Short description:

Yoga and the Body: The Future of Modern Yoga in the Studio and Beyond imagines the prospects for physical yoga practice.

Long description:

Yoga and the Body: The Future of Modern Yoga in the Studio and Beyond imagines the prospects for physical yoga practice. The authors, writing as advanced practitioners and teachers, share their enthusiasm for yoga and lay out the ways its physical practices can evolve and make an impact upon our understanding of consciousness.

The chapters examine techniques, trends, and beliefs about contemporary practices and then speculate about where these could lead. Topics include the central importance of the body in spiritual experience, the role of emotions and imagination in consciousness, the insights gained through aesthetic philosophy about the nature of reality, and yogic techniques used for exploring the mind, body, and spirit.

This book is for anyone who has ever taken a yoga class and wondered if they are missing something. It is a thoughtful and entertaining guide to embodied exploration for those who are genuinely curious about modern yoga and its future.

"The authors tease out a radical vision of an embodied yoga where the body is no longer ?just a body? but a ?tool? of discovery. In its most fundamental expression, the body in yoga reveals mind. The achievement of their approach is that, through a newly framed yoga, they accept the paradox of the body, which is that it can stand mute as a stone, and yet say something wholly other."

Joseph Rubenstein, professor emeritus of anthropology and ritual at Stockton University

?This is the book that yoga desperately needs as it struggles to evolve effectively in the modern context. It offers critical academic and practical insight and covers a wide range of topics of central concern to serious practitioners. Do not expect a pious re-appraisal of the tradition of yoga here. This book contains radically new thought on what yoga could mean for us now.?

Adam Keen, founder of Keen on Yoga, an online community and podcast platform, and international yoga teacher

?This book is a challenge that?s well worth the effort. The writing is stimulating. It?s radiant with brilliant flashes of intelligence and insight that elevate our understanding of yoga. It?s a harbinger that shines a light on the emerging transformative power of yoga in the West.?

Richard Rosen, yoga teacher and author

?Clark and Greene offer an invigorating and original set of essays, this time directed toward serious yoga practitioners. The authors highlight the complexity and richness that has developed through the past century of engagement between the philosophical and embodied understandings of yoga in India and their evolving global practices.?

Sarah Strauss, professor of anthropology and author of Positioning Yoga

Table of Contents:

Section I: The Experience of Practice  1. Minding the Body  2. Anger is an Energy  3. A Thing of Beauty  Section II: The Social World  4. What Really Matters  5. When Credentialing Doesn?t Matter  6. Why Language Matters  Section III: The Transmission of Knowledge  7. The Empathetic Dilemma  8. Myths and the Negotiation of Reality  9. The Future of Technique