Yoga For Americans: A Complete Six Weeks' Course For Home Practice

by Indra Devi

Yoga For A Complete Six Weeks' Course For Home Practice is a comprehensive guide to yoga written by Indra Devi. The book is designed to provide readers with a complete six-week course on yoga that they can practice at home. The book covers everything from the basics of yoga to advanced postures and breathing techniques. It includes detailed instructions on how to perform each posture correctly and safely, as well as tips for improving flexibility and strength. The book also includes information on the history and philosophy of yoga, as well as its benefits for physical and mental health. With clear and concise instructions, this book is suitable for both beginners and experienced practitioners looking to deepen their practice. Overall, Yoga For Americans is a valuable resource for anyone looking to incorporate yoga into their daily routine and improve their overall well-being.This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of the old original and may contain some imperfections such as library marks and notations. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment for protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature in affordable, high quality, modern editions, that are true to their original work.

Genres: Nonfiction, Philosophy, Health

258 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1959

Reviews

[Wes · Rating 3 out of 5]

I found this book one day and I can't even remember where. What made me keep it? I have no idea. I mean I like yoga, but I'm not into it. For the most part, my path crosses with yoga in relation to martial arts competition. When I was an active martial arts competitor, I would take yoga classes to give myself a flexibility edge and use the activity as a type of active rest day. While I enjoyed the classes, they generally never felt "dynamic" enough for me to think of them as my primary form of physical training. That being said, this book has gotten me to look at yoga quite differently.

There is a lot to yoga. A LOT, a lot. It isn't just a physical practice, although that is the natural area of focus for most. Yoga is spiritual, emotional, philosophical, physical AND ancient. We do our best in the Western world to strip yoga of everything but the physical, yet, yoga is so entangled with these other aspects that you will find vestiges of it even in the Western World today. How many yoga classes end with a super small amount of meditation? How many classes use the term "namaste?" I could go on and on, but these Western uses are (for the most part) superficial at best and generally used without any kind of real knowledge of their importance or even yoga as a whole.

I've never run into a true "yogi," and maybe that is part of the problem. The people who teach yoga in the West are AT BEST mid-level students, and I use the term student VERY loosely. In my mind a student is someone who continually strives to learn the roots of a subject and better understand it as a whole. Yoga students in the West do not approach yoga with that mindset AT ALL.

The cold hard reality is that most teaching yoga in the west are simply athletes that can replicate yoga forms and have memorized some basic routines. The knowledge possessed by most Western teachers is surface knowledge generally gleaned from being in a class where a particular phrase has been used a number of times. There is no knowledge of the physical benefits from each posture, there is no transmission of the true philosophical and emotional nature of yoga and there is no quest to better understand yoga as a whole. Ultimately, there seems to be no "growth" in Yoga (in the West) with the exception of being able to perform the postures with greater degrees of accuracy and flexibility.

Devi's book actually reveals and hints at a number of the greater purposes/aspects of Yoga which kind of lines with martial arts for me. There is more than just the physical side of martial arts. There is a philosophical, emotional and spiritual side that is hard to deny the deeper and deeper you dive into it. While you may be honing your body as a weapon, your mind gets honed almost in reverse. More calm, peaceful, and less likely to explode with violence. You learn to respect and fear what you can physically do to another person, you allow the lessons and teaching of class to permeate your life, and make you better and sharper all the way around. Yoga is supposed to do much of the same thing for people, but I would never know it from ANY of the Yoga classes I've taken.

I wouldn't call this essential reading. There are tons of yoga books out there that probably have all the information contained within and then some, but I can say that Indra Devi was WITHOUT a doubt the real deal when it comes to Yoga and being a Yogi. Her approach and enthusiasm is infectious, even through a page. I doubt that Yoga will ever be my PRIMARY form of physical exercise, but this book does make me want to utilize it much more often. I'll just have to be comfortable with expanding my Yoga knowledge through other avenues as opposed to the classes so many take here in the West.

[Lisa · Rating 5 out of 5]

Super interesting look into how yoga was taught in the US in its earliest days. It would be fun to take her suggestions and build a home practice around them.

[Grace · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting reading of early Western Yoga practice

[Laura Brose · Rating 3 out of 5]

An introduction to the practical mastery of well-known yoga poses as well as the (sometimes neglected) different forms of controlled/deep breathing and their health effects, geared towards American laypersons. Unfortunately, it also tries to appeal to the American tendency to fawn over celebrities and follow their ways by making the most of the fact that the late Gloria Swanson was a yoga practitioner (at least as far as having been photographed for the book in some yoga poses while wearing an incongruous bare-shouldered jumpsuit with a stretchy belt and a ribbon tied around her neck). Unlike some present-day yoga books and instruction, this one has certain strong recommendations for diet and lifestyle in addition to describing yoga postures and different forms of controlled breathing. While these are meant to be part of the yoga "package", today it is common to focus strictly on the poses as a form of exercise, while in former times yoga was intended as a form of discipleship, discipline and asceticism as well as athleticism. Some of the recommendations, such as completely abstaining from meat and caffeine, many people might find difficult if not impossible, and this was even more the case when the book was written, well before vegetarians and vegans had a societal presence in large numbers and a diversity of packed foods and products marketed to them. The book also contains a couple of recipes for complicated concoctions of dubious nutritional (and in one case, sanitary) value, which might or might not work, but which modern readers probably will not have the fortitude to try at home. One thing which I consider beneficial in this book, is that there are some photos of older people (in their 60s and 70s and perhaps beyond) engaging in yoga, showing that yoga can be done by all ages and help in retaining health despite age.

[Meryl Landau · Rating 3 out of 5]

Kind of fun to read one of America's original yoga books. Really dated (and musty), which added to the experience.