Product Description: Experience the physical benefits and body awareness from hatha yoga--the most popular form of yoga today. Hatha Yoga Illustrated presents nearly 650 full-color photos to visually demonstrate 77 standard poses from hatha yoga that apply to all major hatha styles including Iyengar, Astanga, Anusara, and Bikram. Individual poses are presented from start to finish, showing you how to achieve proper alignment and breathing to ensure challenging yet safe execution. The result is an increase in the effectiveness, both physically and mentally, youll experience with each pose. Several pose variations based on your personal preference, ability, and fitness level are also included.
Great Great book to help anyone remember what they are/were doing after a yoga session .
loved it! I loved this book. There was a short segment in the front talking about the spiritual aspect of yoga, meditation and breathing, but the rest of the book is poses. They are divided into sections with pictures on how to get in and out of each pose. The pictures are very clear and perfectly done. At the end there are several workouts and instead of having just a list of all the poses, they include tiny pictures of them so you do not have to look back in the book if you don't remember what the poses are. This is a very good book.
salutations I havent read a ton of Yoga books, but this material is comprehensive and has an array of poses for practitioners of all levels. This book does not have a long section devoted to the history and theology of Yoga, so hit the library if that material is essential to you. If you're looking for a truckload of poses complete with variations for your personal level, buy it ASAP
great yoga pictures for help w/poses! As a Yoga instructor I have found this book helpful as a reminder to generate new poses for my classes. It's also a great book for beginners to see HOW the poses should look. Very well done....
Excellent Yoga Reference Hatha Yoga Illustrated, for greater strength, flexibility and focus by Martin Kirk and Brooke Boone is a great yoga resource. It was co-authored by Martin Kirk, one of my yoga teacher trainers, and was used extensively during my teacher training. But even if Martin didn't write it, I would still recommend it.
Hatha Yoga Illustrated is a comprehensive manual of basic hatha yoga poses, providing lots of clear color photographs and instructions for over 70 common poses and their variations/modifications. It includes information regarding benefits of the various poses, suggested counter-poses and contraindications, which can be very useful for those with injuries and/or health concerns.
There are several photographs for each posture including common variations with detailed instructions for obtaining proper alignment as well as directions for coming into and out of the poses safely and with awareness. It's written in a very practical, user-friendly style that is clear and easy to understand making it a perfect guide for beginners and on-going reference book for more experienced yoga practitioners.
Chapter one provides a brief overview of yoga including some background and history, yogic breathing, how to use yoga props, where and when to practice and some meditation basics. But Hatha Yoga Illustrated really isn't about yoga philosophy, it's about yoga poses.
The remainder of the book - chapters 2 through 10 -- is a step-by-step guide to the poses that are grouped according to the following categories:
Standing Postures
Balancing Postures
Arm-Balancing Postures
Inverted Postures
Backward-Bending Postures
Twisting Postures
Forward-Bending Postures
Sitting Postures
Reclining and Relaxation Postures
The last chapter outlines eleven useful hatha yoga routines, or sequences of postures for helping you link them together in various home practice workouts. Two indexes are provided at the back of the book: a photographic index by English name and alphabetic index by Sanskrit (ancient yogic language) name. Helpful resources including a list of yoga schools and sources for yoga props and clothing also are provided.
Hatha Yoga Illustrated would be extremely helpful as a standalone book for getting oriented to many common yoga poses or a great accompaniment to your DVD collection to clarify poses you have questions about.
You can purchase Hatha Yoga Illustrated at most bookstores, including Amazon.com where it currently has a five star rating. It is also available directly through it's publisher Human Kinetics at www.humankinetics.com
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