The Tree of Yoga

This a quirky little book that introduced me to two main things;

1. Yoga is not all about “stretching” and he is very careful to ask us to be very aware of our bodies when doing yoga poses. Don’t just focus on stretching one muscle if some other part of the body is hurting. Listen to your body and don’t go beyond your limit. This made a lot of sense to me. It was a very welcome concept.
2. Yoga is an opportunity to bring the mind and the body together, and therefore bring the mind into the present. This is something we don’t do very often at all these days. The author says that if we combine the mind and the body in yoga and we get better and better at that, then we improve both the mind and the body at the same time, and if we get good enough at this we may reach a position where we can see our soul.

There are some apparently extreme notions brought up in this book. At first they can seem weird and silly, but I find them very good for challenging my assumptions about reality. They don’t seem so silly when you give them some real thought.