The Yoga Tradition: Its History, Literature, Philosophy and Practice

Feuerstein is a renowned yoga scholar and a tireless communicator, sharing his knowledge in more than two dozen books on the subject as well as translations of key yoga scriptures. Most Westerners have a limited understanding of what the term yoga, which means "union," implies. Feuerstein describes yoga as a "spectacularly multifaceted phenomena," and performs a truly yogic feat by combining commentary with translated Sanskrit teachings, history with theory, the spiritual with the practical, and the classical with the contemporary. He illuminates every facet and phase of yoga from its roots in shamanism to its connections to the complex and dynamic spirituality of India, especially yoga's relationship with Hinduism and Buddhism. Feuerstein explicates the different yogic schools and profiles key yoga teachers. Yoga is a vast and vital universe maintained over the centuries by the discipline and persistence of its practitioners, who strive to join the physical with the spiritual, the "individual self with the supreme Self." No more adept or comprehensive study of yoga aimed at a Western audience is to be found.