Living Your Yoga : Finding the Spiritual in Everyday Life by Judith Lasater Ph.D.

Living Your Yoga :

Finding the Spiritual in Everyday Life
by Judith Lasater Ph.D.

Paperback - 162 pages (January 2000)
Rodmell Press; ISBN: 0962713880

Synopsis:

If you think that you have to escape to a cave in the Himalayas to find the enlightenment that yoga promises, think again. In Living Your Yoga, Judith Lasater stretches the meaning of yoga beyond its familiar poses and breathing techniques to include the events of daily life as practice.

Using the time-honored wisdom of the Yoga Sutra and the Bhagavad Gita to steer the course, she serves up off-the-mat practices to guide you in deepening your relationships with yourself, your family and friends, and the world around you. Inspiring and practical, she blends her heartfelt knowledg e of an ancient tradition with her life experiences as a daughter, sister, wife, mother, friend, and yoga teacher and practitioner. The result: a new yoga that beckons you to find the spiritual in everyday life.

Living Your Yoga is divided into three parts, each identifying the qualities to be cultivated and the challenges to be transformed through awareness:

*Awakening of Awareness: Yoga within Yourself
*Widening the Circle: Yoga and Relationships
*Embracing All Life: Yoga in the World

More than 10 million people practice yoga today, and of the many fine yoga books in the marketplace, this is the only one to show you how to extend the inner principles of yoga into gentle and enduring benefits in every aspect of daily life.

Reviews:

Finding the Spiritual in Your Everyday Life

January 27, 2000

Reviewer: Richard Rosen, deputy director, Yoga Research and Education Center from Berkeley, California

Though she holds a doctorate in East-West psychology, there's nothing academic or abstract about Judith Lasater's approach to "living your yoga." She writes in down-to-earth language we can all understand, her points illustrated with homespun anecdotes drawn from her life as a student and teacher, wife and parent. The book is divided into three parts, that grapple with an ever-widening circle of contexts and issues, from the intrapersonal ("Yoga within Yourself") to the interpersonal ("Yoga and Relationships") to the broadly social ("Yoga in the World"). Each part has seven chapters, with subjects ranging from self-judgment, fear, suffering, impermanence, and greed, to faith, courage, compassion, truth, nonviolence, and love. Each chapter has five sections: an opening quote from either the Yoga Sutra or the Bhagavad Gita, which sets the theme for the chapter as a whole; a pithy essay which expands upon this theme; a simple guided practice that helps us to integrate the theme in our everyday life and so experience its enlightening effects; brief suggestions for further practice; and a list of affirmations, called "mantras for daily living," that keep us centered, compassionate toward our self and others, and committed to our spiritual work. The English philosopher Francis Bacon once wrote, "Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested." Living Your Yoga is a feast for the soul that will nourish us again and again with its wisdom.

About the Author
Judith Lasater has taught yoga since 1971 and holds workshops and retreats throughout the U.S. and abroad. She holds a doctorate in East-West psychology and is also a physical therapist. Having studied with B.K.S. Iyengar in India and the U.S., she is the president of the California Yoga Teachers Association. She writes extensively about yoga, and her feature articles, columns, and essays appear in numerous books, magazines, and anthologies.

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Finding the Spiritual in Your Everyday Life	January 27, 2000
Reviewer: Richard Rosen, deputy director, Yoga Research and Education Center from Berkeley, California
Though she holds a doctorate in East-West psychology, there's nothing academic or abstract about Judith Lasater's approach to "living your yoga." She writes in down-to-earth language we can all understand, her points illustrated with homespun anecdotes drawn from her life as a student and teacher, wife and parent. The book is divided into three parts, that grapple with an ever-widening circle of contexts and issues, from the intrapersonal ("Yoga within Yourself") to the interpersonal ("Yoga and Relationships") to the broadly social ("Yoga in the World"). Each part has seven chapters, with subjects ranging from self-judgment, fear, suffering, impermanence, and greed, to faith, courage, compassion, truth, nonviolence, and love. Each chapter has five sections: an opening quote from either the Yoga Sutra or the Bhagavad Gita, which sets the theme for the chapter as a whole; a pithy essay which expands upon this theme; a simple guided practice that helps us to integrate the theme in our everyday life and so experience its enlightening effects; brief suggestions for further practice; and a list of affirmations, called "mantras for daily living," that keep us centered, compassionate toward our self and others, and committed to our spiritual work. The English philosopher Francis Bacon once wrote, "Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested." Living Your Yoga is a feast for the soul that will nourish us again and again with its wisdom.