I believe I have written before about how yoga is somewhat confusing because the asana seem to have different names. I can go to look up an asana and a completely different asana will come up than the one I was thinking of because the names get all wonky. I used to get very frustrated with that, but now I understand that the Sanskrit language originally was just a verbal language. And we all know how that works . . . if you haven’t ever actually played “Telephone” you probably have at least heard how it goes. Where one person tells a story and it gets repeated down the line and then the last person says what they heard and more often than not – depending on how many people the story went through – it is not what it started out to be. Imagine that with a language. And then once they did start writing it down it probably got changed through that process. And THEN there is the process of translation. We know what happens there, right? Things get lost in translation. Well, I have a handful of yoga books and if you were to look at them you will see writing in every one noting what the “actual” name of the pose is. Which is really me just having picked one of the many names and deciding to use it. Not ALL poses have multiple names, but many do. Well, I mention all that because one of the books I have I thought of recently when one of my students asked about a book of poses.
This book came to mind first because I think of it as a simple book. I found it easy to find poses. I like that there are cartoon characters drawn, instead of pictures of people posing. I really like that there is a “Pose At A Glance” page in the back that is just stick figures. So when you want to quickly get the name of a pose you can just flip to that and then look at the reference and then you have it. I never actually used the book as it was intended or at least as one of the intended ways for it to be used.
The book is separated into seven categories (sexy, calm, energy, restore, cleanse, sanity, and ragtime) and has poses that can help with each category in that section. In the front of each section there is even three sequences that one can do to gain benefits to help with that specific category.
For example in the sexy category some of the poses are: Chair, Warrior II, Staff, revolved triangle, and Cow Face Pose. The sequences in the beginning of that section contain some of those poses. So you can pick some of your favorite poses from the sexy category section and do them or you can do one (or more) of the sequences in the front of the section. Of course, the way to use the book is almost endless, just like any yoga book.
The book is Yoga to the Rescue by Amy Luwis and was originally published in 2007. It is a cute book. Just like with any yoga book, the names of the poses might be different from what you learned and even some of the instructions might be different, too. But I think it is a nice little easy-to-follow-quick-to-get-you-started book. If you really get interested in yoga then you will end up wanting more than this book provides, but it is like a yoga-starter book.
Terre Pruitt's Blog 