Complete Illustrated Book of Yoga

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The Complete Illustrated
Book of Yoga
OCLC
32442598

The Complete Illustrated Book of Yoga is a bestselling 1960 book by

Surya Namaskar (salute to the sun) into yoga as exercise. While some of its subject matter is the traditional philosophy of yoga, its detailed photographs of Vishnudevananda performing the asanas is modern, helping to market
the Sivananda yoga brand to a global audience.

Context

The book was one of the first three reference works on

Sivananda Yoga.[2] During the 1965 filming of Help! in the Bahamas, the Beatles met Vishnudevananda, who gave each of the four of them a signed copy of the book.[3]

Book

Publication history

The book was published in 1960 by Bell Publishing/

Julian Press in both hardcover and paperback. It was reprinted in paperback by Harmony Books and Three Rivers Press/Random House in 1988. It has been translated into at least thirteen languages,[4] and is said to have sold over a million copies.[5]

Synopsis

The Complete Illustrated Book of Yoga first introduces the

satchitananda),[CIBY 10] and finally the conquest of death.[CIBY 11]

The Mahavidya website of scholarly resources on Hinduism notes that the book states (on page x) that yoga "balances, harmonizes, purifies, and strengthens the Body, Mind, and Soul of the practitioner", through what Vishnudevananda considered the five basic principles of yoga, namely proper exercise, proper breathing, proper relaxation, proper diet, and positive thinking and meditation (on page xi).[6]

Illustrations

The book is illustrated with 146 large monochrome photographs of Vishnudevananda performing the shatkarmas and the asanas; a frontispiece shows him meditating in Padmasana (lotus position). The book contains also five full-page "charts", line drawings of the body and the subtle body with its chakras. An appendix provides six tables of training schedules.

Reception

The yoga

scholar-practitioner Mark Singleton writes that "it is of course Vishnu-devananda, author of The Complete Illustrated Book of Yoga, who is generally credited as the asana pioneer within Sivananda-inspired yoga".[7]

The yoga scholar-practitioner

Cidambaram temple",[8] and suggests that the book must have been describing those inherited traditions.[8] Sjoman analyses the origins of the asanas in the book, comparing them to Iyengar's and to those of the Sritattvanidhi of the Mysore Palace.[9]

The historian of modern yoga

Andrea Jain writes in her 2015 book Selling Yoga that Vishnudevananda and other students of Sivananda were among the first to build yoga brands and to mass-market these to a global audience, effectively tying yoga to methods for achieving physical fitness.[10]

The historian of modern yoga

treatment for a host of diseases but fitness exercise."[2]

See also

  • Light on Yoga - B. K. S. Iyengar's encyclopedic 1966 yoga reference book

References

Primary

These references are supplied to indicate the parts of the Complete Illustrated Book of Yoga text being discussed.

  1. ^ Vishnudevananda 1988, p. 3 ff
  2. ^ Vishnudevananda 1988, p. 12 ff
  3. ^ Vishnudevananda 1988, p. 19 ff
  4. ^ Vishnudevananda 1988, p. 46 ff
  5. ^ Vishnudevananda 1988, p. 199 ff
  6. ^ Vishnudevananda 1988, p. 204 ff
  7. ^ Vishnudevananda 1988, p. 220 ff
  8. ^ Vishnudevananda 1988, p. 256 ff
  9. ^ Vishnudevananda 1988, p. 286 ff
  10. ^ Vishnudevananda 1988, p. 300 ff
  11. ^ Vishnudevananda 1988, p. 308 ff

Secondary

  1. ^ Jain 2015, p. 69.
  2. ^ a b c Goldberg 2016, pp. 329–331.
  3. ^ Lavezzoli 2006, p. 173.
  4. OCLC 368900
    . Retrieved 27 April 2021.
  5. ^ Sivananda Ashram, Quebec (January 1989). "A Mini Yoga Library for Your Home". Yoga Journal: 10.
  6. ^ Thompson, Michaela (18 June 2012). "Swami Vishnu-devananda". Mahavidya. Retrieved 7 July 2019.
  7. ^ Singleton 2010, p. 219.
  8. ^ a b c Sjoman 1999, p. 39.
  9. ^ Sjoman 1999, pp. 87–89.
  10. ^ Jain 2015, p. 76.

Sources

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