Amrita 6: Asana through the ages - Magazine - Page 82
The Truth of Yoga
“...we invite ourselves or our
students to move in a way
that feels healing, delicious or
wholesome, and allow the fascial
feedback to inform the practice.”
interview. How did he manage to fit
the apparently unwieldy vastness of
yoga into this slim paperback?
“It’s all down to my previous career
as a reporter. We were trained to sum
up a story in a single sentence, preferably shorter than 30 words. If you
couldn’t do that, it meant you hadn’t
understood yet. Of course, that approach can lead to generalisations, so
one needs to know a subject well
enough to summarise it accurately.
That still leaves a lot out, but the nuance and important detail are preserved. It’s a challenge, but part of the
fun – I spent much longer editing than
writing!”
The four parts of the book (Early
Yoga; Classical Yoga; Hatha Yoga; and
Modern Yoga ) hold some wonderfully
named sections, such as Seers and
Soma, Mystic Mantras, Saluting the
Sun, and Lead Me to the Real! I find it
easy to dip into quickly for inspiration,
but it’s also rewarding to read in longer
bursts. This duality perhaps reflects my
love of teaching a quieter yin style as
well as the faster-paced yang of vinya-
80 AMRITA Issue 6 / Spring 2021
sa (another example of the ever-evolving nature of yoga
through cross-fertilisation – Chinese concepts from Taoist
philosophy have combined with Indian traditions).
Before reading this book, I found I often got side-tracked
researching themes for a class by reading websites, articles, or
books that either left me confused, or took time to digest.
Thankfully, today I have the perfect place to turn for a (roughly) 500-word overview of any area of yoga I want to discuss,
from a trusted source. Drawing on The Truth of Yoga , I recently themed a class around saluting the sun. My students
relished hearing about how this sequence relates to the
Gayatri mantra (a translation of which I shared during shavasana ), solar deities, and inner strength, as well as the more
recent postural sequences that harness it. Daniel’s simple
summary of this subject allowed me to give a clearer explanation of where this approach sits in yoga’s history, and how it
might be embodied more generally, asking: ‘How does it feel
to build heat in the body?’ and ‘What this might help us burn
away? ’ I asked Daniel what inspired him to write the book.
