccessible, especially when giving directions; there are a few sparse illustrations but they just made me laugh. The sections of this book about yoga in general seem overstated but also do definitely connect with the appeal of it; however, the chapters about meditation, breathing, stretches and postures, even dietary and lifestyle aspects, all smell far too academic for this to qualify as a 'teach yourself' book in the 21st-century. I mean, for something I picked up out of a bargain bin, this has definitely swayed me with my prior inclinations of trying to start practicing yoga once I've got my own place (currently living in a student house where my room isn't big enough to do much without banging into stuff, which is never very zen) - but as far as learning yoga goes, I guarantee you'll be able to find resources more helpful than this on the internet for free.** This might've been a good book for it in 1960, but times change, dude.

* I appreciated this - this book made it very clear that yoga, despite traditionally helping facilitate aspects of self-knowledge, self-control and meditation for many faiths, is not intrinsically spiritual but physiological: simply physical and mental exercises that help one develop physical and mental faculties and therefore congruent with pretty much any belief system.

** If your googling fails herein, simply pop down to a nearby wholefood shop and check the windows for flyers from self-employed yoga teachers.