How Yoga Works - Book Review

This is a great book for people who are interested in yoga but do not know much about it. This book was suggested to me by my sister, who is practicing yoga since almost 7 years and now is a certified yoga trainer. By the name I thought it was another book on how to do yoga poses and their benefits. But this book has permanently changed the way that I look at yoga. When I started reading, I got hooked to it; it was difficult to put it down, as I wanted to know what happened until I got it. This book confirms the concept that every human being has a purpose, a unique gift, to use in their life to benefit them and the lives of others that they may not realize until sometime along their journey, they are called upon to use their gift. The book goes into some of the inner practice and how powerful it can be when done along with the outer practices of yoga poses and stretches, enhancing their effects. It explains some of the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali. The book, in the form of a story, makes it clear about the working of the chakras, our life force energy flow, and how they respond to everything in our lives.

It is a story of a young girl who is stopped crossing the border of India, carrying the great book of the sutras, which are very valuable. In order to prove that she has not stolen, the captain of the jail allows the girl to leave her cell once each week to teach him the knowledge from the book in order to heal the pain in his back. The young girl and teacher of yoga sow the knowledge of the sutras in the captain’s mind.  The author Geshe Michael Roach explains how yoga enables one to overcome the struggles of the mind and the nature of the subjective thought.

It gives a new way of viewing the world, a new way of understanding how things really work, and how we can stop even the grand mistakes of unhappiness, the aging of the body and death itself. But you must listen with an open mind, a mind opened by the realization that the way we were taught to view the world simply doesn’t work on the most important points of our life. At times, the story moved slowly, though the momentum of the story matched the messages within.

The book has a yellow cover with a picture of gyan mudra. The print is clear and the size of letters makes it easy to read. It has 406 pages. I would highly recommend this book to those who want to know how yoga works externally as well as internally. It would definitely help in enhancing your personality.

                                                           Happy reading!